property in the nineteenth ward, once occupied as the Botanic Garden, which was granted to the College by the Legislature in 1814. The latter, now lying in the Fifth Avenue, includes twentyone acres, comprising two hundred and twentyfive building lots, exclusive of the streets, and is set down in round numbers at four hundred thousand dollars in value. This has been hitherto unproductive, but is now in process of grading by the College, and will soon yield a large inIn addition to this real estate the College derives a rent of upwards of nineteen thousand dollars from other property in the third ward, under lease. The annual expenditures of the College, for the last fifteen years, have been about twenty-two thousand dollars; and the income from students, who pay an annual fee of ninety dollars each, about nine thousand dollars.*

THE CHARLESTON LIBRARY-THE NEW YORK SOCIETY LIBRARY.

THE three oldest public library associations in the country, disconnected with colleges, are the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Library Society of Charleston, S. C., and the New York Society Library. Of the first we have already spoken. The second was founded in 1748 by an association of seventeen young men, who in that year united in raising a fund to "collect new pamphlets" and magazines published in Great Britain. They remitted ten pounds to England, and by the close of the same year expanded their plan to that of a public library. In 1750 their numbers had increased to one hundred and sixty. A charter was obtained in 1755; a bequest of the valuable library of John M'Kenzie, an eminent lawyer of the city, received in 1771; and the vested fund, exclusive of the amount expended in books, amounted in 1778 to £20,000. On the fifteenth of January, of the same year, the collection was destroyed by fire, only 185 out of from five to six thousand volumes being preserved, with about two thirds of the M'Kenzie collection. As its other property was greatly depreciated during the war, but little remained of the institution at the peace. In 1792 a new collection was commenced, which in 1808 ainounted to 4,500, and in 1851 to 20,000 volumes. A building, originally the Bank of South Carolina, was purchased for the use of the institution in 1840.

The New York Society Library was chartered in 1754. The foundation of the collection may, however, be dated back, in advance of all other American institutions of a similar kind, to the commencement of the century, the Rev. John Sharp, chaplain to the governor of the province, the Earl of Bellamont, having in 1700 given a number of volumes for the use of the public, which were deposited in a room provided for the purpose. Those of the collection which remain are preserved in the library, and consist of ponderous tomes of theology, bearing the autograph of the original donor.

Nothing more is known of the history of the collection until twenty-nine years later, when the Rev. Dr. Millington, rector of Newington, England, bequeathed his library to the Society for

*Report of Committee of the Senate, March 10, 1855.

387

the Propagation of the Gospel, by whom it was presented to the New York library. The entire collection remained without further additions of importance in the hands of the corporation, who do not appear to have been good curators of the books intrusted to them.

The establishment of King's College, 1754, seems to have led a number of eminent citizens to unite in an association to form a library "for the use and ornament of the city, and the advantage of our intended college." Funds were collected, and a number of books purchased, which were placed in the same room with those already in the possession of the city. In 1772 a charter was obtained, and the institution assumed the title it has since borne of "The New York Society Library." In 1774 the records of the society were broken off, and not resumed until fourteen years after. During the occupation of the city by the British the soldiery were in the habit, in the words of a venerable citizen, who remembered the circumstance, of "carrying off books in their knapsacks, which they sold for grog."* Little or nothing is said to have been left of the collection at the peace but the folios, which either proved too bulky for the knapsacks or too heavy for the backs of the pilferers, or were perhaps too dry for exchange for fluids on any terms whatever. In December, 1788, the shareholders at last bestirred themselves, issued a call, came together, elected officers, and in the next year obtained a renewal of their charter.

The room in the old city hall, on the site of the present custom-house at the corner of Wall and Nassau streets, being found too small for the convenient accommodation of the collection, additional subscribers were obtained, and a spacious and elegant building erected for its exclusive accommodation in Nassau street, opposite the Middle Dutch church, now the post-office, to which it was removed in 1795.

In 1836 the rapid growth of the city, and the entire abandonment of its lower portion to mercantile purposes, rendered a removal of the library desirable. The building was sold, and a new edifice erected at the corner of Broadway and Leonard streets. In 1853 another removal was deemed advisable. The building was sold to the Messrs. Appleton, by whom the lower floor was converted into the finest and largest retail bookstore in the United States, and probably in the world, thus preserving in a measure the literary associations of the locality. The library was removed to apartments in the Bible-House, which it still occupies. Land has been purchased at the corner of Thirteenth street and University place for a new edifice, which has not yet been commenced.

