Winnsborough, near the centre of the state, and the third in Cambridge, near its western extremity. But experience soon taught that this was going to the opposite extreme. These colleges, in due time, sunk into mere grammar-schools, and still continue in the same state. In 1795, the citizens of Beaufort obtained another charter for a college; but that soon shared the fate of the three others; and it was not until the year 1801, that the legislature hit upon the proper plan.

In that year a law was passed, with unexampled unanimity,' as Dr Ramsay informs us, to found a college, to be called the South Carolina college, at Columbia, the seat of government. The chief executive and judicial officers of the state, with thirteen associates elected by the legislature for a term of four years, constitute the trustees, who possess the sole power of inflicting the punishment of expulsion, and a negative on all suspensions. With these exceptions, the government of the college is in the hands of the faculty.'

The trustees having been empowered to make choice of certain public squares in Columbia, for a site for the college, selected a beautiful eminence to the south-east of the city, commanding a view of the country for many miles around; not indeed like the view from the state-house in Boston, embracing villages, steeples, and country houses, with the bay and its numerous islands, but affording to the north and west a prospect of the capital of South Carolina, one of the finest. villages perhaps in America, with a population of three or four thousand inhabitants, and as refined a society as our country affords, and overlooking to the south an immense forest, of twenty or thirty miles in extent, and now and then interrupted in the uniformity of its appearance by some great cotton field, that stretches itself along the immense plains, through which the Congaree winds its way between its willow banks."

The number and construction of the college edifices, as set forth by our author, appear adequate to the purposes of the institution, though with a brick building designed as an observatory, and the astronomical apparatus kept in it, he makes himself somewhat merry. The library consists of about five thousand volumes, and was selected by general Pinkney, judge De Saussure, and judge Johnson. The smallness of the library is a just subject of complaint; and we must be permitted to remark it as somewhat inconsistent with that claim to liberality, of which Carolinians so justly boast, that, after making such

ample provisions for planting a college, they should furnish so scanty a stock of the very pabulum, upon which it must subsist. If the three first essentials of oratory be action, the three first requisites of a college are books; and we think it was a fine conceit in the ten clergymen, who founded Yale college, that the only act necessary for the purpose was, each to bring three or four large books, and lay them on a table, saying, I give these books for the founding of a college.' Five thousand volumes would scarcely be considered as a decent library for a private gentleman in Europe. Our author mentions several persons in this country, who have twice as many volumes; and we fully adopt his sentiment, when he adds, a late writer in the clerk's office in Charleston had 2 or 3000; and will an independent sovereignty confine the whole body of her youth to 5000 ?'*

The faculty of the college consists of the president, a professor of the languages, a professor of mathematics, mechanical philosophy and astronomy, a professor of logic and moral philosophy, and a professor of chemistry and mineralogy. There are also two tutors, who superintend the freshman class. The salary of the president is 3500 dollars; that of the professors, 2000; that of the tutors, 1000.

There is but one vacation in the year, which includes the months of July, August, and September, and the annual commencement is holden in December. The course of studies prescribed resembles in general that which is followed at similar institutions in our country. It does not appear designed to introduce the students to a familiar acquaintance with ancient literature, and of course leaves them without that discrimination in the use of words, and that familiarity with the whole intellectual history of man, which can only be derived from the study of the ancient authors. An additional objection to the limited range prescribed to the study of the Latin and Greek is, that if more be not learned, the beginning made is worthless; and the student is condemned to waste years in the irksome and unprofitable task of conquering the elements of a language, of which he does not pursue the study far enough, to read its authors with ease or pleasure. We are happy to perceive, however, that an improvement has been made in this respect. By the former system of study, all attention to the learned * There are five or six well selected private libraries of four or five thousand volumes in our immediate vicinity. 40

New Series, No. 19.

languages ceased at the expiration of the freshman year. They [April, are now studied throughout the college life, although the selection of authors to be read is quite limited.

The legislature of South Carolina has manifested a praiseworthy liberality in its appropriations for the support of the institution at Columbia. The author before us has been at the pains of constructing a table to show the yearly and total expenses of South Carolina college; and from his results it appears, that the appropriations increased during the period between 1811 and 1820, from 10,000 to upwards of 15,000 dollars a year; the whole sum, for that time, being 138,659 dollars. Up to the year 1811, where our author's table commences, the annual and special appropriations had amounted to 148,000 dollars; so that the total sum of appropriations is 286,659 dollars. Among the articles, which make up this sum, we observe one of 3 or 400 dollars a year for the education of orphans.' In 1811 the legislature passed an act, empowering the commissioners of the orphan house in Charleston annually to select one of the boys educated and maintained by the bounty of that institution, for the purpose of completing his education at college. The expenses of such youth, except for clothing, are to be defrayed from the general appropriations to the college; and, for clothing, a special appropriation is to be annually made of 140 dollars to each individual.

