collection in Great Britain, received from the trustees, as a reward for his services, the gratuity of one hundred pounds annually, independent of his salary; so that his income from the College now amounted to three hundred and fifty pounds. In a letter, however, written to the board, in the year 1774, he states that, on account of "the advanced price of necessaries, and the growing expense of a growing family," he finds it impossible, with all decent attention to frugality, to make this sum answer for his support; and, in a modest way, reminding the trustees of his services to the institution, he requests them to provide him with a house, and promises, whatever may happen in the future, to make no farther demand on them. His request was unanimously complied with; and a spacious mansion was erected on the College grounds, in which he continued to reside till the College itself passed into other hands. The example of the pro

*

*The house erected for Dr. Smith was that large building which still stands at the southwest corner of

vost was soon followed by the other professors; and most of them obtained the right of a dwelling in addition to their salary. The effect of the depreciation of the currency, and of the increased expense of living, during the revolutionary war, upon the nominal amount of the salaries, has been already noticed.

The cost of tuition for the students of the College was originally four pounds a year, with the addition of six shillings for fire-wood and an entrance fee of twenty shillings. The expense of graduation was four pounds. In the year 1757, an attempt was made to raise the price of tuition to ten pounds per annum; but as other colleges continued to retain the lower rate, the attempt proved unsuccessful, and the old price was resumed. The charge for boarding, in the College buildings, was twentyfive pounds fifteen shillings a year; so that, for the very moderate annual sum

Fourth and Mulberry Streets. All the ground and dwelling-houses, situated between this and the Academy, were the property of the College.

of about thirty pounds or eighty dollars, a young man might, at that period, receive his support in the first city, and his education in one of the highest seminaries of English America. During the revolution it was found necessary, from the same causes which induced an increase in the salaries of the professors, to raise the price of tuition first to twelve, and afterwards to twenty pounds a year.

CHAPTER VI.

ABROGATION OF THE CHARTER OF THE COLLEGE BY THE PENNSYLVANIA LEGISLATURE.

I HAVE before alluded to the suspension of the duties of the College, in consequence of the occupation of Philadelphia by the British army, and to their resumption immediately after the city was evacuated. The schools were closed in the month of June, 1777, and were again opened in September of the following year. The institution, however, had been but a short time in renewed operation, when it experienced, in the disposition of the prevailing political party and of their representatives in the legislature, an hostility much more injurious to its interests than the presence of the enemy. The causes of this hostility it is difficult, at the present time, exactly to understand.

The provost, who, from his long and very important services, and the success with which his exertions had been attended, was, in the public estimation, almost identified with the school itself, had, by his attachment to the proprietors, in their former disputes with the legislature, rendered himself highly unpopular with a numerous party before the war; and his foreign birth, his clerical office in the English church, the honours he had received from the loyal University of Oxford, and the favour in which he stood with men of high station in Great Britain, were circumstances which, as they might naturally give his partialities a direction towards the mother country, tended no doubt, at the commencement of the revolution, to increase the enmity of those who were attached to the cause of independence. Among the trustees of the College, also, were many who were known to be unfavourable to the new order of things, some of whom indeed had left the country and openly joined the enemy. When to these considerations we add the fact, that the in