A catalogue of the library was printed before the Revolution, but no copies have been preserved, nor is the extent of the collection at that time known. A catalogue was printed in 1793, when the library contained five thousand volumes. The collection increased to thirteen thousand in 1813, to twenty-five thousand in 1838. The last catalogue, published in 1850, states the

*Reminiscences of New York, by John Pintard, published in the New York Mirror,

number of volumes at that time to be thirtyfive thousand. The number is now forty thousand.

The original price of shares was fixed at five pounds, the shares being perpetual, but subject to an annual payment of ten shillings. The present price is twenty-five, with an annual payment of six dollars. The number of members in 1793 was nine hundred, it is now one thousand.

The proprietors elect annually fifteen of their number as trustees, to whom the entire charge of the affairs of the corporation is intrusted.

John Forbes filled the office of librarian from 1794 to 1824. He was succeeded by his son, the present librarian, Philip J. Forbes, to whom the institution is under obligations for his long services as a faithful curator of its possessions, and a judicious co-operator with the trustees for their increase.

The collection includes valuable files of the newspapers and periodical publications of the present century, and good editions of classic writers of every language. In 1812 the society received a valuable donation from Francis B. Winthrop, Esq., of a collection of early theological and scientific works, mostly in the Latin language, collected by his ancestor John Winthrop, the first governor of Connecticut.

THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

THIS institution is an illustration of the growth and development of liberal education in the city of Philadelphia. It had its origin mainly in the efforts of Franklin, by whose exertions the Academy of Philadelphia was organized, and went into operation in 1750. A public school had been established in 1689 by the Society of Friends, at which Latin and mathematics were taught, and of which George Keith was the first teacher. In 1743 Franklin, sensitive to the wants of the times, communicated the plan of an Academy, as he states in his autobiography, to the Rev. Richard Peters, which he revived in 1749 in conjunction with Thomas Hopkinson and others, when he issued his pamphlet entitled "Proposals relative to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania," the publication of which he tells us, in his politic way, he took care to represent, in his introduction, "not as an act of mine, but of some publicspirited gentleman, avoiding as much as I could, according to my usual rule, the presenting myself to the public as the author of any scheme for their benefit." A body of trustees was formed, including the most influential men of the city, among whom were Franklin himself, James Logan, Thomas Hopkinson, Richard Peters, Jacob Duché, Philip Syng, Charles Willing, and others, "men of character and standing and learning; or where, as with the greatest of them, mere scholarship was wanting, of masculine intelligence, and pure, vigorous American mother wit;" while "the master spirit then, as the master spirit in every effort to do public good, from the hour when he landed penniless at Market-street wharf, till the distant day when, at the end of almost a century, he was carried amidst mourning crowds and tolling bells to his modest and almost forgotten grave, was Benjamin Franklin. His mind conceived and

his energy achieved the first Philadelphia college."* Franklin has himself told the story of his adroitness in taking advantage of the arrival of Whitefield to secure a permanent location for the school. A building was erected to provide accommodation for travelling preachers under similar circumstances with the great Methodist, and was placed under the control of members of the several denominations. One of them was a Moravian, who had not given satisfaction to his colleagues; and on his death it was resolved to leave that sect out, and as there was no religious variety to draw from, Franklin secured his election on the ground of being of no sect at all. Having thus attained a position in both boards, he effected a junction of the school and the meeting-house in the same building, and to this day, in the present halls of the University, accommodation is afforded, if called for by itinerant preachers. In 1751 the academy opened in the new building with masters in Latin, English, and mathematics. Charles Thomson, the future Secretary of Congress, was during four years a tutor in the school. In 1753 a charter was obtained for "the Trustees of the Academy and Charitable School in the Province of Pennsylvania." Logic, rhetoric, natural and moral philosophy were added to the instructions, and the Rev. William Smith, then full of youthful ardor in the cause of education, was employed to teach them. An additional charter in 1755 conferred the power of granting degrees, and instituted a faculty with the title of "The Provost, Vice-Provost, and Professors of the College and Academy of Philadelphia, in the province of Pennsylvania." By this act the Rev. William Smith was appointed the first Provost, and the Rev. Francis Alison Vice-Provost. Both, by disposition, education, and experience, were well fitted for the calling.

Col. Martin of Long Island. During this time he revisited England and was ordained to the ministry.

He early gave his attention to the subject of education, for in 1753,* when King's College was about being organized in New York, he drew up and published an ingenious essay entitled A General Idea of the College of Mirania, addressed "to the Trustees by law appointed for receiving proposals relating to the establishment of a College in New York." He visited England, and received his ordination there in 1753.

