Sect. III.] United States of America. 2 0l 



who undertook to teach the English language 

 grammatically. By the aid of these teachers 

 some of the oldest and most respectable inhabi- 

 tants of Pennsylvania, now living, were initiated 

 into the elements of English and classical know- 

 ledge. 



About the year 1 740 the rev. Dr. Francis Al- 

 lison opened an academy for teaching the Latin 

 and Greek classics and the sciences at New Lon- 

 don, in Chester county, Pennsylvania *. Here he 

 began that course of public instruction, and that 

 zeal for the diffusion of general knowledge, which 

 •ended only with his life, and to which Pennsyl- 

 vania owes much of that taste for solid learning, 

 and particularly for classic literature, for which 

 many of her eminent characters have been so 

 laudably distinguished. Not long afterward the 

 rev. Samuel Blair opened an academy at Fog's 

 Alanor, also in Chester county, on nearly the same 

 plan of education. with that which was adopted 

 in Dr. Allison's seminary, but with more particu- 

 lar attention to the study of theology as a science. 

 Mr. Blair was a man of respectable talents as 



* The rev. Francis Allison, D. D., was born iu Ireland, in the 

 year 1705. He received an excellent classical education at an 

 acadeniy in the north of that kingdom, under the particular in- 

 spection of the bishop of Raphoe, and afterward completed his 

 studies at the university of Glasgow. He came to America in 

 1735, and was the pastor of a presbyterian church in Chester 

 county, Pennsylvania, until about the year 1753, when he was 

 chosen rector of the academy in Philadelphia. Beside an un- 

 usually accurate and profound acquaintance with the Latin and 

 Greek classics, he was well informed in moral philosophy, his- 

 tory, and general literature. He died in 1779, in the seventy- 

 /burth year of his age. 



