COMMENCEMENT OK PE.NMSVLVAMA COLLEGE, 287 



qualities of water during pestilential periods is well attested. In the 

 plague known as '"the black death," which, in the fourteenth century 

 deprived Europe of twenty-five millions of inhabitants, the water in 

 many places in Switzerland, Germany, France, and other European coun- 

 tries, became so contaminated as to render their use highl^y destructive. 

 At this period, v/hen the human mind, appalled at the scenes of death, 

 which thickened in the land, was unable to form a deliberate judgment, 

 and suspicions of a fearful kind biassed the intellect in the investigation 

 of supposititious proofs, tens of thousands of harmless Jews were sac- 

 rificed to the fury of the populace on the charge of having poisoned the 

 wells and fountains. In 1795 the same condition of the water in New 

 Haven, (Connecticut,) gave rise to the suspicion of the wells being poi- 

 soned at the time of the prevalence of a destructive epidemic. In addi- 

 tion to the extreme insalubrity of the water, which attended this epi- 

 demic in New Haven, the immense number of animalcules generated in 

 it afforded incontestable evidence that the pestilential principle which, 

 diffused through the air, had so sorely afflicted mankind, had penetrated 

 the water, deteriorated its healthful properties and brought inlo play new 

 and unwonted phenomena. Thus it was in the great plague, that devas- 

 tated Athens, when the corruption of the water, alleged to have been 

 poisoned by the Lacedemonian?, was supposed to have given origin to 

 the pestilence. 



It has thus far escaped, and perhaps always will elude the research 

 of mortals to discover, in what this perva'ling principle essentially con- 

 sists. The death of every species of animated nature, when a very mor- 

 tal epidemic is raging, shows a universal diffusion of the deleterious 

 principle, but what that principle is, which can reach the bottom of seas 

 and destroy at those almost unfathomable depths with the same power 

 that lays waste man in habitations on the land will perhaps be known 

 only to Ilira whose "-thoughts are are not as our thoughts." 



COMMENCEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA COLLEGE. 



Commencement-week was an attractive and interesting season. The 

 attendance of visitors, who assembled to enjoy the literary festivities, 

 was unusually large and the services apparently afforded general gratili- 

 cation. 



The exercises, preparatory to Commencement, were opened on the 

 Sabbath evening preceding, with the Baccalaureate bv the President of 

 the Institution, it was an impressive discourse, founded on Acts xi, 24. 

 He was a good man, iii which the young men about to leave the Institu- 

 tion were urged to aim at the cultivation and exhibition of true moral 

 •".'.vccllence, uad lu gain the reputation of being good nieu. 