Before the College charter was obtained in Philadelphia he was placed at the head of the Academy, May 25, 1754, and was, as we have seen, constituted the first Provost of the College. In the published collection of his Discourses there is a sermon from his pen preached in Christ Church, Philadelphia, Sept. 1, 1754, on the death of a pupil of the Senior Philosophy Class, William Thomas Martin, which is accompanied by verses written by Francis Hopkinson, Samuel Magaw, Jacob Duché, and Paul Jackson who became a classical tutor in the College, who were among the first graduates in the year 1757. Other discourses and addresses at various intervals show Dr. Smith to have been a man of science, of literature, of patriotism, and of Christian devotion. One of the earliest of his writings was A Philosophical Meditation and Religious Address to the Supreme Being, which was intended for the use of young students in philosophy, and published in London in 1754, in a volume with a treatise on Ethics by the Rev. Dr. Johnson, the first President of King's College. From October, 1757, to October, 1758, he published a series of eight essays in the American Magazine at Philadelphia, with the title of The Hermit. They exhibit a warmth of feeling and a taste for letters ready to ripen into the pursuits of the scholar and divine. In 1758 he wrote an Earnest Address to the Colonies stimulating the country for its defence against the French. He preached also several sermons on occasion of that war and on the opening of the Revolution a military discourse, June 23, 1775, in which he assisted the American

cause.

He also delivered an oration in memory of General Montgomery, at the request of Congress, in 1776. This was an eloquent production, as was also his Eulogium on Benjamin Franklin pronounced before the American Philosophical Society, March 1, 1791.†

The Rev. Francis Alison, who filled the office of Vice-Provost the corresponding period with the Provost-ship of Dr. Smith, was born in Ireland in 1705, was educated at the University of Glasgow, and reaching America in 1735, was appointed to the charge of a Presbyterian Church

This is the date also given to a Poem by the Rev. Mr. Smith, on visiting the Academy of Philadelphia; printed in folio, aud of nearly three hundred lines. It is mentioned by Fisher in his account of the early poets of Pennsylvania, who also speaks of the Provost's habit of " inciting and encouraging every boyish attempt at rhyme in the College; so that every commencement or exhibition, every occasion of general rejoicing or grief, was an opportunity for the public pronunciation of dialogues, odes, or elegies, some of which possess great beauty and animation, and are far above the ordinary capacity of Collegians."

These were published in the posthumous edition of his Works in Philadelphia in two volumes in 1803. There were two London editions of his Discourses in the author's lifetime, in 1759 and 1762.

at New London, in Chester county, Pennsylvania. There he opened a school, and had for his pupils several youths who afterwards became distinguished. He was first Rector and then Master of the Latin School at Philadelphia. He then became first Vice-Provost of the College in 1755, and held the office at his death in 1779. Besides these engagements Dr. Alison was colleague in the ministry of the First Presbyterian Church with Dr. Ewing.

Provost Smith made two visits to England while in charge of the college. On one of these, in 1759, undertaken we are told "to escape the resentment of the Pennsylvania legislature,"* with which he had become at odds by his sympathies with the proprietors, he received the title of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Oxford; aud in 1762 he was united with James Jay of New York in solicitation for funds which were divided between the colleges in New York and Philadelphia; the latter receiving the sum of six thousand pounds sterling. The College had been sustained by numerous donations, legacies, and gifts, which its benevolent feature of a charity school facilitated.

The College rapidly grew into fame under Smith's administration; the aggregate of students was large, and the number from other provinces and the West Indies became so considerable that a special building, in 1762, was erected for their accommodation, the trustees readily raising the funds by a lottery.

From 1753 to 1773, in this ante-revolutionary period, the studies in oratory and English literature.were directed by the Rev. Ebenezer Kinnersley, who attained separate distinction by his share in the electrical experiments of Franklin. He exhibited the phenomena of electricity in public lectures through the Colonies, and visited the West Indies. His apparatus was bought by the College after his decease. The Medical School which has become of such high distinction, dates from the appointment of Dr. Morgan in 1765 as professor of the theory and practice of physic. Dr. William Shippen's chair of anatomy and surgery was created the same year, and the appointments of Dr. Kuhn, Professor of Botany and Materia Medica, and of Dr. Benjamin Rush of Chemistry, followed. In 1767, the Medical School, which has since attained such high distinction, was regularly organized, and the next year degrees were conferred.

