the inmates. It has required ingenuity and expense to render the main building habitable; but even now the visitor cannot but smile as he compares the splendor of the architecture with the homely benevolence of its purpose. The Parthenon was a suitable dwelling-place for a marble goddess, but the mothers of Athens would have shuddered at the thought of consigning their little boys to dwell in its chilling grandeurs.

We can scarcely overstate the bad effect of this first mistake. It has constantly tended to obscure Mr. Girard's real purpose, which was to afford a plain, comfortable home, and a plain, substantial education to poor orphans, destined to gain their livelihood by labor. Always there have been two parties in the Board of Directors: one favoring a scheme which would make the College a college; the other striving to keep it down to the modest level of the founder's intentions. That huge and dazzling edifice seems always to have been exerting a powerful influence against the stricter constructionists of the will. It is only within the last two years that this silent but ponderous argument has been partially overcome by the resolute good-sense of a majority of the Directors. Not the least evil consequent upon the erection of this building was, that the delay in opening the College caused the resignation of its first President, Alexander D. Bache, a gentleman who had it in him to organize the institution aright, and give it a fair start. It is a curious fact, that the extensive report by this gentleman of his year's observation of the orphan schools of Europe has not been of any practical use in the organization of Girard College. Either the Directors have not consulted it, or they have found nothing in it available for their purpose.

The first class of one hundred pupils was admitted to the College on the first day of the year 1848. The number of inmates is now six hundred. The estate will probably enable the Direc tors to admit at length as many as fifteen hundred. It will be seen, therefore, that Girard College, merely from the number of its pupils, is an institution of great importance.

Sixteen years have gone by since the College was opened, but it cannot yet be said that the policy of the Directors is fixed. These Directors, appointed by the City Councils, are eighteen is

number, of whom six go out of office every year, while the Councils themselves are annualty elected. Hence the difficulty of set

tling upon a plan, and the greater difficulty of adhering to one. Sometimes a majority has ravored the introduction of Latin or Greek; again, the manual-labor system has had advocates; some have desired a liberal scale or living for the pupils; others have thought it best to give them Spartan fare. Four times the President has been changed, and there have been two periods of considerable length when there was no President. There have been dissensions without and troute within. As many as forty-four boys have run away in a single year. Meanwhile, the Annual Reports of the Directors have usually been so vague and so reticent, that the public was left utterly in the dark as to the condition of the institution. Letters from masters to whom pupils have been apprenticed were published in the Reports, but only the letters which had nothing but good to say of the apprentices. Large numbers of the boys, it is true, have done and are doing credit to the College; but the public have no means of judging whether, upon the whole, the training of the College has been successful.

Nevertheless, we believe we may say with truth that invaluable experience has been gained, and genuine progress has been made. To maintain and educate six hundred boys, even if those boys had enlightened parents to aid in the work, is a task which would exhaust the wisdom and the tact of the greatest educator that ever lived. But these boys are all fatherless, and many of them motherless; the mothers of many are ignorant and unwise, of some are even vicious and dissolute. A large number of the boys are of very inferior endowments, have acquired bad habits,

have inherited evil tendencies. It would be hard to overstate the difficulty of the work which the will of Girard has devolved upon the Directors and teachers of Girard College. Mistakes have been made, but perhaps they have not been more serious or more numerous than we ought to expect in the forming of an institution absolutely unique, and composed of material the most unmanageable.

There are indications, too, that the period of experiment draws

to an end, and that the final plan of the College, on the basis of common-sense, is about to be settled. Mr. Richard Vaux, the present head of the Board of Directors, writes Reports in a style most eccentric, and not always intelligible to remote readers; but it is evident that his heart is in the work, and that he belongs to the party who desire the College to be the useful, unambitious institution that Girard wished it to be. His Reports are not written with rose-water. They say something. They confess some failures, as well as vaunt some successes. We would earnestly advise the Directors never to shrink from taking the public into their confidence. The public is wiser and better than any man or any board. A plain statement every year of the real condition of the College, the real difficulties in the way of its organization, would have been far better than the carefully uttered nothings of which the Annual Reports have generally consisted. It was to Philadelphia that Girard left his estate. The honor of Philadelphia is involved in its faithful adminis tration. Philadelphia has a right to know how it is adminis tered.