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Our remarks thus far regard the college of South Carolina. We must now devote a little space to those minor institutions, in which are taught the primary elements of learning,-reading, writing, and arithmetic.' This is the language of an act passed in 1811, to establish, in every district of the state, as many free schools as each district respectively sent members to the house of representatives. By free is meant that the tuition only is free to every citizen of the commonwealth: but, where the citizens are too numerous, the children of the necessitous and poor orphans are to be preferred. These schools are placed under the care of commissioners; who have full power of appointing teachers, determining the situation of schools, increasing or diminishing their number, arranging the system of instruction, of drawing on the comptroller for sums appropriated,' &c.

Three hundred dollars per annum were voted to each school, until sufficient funds should be provided; and, in 1815, the legislature began with an appropriation of 37,000 dollars a year,

which has been ever since regularly continued. Of the sums annually drawn out of the treasury by the commissioners, from 1812 to 1820, our author has constructed a table; from which it appears, that, for those eight years, 302,490 dollas had been expended by the state, upon this system of elementary education. But expended by the state' does not mean expended by the commissioners.' That these latter did not expend the money, as they ought, our author does not take it upon him to say; but he proves, by a laborious investigation, that they have not, as they ought, accounted for the expenditure of upwards of 100,000 dollars. And it appears, indeed, from the results presented in the pamphlet before us, that this bountiful system of charity, like most bountiful systems of the same kind, must have been egregiously mismanaged, and has come to little good. In 1813, for instance, nearly 40,000 dollars appears to have been drawn out; and no account given of it whatever. Nearly the same sum was taken out in 1817; in which year there were no returns from thirty-one districts, and, with this large sum, there was no evidence, that the education of more than 2,237 children was paid for!

These are only specimens; and truly they furnish our author a fair opportunity of referring to some of those instances of gross abuse in charters, which Mr Brougham's investigations in England have recently brought to light, and which, from a case mentioned in p. 39, appear to grow up as well in this country as in England.

I shall,' says our author, fatigue the reader no longer with instances of abuses in foreign nations, but will barely mention that I have been informed, that one of our sister states, north of us, is at present a striking example of the difficulty of succeeding in this kind of charity schools. It is said, that in that state, many of the commissioners have actually hired poor children, for a small reward, to enter the schools, have their names registered, and after a short attendance, to decamp. The commissioner and master understand each other; the account for teaching the year or quarter so many scholars is made out, and paid, and thus the money is accounted for, and the plan to the legislature seems to be succeeding most prosperously;-at least the money is well spent. p. 39.

What has been the particular mode of management in South Carolina our author has not stated; but he appeals to results, as furnishing evidence of the imperfection of the system, either

in design or execution. Of its actual operation in some places, he has given us a glimpse, which, to our readers in this part of the country, will appear almost too ludicrous to be credible :

I believe, in many instances, the teachers that have been employed, were as much in want of instruction as their pupils. I have heard that in some of the lower districts, they have actually converted the schools into a sort of gymnastic academies; where, instead of studying philosophy in the woods and groves, as the Druids did of old, they take delight in the more athletic exercise of deer and rabbit hunting; and that it is a fine sight to see the long, lean, serpentine "master," with his dial face and greasy rifle, looking like a very surveyor, at his stand, whilst the younger peripatetics are scouring the woods, and hallooing up the game.' p. 44.

Contrasted with these results of the free school system, our author displays the benefits, which the college has conferred upon South Carolinian society; and thence derives a strong argument, to convince the legislature how much wiser it would be to endow new professorships in the college, increase its library, and improve it in other respects, with a part of their 37,000 dollars, than to appropriate it all in a manner in which, at best, its utility is inferior, and in which it is so likely to be mismanaged. With regard to the influence on society of the institution of the college, our author makes the following remark, though it admits, perhaps, of question, whether all the effect should be ascribed to the college at Columbia alone, since it is well known that large numbers of the young men of Carolina are annually sent to Princeton, New-Haven, Providence, and Cambridge.*

Some years ago, the middle and back country scarcely had a man who was well educated; and to many of the good old folks, when the wonders of the college came upon them, it appeared that all these curious inventions of chemistry, Greek, Latin, &c. had just been discovered since the revolutionary war-the event from which every thing that is excellent is dated. Now there is not a neighbourhood that has not intelligent, well educated young men. The young men, who have received liberal educations in this state, have a spirit and vivacity in conversation, that is not very common to any other nation, save the French. This gives them considerable influence upon society, and its effects are only to be

* We observe even in the late catalogue of the flourishing university at Lexington, Kentucky, the names of South Carolinians.