At a later period in Smith's career difficulties grew up between the trustees and the legislature representing the popular interest. The Provost had been attached to the proprietors in the political agitations of the times, and it was charged, though apparently without reason, that it was the design of the trustees, some of whom were represented to be of monarchical inclination, to defeat the original liberal object of the charter, by making a Church of England institution of the College. This prejudice or hostility took shape in 1779 in an act of the Legislature which annulled the charter of the College, took away the funds, and created a new institution, with libe

ral grants out of the confiscated estates of the royalists, entitled the University of Pennsylvania. The old offices were pronounced vacant in this act, and a new body of trustees appointed. This act produced the usual excitement of a proceeding necessarily of a violent revolutionary character, and it was resisted by Dr. Smith and his friends, who procured a law in 1789 reinstating the College trustees and faculty in their ancient estates and privileges. The meetings for the reorganization of the College were held at the house of Dr. Franklin. Dr. Smith became again Provost, and the medical faculty was strengthened by the addition of Dr. Wistar in Chemistry and the Institutes of Medicine, and Barton in Botany and Natural History. In 1791 the old institution finally succumbed, and an act of the Legislature was passed blending the two bodies in the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Smith at this time permanently retired from the institution, his age and the old difficulties preventing his reappointment. He carried with him the respect of the public and an acknowledgment of his usefulness in an annuity of one hundred pounds for life. He died in 1803, leaving a collection of his writings ready for posthumous publication.

In the charter of the University in 1779 the Rev. Dr. John Ewing was created Provost. He was born the son of a farmer in East Nottingham, Maryland, June 22, 1732, and received his classical education at the school of Francis Alison. He was a graduate of the College at Princeton in 1752, where he was received as a student of the senior class. He studied theology; and in 1758, when Dr. Smith left the College of Philadelphia on his visit to Europe, took his place as instructor of the philosophical classes. In 1759 he was called to the ministry of the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, which he filled during the remainder of his life. In 1773 he visited England to collect funds for the Academy at Newark, in Delaware, and while there had the opportunity of the acquaintance of Dr. Robertson, an interview with Dr. Johnson, in which he overcame the disinclination of that leviathan to a republican from America, and

meeting Lord North frankly acquainted him with the probable and, as it turned out, prophetic, issue of a contest between England and this country. He received his degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Edinburgh.

In 1777 Dr. Ewing removed from the scenes of the Revolution in Philadelphia to Maryland, and on his return became Provost of the University in 1779. He was eminent as a man of science, and filled the chair of Vice-President of the Philosophical Society. His College lectures on Natural Philosophy were published in 1809.*

During a portion of his College course from 1779 to 1782 the office of Vice-Provost was held by David Rittenhouse. Ewing's accomplishments are highly spoken of. He was eminent as a mathematician and in the various branches of Natural Philosophy, and profound in metaphysical and classical studies.

The incumbents of the office of Provost since this period have been Dr. John McDowell, from 1806 to 1810; Dr. John Andrews, who had held the Chair of Moral Philosophy since 1789, for the next three years; Dr. Frederick Beasley from 1813 to 1828; the present Bishop William H. Delancey from 1828 till 1834; when Dr. John Ludlow succeeded, who was followed by Dr. Henry Vethake, the present incumbent. He was first connected with the College as Vice-Provost, and was formerly for a short period a lecturer in Columbia College, New York. In 1838, he published in Philadelphia his Principles of Political Economy, and in 1847 edited the supplementary fourteenth volume of the Encyclopædia Ameri

cana.

Dr. John McDowell, before his appointment to the Provostship, occupied the position of Principal of St. John's College in Maryland.

Dr. John Andrews, born in Maryland in 1746, was educated at the Academy at Philadelphia, and was a graduate of the College in 1765 in the same class with Bishop White. He was ordained by the Bishop of London in 1767, and became a

*Art. by Robert Walsh, Am. Biog., Am. Quar. Rev. No. 1. History of First Presbyterian Church by the Rev. Albert Barnes, Am. Quar. Reg. xiii, 303.

Missionary of the Society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts. He was afterwards rector at Queen Ann's county, Maryland. His political sentiments were with the loyalists, and he removed from his parish to Yorktown, where he kept a school. In 1785 he took charge of a new Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia, and in 1791 was made Vice-Provost of the College. In December, 1810, he succeeded Dr. McDowell as Provost. He withdrew from the office in 1813 in ill health, and died in that year at the age of sixty-seven.*

The Rev. Frederick Beasley, a presbyter of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University from 1813 to 1828, and is favorably known for his metaphysical work in defence of the philosophy of Locke, which he published in 1822, entitled "A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind." He lived many years after his retirement, dying at Elizabethtown, N. J., at the age of sixty-eight, in 1845.

