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minutes, that the original plan of the English school has been departed from; that the subscribers to it have been disappointed and deceived, and the faith of the trustees not kept with them; that the public have been frequently dissatisfied with the conduct of the trustees, and complained of it; that by the niggardly treatment of good masters, they have been driven out of the school, and the scholars have followed, while a great loss of revenue has been suffered by the academy; so that the numerous schools now in the city owe their rise to our mismanagement, and that we might as well have had the best part of the tuitionmoney paid into our treasury that now goes into private pockets. That there has been a constant disposition to depress the English school in favor of the Latin; and that every means to procure a more equitable treatment has been rendered ineffectual; so that no more hope remains while they continue to have any connexion. It is, therefore, that wishing as much good to the Latinists as their system can honestly procure for them, we now demand a separation, and without desiring to injure them; but claiming an equitable partition of our joint stock, we wish to execute the plan they have so long defeated, and afford the public the means of a complete English education.

I am the only one of the original trustees now living, and I am just stepping into the grave myself. I am afraid that some part of the blame

incurred by the trustees may be laid on me for having too easily submitted to the deviations from the constitution, and not opposing them with sufficient zeal and earnestness; though indeed my absence in foreign countries at different times for near thirty years, tended much to weaken my influence: to make what amends are yet in my power, I seize this opportunity, the last I may possibly have, of bearing testimony against those deviations. I seem here to be surrounded by the ghosts of my dear departed friends, beckoning and urging me to use the only tongue now left us in demanding that justice to our grand-children that to our children have been denied. And I hope they will not be sent away discontented.

The origin of Latin and Greek schools among the different nations of Europe is known to have been this, that until between three and four hundred years past there were no books in any other language; all the knowledge then contained in books, viz. the theology, the jurisprudence, the physic, the art-military, the politics, the mathematics and mechanics, the natural and moral philosophy, the logic and rhetoric, the chemistry, the pharmacy, the architecture, and every other branch of science, being in those languages, it was of course necessary to learn them, as the gates through which men must pass to get at that knowledge.

The books then existing were manuscript, and

these consequently so dear, that only the few wealthy inclined to learning could afford to purchase them. The common people were not even at the pains of learning to read, because, after. taking that pains, they would have nothing to read. that they could understand without learning the ancients' languages, nor then, without money to purchase the manuscripts. And so few were the learned readers sixty years after the invention of printing, that it appears by letters still extant between the printers in 1499, that they could not throughout Europe find purchasers for more than 300 copies of any ancient authors. But printing beginning now to make books cheap, the readers increased so much as to make it worth while to write and print books in the vulgar tongues. At first these were chiefly books of devotion and little histories; gradually several branches of science. began to appear in the common languages, and at this day the whole body of science, consisting not only of translations from all the valuable ancients, but of all the new modern discoveries, is to be met with in those languages, so that learning the ancient for the purpose of acquiring knowledge is become absolutely unnecessary.

But there is in mankind an unaccountable prejudice in favor of ancient customs and habitudes, which inclines to a continuance of them after the circumstances which formerly made them useful. cease to exist. A multitude of instances might be

Hats

given, but it may suffice to mention one. were once thought an useful part of dress; they kept the head warm and screened it from the violent impression of the sun's rays, and from the rain, snow, hail, &c. Though, by the way, this was not the more ancient opinion or practice; for among all the remains of antiquity, the bustos, statues, basso-relievos, medals, &c. which are infinite, there is no representation of a human figure with a cap or hat on, nor any covering for the head, unless it be the head of a soldier, who has a helmet, but that is evidently not a part of dress for health, but as a protection from the strokes of a weapon.

At what time hats were first introduced we know not, but in the last century they were universally worn throughout Europe. Gradually, however, as the wearing of wigs, and hair nicely dressed prevailed, the putting on of hats was disused by genteel people, lest the curious arrangements of the curls and powdering should be disordered; and umbrellas began to supply their place; yet still our considering the hat as a part of dress continues so far to prevail, that a man of fashion is not thought dressed without having one, or something like one, about him, which he carries under his arm. So that there are a multitude of the politer people in all the courts and capital cities of Europe, who have never, nor their fathers before them, worn a hat otherwise than as a chapeau bras, though

the utility of such a mode of wearing it is by no means apparent, and it is attended not only with some expense, but with a degree of constant trouble.

The still prevailing custom of having schools for teaching generally our children in these days the Latin and Greek languages, I consider therefore in no other light than as the chapeau bras of modern literature.

Thus the time spent in that study might, it seems, be much better employed in the education for such a country as ours; and this was indeed the opinion of most of the original trustees. B. FRANKLIN.

HINTS FOR CONSIDERATION RESPECTING THE ORPHAN SCHOOL-HOUSE IN PHILADELPHIA.

CHARITABLE institutions, however originally well intended, and well executed at first for many years, are subject to be in a course of time corrupted, mismanaged, their funds misapplied or perverted to private purposes. Would it not be well to guard against these by prudent regulations respecting the choice of managers, and establishing the power of inspecting their conduct in some permanent body, as the monthly or quarterly meeting?

Would it not be more respectable for the institu

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