448 HISTORY OP 



be invariably preserved. Trustees empowered to appoint 

 other officers not named in the charter, to fix salaries, &c. 

 Misnomer not to defeat any gift &c., nor non-user to create a 

 forfeiture, fee. ^3. The Constitution not to be altered but by 

 the Legislature. ^4. The College endowed with 10,000 acres 

 of land, &c. 



Under this charter and a donation subsequently granted by 

 an act of Assembly, consisting of an old military store-house 

 and two lots of ground in the borough of Lancaster, worth 

 about >5;2GOO, the College went into operation, A. D. 1786, as 

 a Grammar School, with a Professor of the Latin and Greek lan- 

 guages, and also a Professor of Mathematics. The first pro- 

 fessor was a German by the name of Melsheimer. Ardently 

 attached to literary pursuits, he strove long and earnestly to 

 create a proper taste for them, among the Germans and tlieir 

 descendants. To some extent he succeeded, for under his 

 management the Hohe Schule* prospered fur a little while ; 

 but continually owing to the want of a proper management of 

 its finances, it afterwards gradually declined, until^about the 

 year 1821, when it ceased all further practical operations: 

 But it was not doomed to sleep in inglorious inactivity, like 

 the Phoenix from her ashes, it was destined to rise again with 

 renewed usefulness, as we shall hereafter shew, when through 

 the prudence of its Trustees, its funds should be carefully hus- 

 banded, and their ability to support its existence from the 

 income, would be undoubted. 



In the meanwhile, private schools and academies were estab- 

 lished and supported in the Borough and various sections of 

 the county, but no organized or settled system being adopted 

 for their government, none of them attained to any eminence. 

 It is true, large numbers of poor children in the county, as 

 well as the city, were educated free of expense, pursuant to 

 the provisions of the act of Assembly of April 4, A. D. 1809,t 

 entitled "An act for the education of the poor gratis;" but 

 such education, owing to the general incompetency of the 

 teachers, was exceedingly limited. The system established by 

 this act, having been found in its pracficaloperation, tobe both 

 expensive and inadequate to the wants of the people in the 



*Anglice-I!igh School. 



j5 Sm. laws, pages 73 and 74. 