The present University Buildings in Ninth street, originally erected for the accommodation of Congress, were in 1800 purchased by the University.

The general course of instruction is embraced in the Faculties of Arts and of Medicine, while the original distinctive features of the College, the Academy or Grammar-school, and the Charity schools, are severally maintained under the organization.

JOEL BARLOW.

JOEL BARLOW, whose career presents a greater variety of circumstances than the history of any of his fellow litterateurs in the early records of America, was born the son of a respectable farmer, and the youngest of a family of ten children, at Reading, in Connecticut, in the year 1755. His father died while he was at school, leaving the son means sufficient to acquire a college education. In 1774, he was sent to Dartmouth, and thence removed to Yale, where he found Dwight, who had been installed tutor three years before, and with whom he shared both his patriotism and his poetry. During the vacations of the college, Barlow was off handling a musket with the militia in the opening scenes of the Revolution, being present, it is said, and fighting bravely, in the action at White Plains. His poetic first appearance was made on Commencement day, when he took his degree, in 1778, and delivered a poem, The Prospect of Peace, which was published the same year in New Haven, and which reappeared, with another poem spoken at the college three years afterwards on taking his degree of Master of Arts, in the Litchfield collection of "American Poems" by Elihu H. Smith, in 1793. In 1780, he published an elegy on his friend, the accomplished statesman of Connecticut, Titus Hos:ner.t In these early productions, we notice

*Wood's Historical Discourse. Sabine's Loyalists.

Titus Hosmer, the friend of Barlow, was a lawyer and patriot of great distinction in Connecticut, whose education and manners procured him great respect and affection. David D. Field, in his Middletown Historical Address, has given a notice of his career: "Noah Webster numbered him among the three mighties; and these three he designated as William Samuel Johnson, LL.D., of Stratford, Oliver Ellsworth of

a certain breadth of philanthropy, and extension of the local limits of American patriotism, which the author, in after life, was destined to display on an ampler field. It is curious to note at this time, in advance of the dreams of the French Revolution, the universal claims of humanity engaging his attention. He was even then an enthusiastic visionary looking for an early Millennium. He already saw the advancing conquests of America

What wide extent her waving ensigns claim,,
Lands yet unknown and streams without a name.
And celebrated the coming population of Europe.
On this broad theatre unbounded spread,
In different scenes, what countless throngs must
tread!

Soon as the new-form'd empire, rising fair,
Calms her brave sons now breathing from the war,
Unfolds her harbors, spreads the genial soil,
And welcomes freemen to the cheerful toil.
With war and discord around him, he sang the
universality of peace and union; nations growing
fraternal under the general impulse-

Till each remotest realm, by friendship join'd, Link in the chain and harmonize mankind, The union'd banner be at last unfurl'd, And wave triumphant round the accordant world. From college Barlow went to the study of law, but the Massachusetts line wanting chaplains, he turned to divinity, and putting himself through a diligent six weeks course of theology, was duly licensed a Congregational minister, and joined the army as Dwight had done before him; and like Dwight, he cheered the spirits of the soldiery with animating odes from the camp. He remained in the army during the war, meditating and composing his Vision of Columbus, which was a well written poem for the times; some of the difficulties of which, to the scholar, may be estimated from Barlow's statement that he had long sought in vain in the country for a copy of Camoens' Lusiad, and had not been able to obtain it till his poem was ready for the press. The Vision was published by subscription in 1787, and was reprinted in London and in Paris. The dedication to the first edition was to Louis XVI., in a strain of superfluous eulogy and humility.*

Windsor, Chief Justice of the United States, and the Hon. Titus Hosmer of Middletown." The general Congress had just conferred the appointment of Judge of a Court of Appeals upon Hosmer, when he died suddenly, August 4, 1780, at the age of forty-four. Barlow, who was encouraged by Hosmer to write his Vision of Columbus, speaks of his orphaned muse on this event:

At thy command she first assumed the lyre,
And hop'd a future laurel from thy name.
How did thy smiles awake her infant song!
How did thy virtues animate the lay!
Still shall thy fate the dying strain prolong,
And bear her voice with thy lost form away.

* If all that he says of the Bourbons is true, the French Revolution ought never to have occurred. "The illustrious line of your royal ancestors have been conspicuous in seizing those advantages (proceeding from the discovery of America) and diffusing their happy effects. The great Father of the House of Bourbon will be held in the highest veneration till his favorite political system shall be realized among the nations of Europe and extended to all mankind. * Your Majesty's permission, that the unfortunate Columbus may once more enjoy the protection of a royal benefactor, has added a new obligation to those I before felt-in common with a grateful country."