26 LIFE AXD CORKESPONDEXCE OF THE [1/79 



and arc not made." A popular error prevails that a large endowment, 

 an extended cun-iculuin, and an imposing array of Professors, are all 

 that is necessary to insure the permanent success of a newly-founded 

 College. Such an opinion is contradicted by universal experience. 

 Both in Europe and in this country, institutions of learning which have 

 gained reputation and success have all had their day of small things, 

 and their present strength is only the natural development of a slow 

 but steady and healthy growth. There have been thousands of failures, 

 where the greatest zeal, aided by large endowments, has established 

 Colleges. Defects in the most brilliant projects have been brought to 

 light by experience, or the soil in which they were planted has not 

 proved kindly to their nurture. Such was the case with the short-lived 

 "University of the State of Pennsylvania." 



He must indeed have been a bold and sanguine man who thought it 

 possible to establish, with any chance of success, a new College in this 

 State in the year 1779. In the very crisis of the Revolution, with the 

 fortune of every man who had been engaged in trade ruined by the 

 worthlessness of the currency, with the cost of living increased in the 

 proportion of sixty to one, with every nerve strained to keep up the 

 sinking fortunes of the war, with dissensions among the best men in 

 the State more bitter than their hatred of the common enemy; with 

 the belief among nearly all who had been real supporters of learning 

 that the Charter had been taken away from party malice, and that the 

 new institution would be managed in such a way as to subserve party 

 ends; above all, with the ever-present consciousness that the money 

 they were using did not belong to them in law or morals, it is not to be 

 wondered at that the projectors of the new establishment soon found 

 that they had been building upon the sand. There was certainly but 

 one man living in this State, at that time, who could have carried even 

 an old College successfully through the dangers which threatened the 

 interests of learning during the Revolution, and for ten years after- 

 wards, and that was the very man whom a blind party-zeal had driven 

 from his post. When we consider what Dr. Smith did for those inter- 

 ests during the twenty-five years in which they had been in his special 

 charge, we may form some estimate of the loss sustained, both by the 

 College and the State, by the forced employment of the remaining 

 twenty-five years of his life in other pursuits. 



As the removal of Dr. Smith was, no doubt, the great object aimed 

 at in the abrogation of the Charter, so he was the chief victim of that 

 measure. He had to mourn not merely, in common with all his 

 friends, that the work he had been so long painfully building up was in 

 ruin, and that the pledges which he had given as to the management 

 of the funds which He had collected were shamefully violated, but he 

 was ejected from his office, and without the means of su]Dporting his 

 family. But it was not in the man's nature to despond. Feeling that 



