316 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



Professor Bache had just attained the thirtieth year of his age when, 

 in 1836, the Trustees of the Girard College for Orphans, preparatory to 

 organizing that nobly-endowed charity, determined to select a suitable 

 person as President, and to send him abroad to study the organization 

 and methods of instruction of similar institutions in Europe. The eyes 

 of the community being with one accord turned to him, he was pre- 

 vailed upon to accept this important position, and — with lingering 

 regret for the scientific pursuits from which he was likely to be sepa- 

 rated — to turn his attention and powers of administration in a new 

 direction. He visited Europe under the most favorable circumstances 

 for becoming intimately acquainted with its scientific and educational 

 institutions ; he devoted two years to the work, and, on his return, 

 embodied the results in his well-known Report to the Trustees of 

 Girard College. This report fills a large 8vo. volume, and is an 

 almost exhaustive exposition of the systems of education in use at the 

 time in the schools of England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and 

 Italy, — the facts all founded on personal inspection, and recorded on 

 the spot with his habitual regard to entire accuracy ; and the practical 

 inferences and pregnant suggestions with which it abounds show how 

 thoroughly he had entered into a new line of inquiries. 



He was now ready to commence the organization of the College ; 

 but this being deferred by the Trustees, Professor Bache, desirous of 

 turning the knowledge he had acquired to immediate practical account, 

 offered his services gratuitously to the municipal authorities of Phila- 

 delphia, and entered upon the organization of a system of public edu- 

 cation for that city on an improved basis. At the end of a year, 

 finding the Trustees of Girard College still unprepared to open the 

 institution, he declined the salary while yet retaining the office of 

 President, and devoted his time mainly to the organization of the 

 schools, now accepting from the city the salary needful for his support, 

 but much smaller than that he relinquished. 



In 1842, having successfully established what was regarded as the 

 best system of combined free education which had at that time been 

 adopted in this country, and Girard College still remaining in a 

 statical condition, he resigned his connection with it, and, yielding to 

 solicitations of the Trustees of the University, returned to his former 

 chair of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry. He could now resume 

 the favorite pursuit of his life, the cultivation of physical science, — 

 which, however, he had never wholly abandoned. While abroad, 