The President of the College is Major Richard Somers Smith, a graduate of West Point, where he was afterwards a Professor. He has served with distinction in the Army of the Potomac, în which he commanded a brigade. To learn how to be an efficient President of Girard College is itself a labor of years and Major Smith is only in the second year of his incumbency The highest hopes are indulged, however, that under his energetic rule, the College will become all that the public ought to expect. He seems to have perceived at once the weak point of the insti tution.

"I find in the College," he says in one of his monthly reports, "a certain degree of impatience of study, an inertness, a dragging along, an infection of 'young-Americanism,' a disposition to flounder along through duties half done, hurrying to reach — what is never attained - an 'easy success'; and I observe that this state of things is confined to the higher departments of study. In the elementary departments there is life; but as soon as the boy has acquired the rudiments of his English or common-school education, he begins to chafe, and to fee

that it is time for him to go out, and to make haste to 'finish (!) his studies,' which of course he does without much heart."

"The 'poor white male orphan,' dwelling for eight or ten years in comfort almost amounting to luxury, waited upon by servants and machinery in nearly all his domestic requirements, unused to labor, or laboring only occasionally, with some reward in view in the form of extra privileges, finds it hard to descend from his fancied elevation to the lot of a simple apprentice; and his disappointment is not soothed by the discovery that with all his learning he has not learned wherewithal to give ready satisfaction to his master."

It has been difficult, also, to induce the large manufacturers to take apprentices; they are now accustomed to place boys at once upon the footing of men, paying them such wages as they are worth. Men who employ forty boys will not generally undertake the responsibilities involved in receiving them as bound apprer. tices for a term of years.

To remedy all these evils, Major Smith proposes to add to the College a Manual Labor Department, in which the elder boys shall acquire the rudiments of the arts and trades to which they are destined. This will alleviate the tedium of the College routine, assist the physical development of the boys, and send them forth prepared to render more desirable help to their employers. The present Board of Directors favor the scheme.

In one particular the College has fulfilled the wishes of its founder. He said in his will, "I desire that by every proper means, a pure attachment to our republican institutions, and to the sacred rights of conscience, as guaranteed by our happy Constitution, shall be formed and fostered in the minds of the scholars." Three fourths of the whole number of young men, out of their time, who were apprenticed from Girard College, have oined the Union army. We must confess, also, that a considerable number of its apprentices, not out of their time, have run away for the same purpose. With regard to the exclusion of ecclesiastics, it is agreed on all hands that no evil has resulted from that singular injunction of the will. On the contrary, it has served to call particular attention to the religious instruction of

the pupils. The only effect of the clause is, that the morning prayers and the Sunday services are conducted by gentlemen who have not undergone the ceremony of ordination.

The income of the Girard estate is now about two hundred

thousand dollars a year, and it is increasing. Supposing that only one half of this revenue is appropriated to the College, it is still, we believe, the largest endowment in the country for an educational purpose. The means of the College are therefore ample. To make those means effective in the highest degree, some mode must be devised by which the politics of the city shall cease to influence the choice of Directors. In other words, "Girard College must be taken out of politics." The Board of Directors should, perhaps, be a more permanent body than it now is. At the earliest possible moment a scheme of instruction should be agreed upon, which should remain unchanged, in its leading features, long enough for it to be judged by its results. The President must be clothed with ample powers, and held responsible, not for methods, but results. He must be allowed, at least, to nominate all his assistants, and to recommend the removal of any for reasons given; and both his nominations and his recommendations of removal, so long as the Directors desire to retain his services, should be ratified by them. He must be made to feel strong in his place; otherwise, he will be tempted to waste his strength upon the management of committees, and general whitewashing. Human nature is so constituted, that a gentleman with a large family will not willingly give up an income of three thousand dollars a year, with lodging in a marble palace. If he is a strong man and an honorable, he will do it, rather than fill a post the duties of which an ignorant or officious committee prevent his discharging. If he is a weak or dishonest man, he will cringe to that committee, and expend all his ingenuity in making the College show well on public days. It might even be well, in order to strengthen the President, to give him the right of appeal to the Mayor and Councils, in case of an irreconcilable difference of opinion between him and the Directors. Everything depends upon the President. Given the right Pres ident, with power enough and time enough, and the success of