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the order and propriety of the infant scholars at their evening meal, under the eye of their matron; and at their evening devotions, under the solemn ministrations of their President.* Let those who underrate this philanthropy, or who fear its tendency as inimical to the growth of a sustaining faith and vital piety, witness these, and have all their apprehensions resolved and dispelled!

The chief officers and teachers of the institution are ladies. It is to women of superior parts and education; to women of cultivated manners, minds, and hearts; that the care of these children is chiefly committed. The circle of feminine employments, whose bounds are constantly enlarged by fresh discoveries, was believed to embrace those delicate functions of instruction and nurture, which are incident to a young and numerous household. Experience has justified the trial of the experiment. The government is essentially maternal. Under the plastic discipline of their teachers, the young scholars are led to the observance of rule, and the performance of their tasks, by kind language and affectionate remonstrance. Where the law of kindness is effectual, is it not preferable to the authority of force? And where the tender child is accustomed to the former, will he need a resort to the latter in subsequent years?

"It is upon the foundations of such a beginning that this great college is to be reared, a college whose inmates, at no distant day, may assemble within its walls a thousand scholars.'

"Is it expecting too much to anticipate important improvements and inventions, in the various pursuits to which these pupils will be devoted? Experience has not proved that useful knowledge and proper training, disqualify men for the handicraft occupations of life. On the contrary, the knowledge of Franklin and Rittenhouse did not prevent one from being a most assiduous and accurate printer, nor the other from being a pains-taking and finished instrument-maker. Roger Sherman was not the less a good shoemaker, because he comprehended the grounds of civil freedom, and the principles of the constitution of his country. Simpson, the mathematician, worked at the weaver's loom. Herschel, one of the greatest astronomers that ever lived, commenced life as a poor fifer-boy in the army. Elihu Burritt, whose learning is a subject of wonder, was a blacksmith. The late George Stevenson, a most distinguished, ingenious and useful man, was an engine tender at a colliery, near New Castle-upon-Tyne. The female operatives of Lowell show as much assiduity in the cultivation of their minds and tastes, as in the application of their hands to the labours of the loom. -On the other hand, who can tell what such original minds as those of John Fitch and Oliver Evans might have accomplished, if they had enjoyed, in early life, some of the advantages offered to the pupils of this institution? Evans has been called the American Watt. His

* The Hon. Joel Jones, the learned President of the College.

curious inventions in steam carriages, locomotive engines, the hopperboy and other machines, entitle him to the honour of an original projector. Nothing was wanting but a knowledge of scientific principles, to enable him to bring his ingenious but crude suggestions to a productive and successful maturity. Fitch, illiterate as he was, by the unaided power of his native genius, devised a steam-boat which plied in the Delaware in 1786, and by the force of his sagacity, foresaw and predicted in 1792, the regular navigation of the Atlantic by steam."

One of the most serious objections that we have heard made against this institution, is, that by the will of the founder, instruction in the principles of the Christian religion is prohibited. He ENJOINS and requires "that no ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister, of any sect whatever, shall ever hold or exercise any station or duty whatever in the said college; nor shall any such person ever be admitted for any purpose, or as a visiter within the premises appropriated to the purposes of the said college." He disclaims, however, any intention "to cast a reflection upon any sect or person," by this total exclusion of the ministers of religion from the bounds of the institution, and desires that pains be taken to instil the purest principles of morality, leaving the pupils free to adopt "such religious tenets as their matured reason may enable them to prefer." On this subject the prevailing opinion of Christian communities is certainly opposed to the design and scope of the bequest. It seems to be admitted generally, that the religious training of a child ought to be "in the way he should go." The essential and leading principles of revealed truth are taught by almost all sects, and, therefore, it is insisted that the danger is less in impressing these principles upon the mind in early life, even according to the forms of sectarian teaching, than to omit them altogether through fear of improper bias and party influence.

But let us give to the founder of the Girard College the benefit of the justification contained in the eloquent discourse of Mr. Tyson.

"In the bright array of influences with which the college is to be guarded and encircled, we find coupled, in beautiful sisterhood, virtue and morality, sustained and nurtured by their foster-mother, RELIGION. The virtue is to be elevated, the religion to be holy-a religion of the affections and the reason; purified from intolerance, and redeemed from bigotry. Are not these comprised in the following remarkable passages of the will? I desire that, by every proper means, a pure attachment to our republican institutions, and to the sacred rights of conscience, as guarantied by our happy constitutions, shall be formed and

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fostered in the minds of the scholars. As there is such a multitude of sects, and such a diversity of opinion among them, I desire to keep the tender minds of the orphans, who are to derive advantages from this bequest, free from the excitement which clashing doctrines and sectarian controversy are so apt to produce: My desire is that all the instructors and teachers in the college, shall take pains to instil into the minds of the scholars, the purest principles of morality, so that on their entrance into active life they may, from inclination and habit, evince benevolence towards their fellow-creatures, and a love of truth, sobriety, and industry, adopting, at the same time, such religious tenets as their matured reason may enable them to prefer.' Saving one restrictive and somewhat invidious prohibition,* *at war with those sublime ideas, from which it is deduced as a corollary, or upon which it professes to lean for support, no one can fail to perceive whence these principles are derived. In Pennsylvania, the great law of 1682, and the successive constitutions of the province, all recognise 'the sacred rights of conscience,' and proclaim the unfettered liberty of faith and worship. The constitutions of the state, which succeeded to a colonial dependency,-first that of 1776, then that of 1790, and the recent one of 1838, all repeat that fundamental doctrine of political freedom which was announced at the first settlement. It was introduced into the great charter of the national government, as one of the richest trophies of the revolution. It is now assumed as a fixed law of the social state, that man is answerable only to his Maker for the modes of faith and worship he may adopt; and that however opposed to reason, or condemned by authority, these cannot abridge the consciences of others, or interfere between men in the relations of society. This genius of a free land, thus caught by the fathers of our commonwealths, and diffused through a wide-spread and mixed population, was imbibed by Girard, and breathed into his college. He saw that an institution which could be made an arena for heated sectaries, or be torn in pieces by contending factions, would be rather a curse than a blessing. He saw that its pupils might become entangled in the mazes of polemics, or fall a prey to the embittered spirit of party. He saw that though he might err, in unduly fortifying his walls against the insidious approaches, he was vindicating the majesty of a noble principle of our history, and was arming champions to battle for the extension of its sceptre over the world."

