188 SANTIAGO. 



eluding by explanation of the doctrinal points, suited to their capacities. In this manner, and 

 until they could establish one of their own, they taught the children of other schools. Up to 

 that epoch, knowledge in primary schools had been obtained by payment to the masters or pre- 

 ceptors ; but the Jesuits opened the doors of their establishment for gratuitous instruction, and 

 thus broke down the formidable barrier opposing enlightenment of the poor." During nearly 

 a century and a half that followed, the only schools were those under charge of the several con- 

 vents, in which the course of instruction was far too limited to develop the abilities of their 

 pupils ; and hence youths who might have been trained to habits of study in after life, of a 

 necessity acquired those of indolence, of which one result is the desire for employments consonant 

 with a lethargic disposition, rather than occupations requiring intellectual exertion a labor that 

 would inevitably have led to improvement of themselves and their race. Even to the present 

 day, with all the encouragement given by government in the way of high salaries to professors of 

 the National Institute and provincial colleges, and the exorbitant sums expended by parents to 

 the same end, the standard of education is far below that of Europe or the United States. But 

 to proceed with a brief history. 



The two principal colleges or seminaries were known as " Colegio Azul," and " Colegio 

 Carolina," or sometimes ''Colegio Colorado;" the former under charge of the Jesuits till their 

 expulsion, and the latter since 1619 belonging to the Dominicans. At the solicitation of the 

 municipality, the University of San Felipe, intended as a counterpart to that at Salamanca, 

 was authorized by the King of Spain in 1*738, the city agreeing, to endow professorships from 

 its surplus revenue. These were to consist of ten : Medicine, 1 ; Theology, Canonical and 

 Ecclesiastical Law, 3 ; Maestro de Sentencias, 1 ; Mathematics, 1 ; National and Civil Law, 2 ; 

 Arts and Languages, 2. From some delay, the cause of which is not now known, the institu- 

 tion was not organized until twenty years afterwards. Padre Guzman, however, says the 

 charter was only received in 1747, and that it went into operation three years later, or in 1750. 

 It cannot be ascertained, with any degree of precision, what number of pupils availed them- 

 selves of either the new University or the Colegio Carolino, which had survived as late as 1810. 

 Then the latter institution, teaching Latin, theology, philosophy, and international law, num- 

 bered only sixteen in all its classes ! To so low an ebb had the tide of knowledge fallen, that 

 when an academy for instruction in mathematics and drawing was opened, its proprietor was 

 actually arraigned before the courts as "the author of dangerous innovations !" Up to this 

 period the education of females was cruelly neglected, and, if attended to at all, never extended 

 beyond reading and writing to an extremely limited number. 



The National Institute a child of the University that sprang into existence at the close of 

 the revolution of 1810, and was intended, by the dissemination of knowledge, to strengthen 

 more effectively the bonds of the new republic died with the liberty that gave it birth, and 

 before its fair proportions were fully developed. In order to bring it into operation more 

 rapidly, the pupils of the principal schools were united in a common establishment, and the 

 professors of the University were directed to continue the same course of instruction in the new 

 institution or to resign. Its inauguration took place in 1813, amid the firing of cannon, orations, 

 and masses, at which the principal officers of government and a large concourse of citizens 

 attended. Of the fourteen professorships then endowed, there were for Eeligion and church 

 matters, 5 ; Laws of Nations and Political Economy, 1 ; Experimental Physics, 1 ; Chemistry, 

 1 ; Geography and Military Science, 1 ; Pure Mathematics, 1 ; Drawing, 1 ; Logic, Meta- 

 physics, and Moral Philosophy, 1 ; Latin, 2. Eight of the professors were clergymen. A fair 

 creation to have been so short-lived ! 



During the reconquest, the Colegio Colorado was the only school of importance continued. But 

 the patriots had scarcely achieved independence again before they commenced reorganizing the 

 Institute ; and in 1819 its classes, numbering about thirty youths taken from that seminary, 

 recommenced with a modification in the professorships previously existing. This number 

 rapidly increased, and the apparent desire for education thus expressed could not but have 



