RHODE ISLAND. 



RIPLEY, GEORGE. 



657 



hand at the beginning of $166,164.08. The 

 expenditures were $751,460.25, leaving a bal- 

 ance on hand at the close of $85,865.20. The 

 amount of State bonds outstanding is $2,523,- 

 500, against which there is a sinking fund 

 amounting to $825,595.05. This leaves as the 

 net indebtedness $1,697,904.95, and shows a 

 decrease of $134,558 during the year. The 

 State bonds are payable as follows : 



Bonds issued October 1, 1861, payable 1831 $500 



Bonds issued September 2, 1862, payable 1882. . . . 954,000 



Bonds issued April 1, 1863, payable 1883 200.000 



Bonds issued July 1, 1863, payable 1893 631,0()0 



Bonds issued August 1, 1864, payable 1894 738,000 



Total $2,523,500 



The school statistics of the year are as fol- 

 lows: 



Number of children from fire to fifteen years 



enumerated 52,273 



Number of children reported as attending pub- 

 lic schools 33,504 



Number of children reported as attending 



Catholic schools 4,817 



Number of children reported as attending se- 

 lect schools 1,891 



Number of children reported as not attending 



any schools 12,279 



Number of pupils enrolled in day-schools 40,607 



Average number 30,112 



Average attendance 27,217 



Number of schools 824 



Average length of schools 9 mos., 4 days. 



Number of teachers regularly employed 889 



Amount paid teachers $390,558 34 



Number of pupils enrolled in evening-schools. 4,176 



Average number 2,846 



Average attendance 1,848 



Number of schools 40 



Average number of teachers employed 168 



Average length of the schools 12J weeks. 



Total receipts $558,450 86 



Current expenditures 486,862 91 



Permanent expenditures (land, building, etc ). 57,337 64 



The School for the Deaf, which has been es- 

 tablished only four years, is on a successful 

 basis, and has twenty-five pupils. The perma- 

 nent school fund of the State is $240,376.37, 

 invested chiefly in the stock of Providence 

 banks, and $26,573.54 awaiting investment. 



The penal, correctional, and charitable insti- 

 tutions on the State farm at Cranston cost 

 $147,190.57 for support during the year. A 

 new Reform School, with separate departments 

 for boys and girls, has been added, for which 

 the buildings are not yet complete. At the 

 close of the year the Workhouse and House 

 of Correction contained 180 men and 57 wom- 

 en; the Asylum for the Incurable Insane, 113 

 men and 132 women; the Almshouse, 76 men, 

 77 women, 21 boys, and 4 girls 178 in all ; the 

 State Prison, 76 men and 6 women. The Provi- 

 dence County Jail contained 109 men and 14 

 women ; that of Washington County, 3 men ; 

 that of Bristol County, no inmates at all ; New- 

 port County, 1 man ; Kent County, 2 men. 



There are thirty-nine savings-banks in the 

 State, with 97,682 depositors and an aggregate 

 of $44,755,625.49 in deposits, making the aver- 

 age due each depositor $458.18. The increase 

 of deposits for the year was $1,660,091.68; 

 increase in number of depositors, 4,489. The 

 average rate of dividends was 4f per cent. 

 VOL. xx. 42 A 



RIPLEY, GEOKGE, LL. D., died July 4, 1880, 

 in New York. The family from which he 

 sprung has produced many eminent men, gen- 

 erals and divines. He was born at ' 

 field, Massachusetts, September 3, 1801'. II- 

 graduated at Harvard in 1823, and in 1826 at 

 the Cambridge Divinity School. DuriiiLr tlnvi- 

 years he occupied the pulpit of a Unitarian 

 church in Boston. In 1831 he definitively re- 

 tired from the ministry, and went to Europe 

 to study philosophy. From that time he kept 

 up with the foremost wave of thought. The 

 schools of Fourier, Comte, and St. Simon were 

 then in high vogue. Though his mind was 

 strongly imbued with some of their theories, 

 he never avowed himself a disciple. On his 

 return to Boston, in 1835, he became a propa- 

 gandist of advanced French and German phi- 

 losophy. His translations of such works helped 

 to popularize the new views. Between 1838 

 and 1842, in conjunction with Dr. Hedge, he 

 published " Specimens of Foreign Standard Lit- 

 erature," in fourteen octavo volumes. In 1839 

 Dr. Ripley published "Discourses on the Phi- 

 losophy of Religion." Professor Andrews Nor- 

 ton, of Cambridge, replied to this in a pamphlet 

 entitled " The Latest Form of Infidelity." A 

 vigorous, prolonged, and bitter controversy en- 

 sued. He was intimately connected with the 

 inception of New England Transcendentalism. 

 Ralph Waldo Emerson was his college mate 

 and friend. Dr. Ripley wrote for " The Dial," 

 the exponent of their peculiar views. In 1844 

 he invested and lost his slender fortune in the 

 Brook Farm experiment. He was the actual 

 head of this socialistic colony, established near 

 Roxbury, where Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel 

 Hawthorne, and other American philosophers, 

 male and female, lived on a communistic plan. 

 Their organ, " The Harbinger," asserted that 

 this was not at first a Fourierite movement, 

 but that those principles were adopted after 

 the fusion of the New York with the Boston 

 community. Whether or not they could have 

 succeeded in this nineteenth century in fleeting 

 the time carelessly as they did in the golden 

 world, after three years a fire swept away their 

 buildings, and the philosophers dispersed. Dr. 

 Ripley moved to New York, and in 184M be- 

 came literary editor of the "Tribune." He 

 was a consummate critic, and his reviews helped 

 to form public taste. He superintended the 

 literary department of "Harper's Monthly," 

 and occupied the post of "reader" to that 

 publishing firm. Mrs. Ripley was his coadju- 

 tor in all his literary and philosophic enter- 

 prises. In 1852 he and Bayard Taylor edited 

 a " Handbook of Literature and the Fine Arts." 

 In 1858, in conjunction with Charles A. Dana, 

 he undertook the editing of " Appletons' New 

 American Cyclopaedia," which is largely in- 

 debted to his erudition and fidelity of research. 

 A revised edition appeared in 1873. Labors so 

 arduous precluded much original writing, and 

 upon these works his fame must rest. From 

 the time when a knot of young enthusiasts 