* Exclusion of ministers of religion.

S.

THE PRESIDENT OF FRANCE.

CHARLES LOUIS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, the President of the French Republic, is the son of Louis Bonaparte, ex-king of Holland, and Hortense de Beauharnais, daughter of the Empress Josephine. His birth, which took place at Paris on the 26th of April, 1808, was announced by the roar of cannon. As the Emperor Napoleon, his uncle, had at that time no son of his own, the young prince was born heir apparent to the imperial throne. The Emperor was then supposed to hold in his hands the destinies of Europe; but when, seven years afterwards, he was defeated and dethroned by the allied powers, Prince Louis fled with his mother to Augsburgh; and his grief at parting with the Emperor is said to have made a lasting impression on the mind of the great captain.

His mother had purchased the chateau of Arenenberg, in Switzerland, where he received a thorough education, and published, at an early age, a work on the science of artillery, which he had studied under Col. Dufaure.

The revolution of July, 1830, inspired in him the hope of again seeing his native city. In this he was disappointed, Louis Philippe's government refusing to withdraw the edict of proscription against the Bonaparte family. He and his brother, proceeding to Italy, took part in the important revolutionary movements of that year, and in several engagements, sustained the honour of their name. The brother died at Forli, from disease contracted in the service, and Louis Napoleon himself fell dangerously ill. His mother repaired to his bed-side, at Ancona; and as soon as he was able to travel, they left Italy, and in March 1831, arrived incognito in Paris. Hortense requested permission to remain till her son's health should be restored. It was refused, and they returned to Arenenberg, where he devoted himself to the preparation for the press of his "Literary and political considerations upon Switzerland."

This work procured for him the honour of citizenship from the Helvetic Republic. In 1834 he received the commission of captain in the Swiss service. In 1835 he published "A Manual of Artillery for Switzerland." During his military residence in Berne he had intimate relations with several French officers. Concerting with these gentlemen and other friends of his family a revolutionary movement in 1836, for the purpose of gaining possession of the French throne, young Napoleon landed, on the 30th of October, at Strasburgh; but his partisans were overpowered by the military, and he himself was taken prisoner, after a brief but spirited resistance. Some time after his arrest he was pardoned by the French government, on condition of his emigrating to some other country. He accepted this condition,

and set sail for America, arriving at New York in 1837. He took an early opportunity to speak favourably of America and Americans. In a letter to the President of the United States he wrote: "I wished to study the customs and institutions of a people who have achieved more lasting triumphs by commerce and enterprise, than we in Europe have gained by arms. I hoped to have travelled through a country which excites my sympathy, from the fact that its history and prosperity are closely connected with the remembrance of that which is a glory to Frenchmen." This letter was an apology for his sudden return to Europe, whither he was summoned to attend the death-bed of his mother, who died October 5, 1837.

In that year the prince took up his residence in Switzerland, and resumed his efforts for permission to return to France as a French citizen. It is stated that this request was not only denied, but that Louis Philippe required of the Swiss authorities that he should not be permitted to reside so near to France. He then repaired to England, and, exercising a large hospitality, gathered around him, as associates, some of the old officers of the empire. Acknowledged by them as the legal heir to whatever imperial rights Napoleon had transmitted, another attempt was made to place him on the throne. Aided by Gen. Montholon, he made his famous descent, with a handful of followers, upon the French coast, near Boulogne, August 5th, 1840. This expedition terminated more disastrously than that of Strasburgh. In the melee which ensued, the prince, after severely wounding a grenadier with his own hand, was taken prisoner. His associates, attempting to escape, were fired on, some of them killed, and the survivors were all captured, with the "Edinburgh castle" steamer, which had brought the expedition over the channel.

Louis Napoleon was brought to trial, and sentenced to imprisonment for life. He was confined in the castle of Ham until the 25th of May, 1846, when, taking advantage of the occasion offered by some repairs in the prison, he escaped in the disguise of a workman, and immediately repaired to England, where he lived in an unobtrusive manner until the breaking out of the revolution, in February, 1848. By the revolution he was restored to the privileges of a French citizen, and was elected to the National Assembly by no less than four separate districts. One of these districts being his native city, and able to accept only one, he of course chose the return from Paris. He was among the first to declare in favour of the revolution of February, and although somewhat reserved in the expression of his views, he has preserved great consistency in his course as a friend of the republic. When first elected to the Assembly, objections were made in that body to repeal the law of banishment against the Bonaparte family, when the cries of "Vive Louis Napoleon!" "Vive l'Empéreur!" were soon heard in the streets of Paris. On the next day the question of admission was decided in his favour; but he declined, at

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