was a necessity for having a house sufficient to contain ye studts as they could not lodge in private houses in that village where we have fixed the College, which is in the centre of the Province, where provisions are plenty and firewood will always be cheap, is doubtless the fittest place we could have pitched upon.

"The buildings prove more expensive than we at first imagined from the best computations we could get, but by the smiles of Heaven upon us we shall be able, I think, to complete what we design at present: and have at least a fund left of 1600 Ster, which, with the other income of the College will be sufficient for the present Officers and a little more.. This fund will be increased by what we get from Ireland, and a little more from South Britain-and we hope by the help of some generous benefactors here and abroad to be able before long to support a Professor of Divinity; that office at present lies on the President, with a considerable part of the instruction in other branches of Literature. The Trustees have their eyes upon Mr. Edwards. The students in general behave well; some among ym that give good evidence of real piety, and a prospect of special usefulness in the Church of Christ are a great comfort and support to me under the burden of my important station."

As for the students in particular, some of them may not have been so enthusiastic over the Princeton prospect. Young Timothy Edwards, for instance, who looked so smart "with his gound and new coat," according to his sister Esther. "I think there is not one in College looks so smart and genteel." And an

enforced residence in this new Nassau Hall they were building would not have appealed to him, since he would not stay at the parsonage in Newark, but must be off with a friend to live in the town at Tutor Ogden's. "He is going out of the house I this morn perceive," Esther informed Lucy, "though he has said nothing about it to me, but only in general when Mr. Burr was gone what if he should, what should I think of it. I hope he has a good design in it and wish it may be for his good, but indeed it is very hard I can hardly have it.

"Only think of it, no brother! No sister! But he not here and he not live with me, is it not hard. I expect it will set all the Town a talking, tis a pity, for now they are pretty still. It is for no dislike he says to anybody, or anything, but purely for his own advantage." It was all very dismaying for Esther, for "I have nobody with me nor have had since Commencement, though through mercy I have my health as well as ever I had in my life or I could not possibly get along in any shape; but you know there is nobody to have, girls are very scarce for all are ladies now-a-days."

But finally, in November, 1756, the College was moved to "Prince Town," and the Burr family went to live in that little academic village whose chief adornment, aside from its native beauty, was the recently constructed glory of Nassau Hall.

2

And the Lord's work went on "gloriously" in the College. "The fatigue I have had in the case of the College this winter has been greater than ever," Presi

NASSAU HALL, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

From "An Account of the College of New Jersey, 1764."

Probably the first published view. Courtesy of the Robert Fridenberg Galleries.

dent Burr wrote to the Reverend George Whitfield in 1757. "But pleased by God I never had so much comfort in my little Society. There has been a growing concern about the great things of religion among my pupils for some time past. Some of the most vain and careless greatly reformed, and some enquiring the way to Zion."

In fact, "O my dear," Esther informed Miss Prince, "who knows what God may do for the poor youth of this College if we pray ernestly for them!" And in February, "Mr. Burr was sent for to the College about dark and when he came their he found above 20 young men in one room crying and begging to know what they should do to be saved, 4 of them under the deepest sense of their wicked hearts and need of Christ." So they sent for Mr. Tennent "to come and assist in drawing the Net ashore for it is ready to break with the abundance of the Fish yt are caught in it"-and Esther herself composed a long poem to the Lord, in which she expressed the hope that

"May Nassau Hall the attractive magnet be

And draw ten thousand precious Souls to Thee!"

And there was grave need for such a revival of piety, for, in President Burr's opinion, the defeat of General Braddock had been "an awful but a seasonable rebuke of Heaven. Those that had the least degree of seriousness left could not but observe with concern the strange confidence in an arm of flesh and disregard to God and religion that appeared in that army. . . And I can but think God has brought good to the land out of this evil. . . . The state

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