450
EDUCATION AND PHILANTHROPY IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1842 MMUNIFICENT bequests and donations for public purposes, whether charitable or educational, form a striking feature in the modern history of the United States, and especially of New England. Not only is it common for rich capitalists to leave by will a portion of their fortune towards the endowment of national institutions, but individuals during their lifetime make magnificent grants of money for the same objects. There is here no compulsory law for the equal partition of property among children, as in France, and, on the other hand, no custom of entail or primo-geniture, as in England, so that the affluent feel themselves at liberty to share their wealth between their kindred and the public; it being impossible to found a family, and parents having frequently the happiness of seeing all their children well provided for and independent long before their death. I have seen a list of bequests and donations made during the last thirty years, for the benefit of religious, charitable, and literary institutions, in the State of Massachusetts alone, and they amounted to no less a sum than six millions of dollars, or more than a million sterling. There are popular libraries in almost every village of Massachusetts, and a growing taste for the reading of good books is attested by the sale of large editions of such works as Herschel's Natural Philosophy, Washington Irving's Columbus, and Plutarch's Lives. Of each of these, from five to twenty thousand copies have been sold. It will seem still more remarkable, that no less than sixteen thousand copies have been purchased of Johnes's Translation of Froissart's Chronicles, illustrated by wood-engravings, and twelve thousand of Liebig's Animal Chemistry. These editions were very cheap, as there was no author's copyright; but it is still more surprising, that about four thousand copies of Prescott's Mexico should have been sold in one year in the U.S. at the price of six dollars, or about twenty-six shillings. When, in addition to these signs of the times, we remember the grants before alluded to, of the New England and other states in behalf of public schools and scientific surveys, we may indulge very sanguine hopes of the future progress of this country towards a high standard of general civilization. Bull. N. Y. Acad. Med.
EDUCATION AND PHILANTHROPY IN
I8842
4s I
The universities of the United States are annually increasing in number, and their discipline in New England (to which my inquiries on this head were chiefly confined) is very strict; a full staff of professors, with their assistants or tutors, superintending at once the moral conduct and intellectual culture of the students. In each university, there is a divinity-school, appropriated to some particular religious denomination, which is Presbyterian or Independent at Newhaven, in Connecticut, where there are about six hundred students; and Unitarian at Harvard, College, near Boston, where there are about four hundred. But youths belonging to various sects resort indifferently to Newhaven, Harvard, and other colleges, to pursue their ordinary academical studies. After obtaining their first degree, they enter, if intended for the ministry, some theological faculty established in the same or in another university, or constituting a separate institution for the professional training of future divines. The Episcopalians have a flourishing college of this kind in the State of New York. The Independents, or Congregationalists, have one at Andover in Massachusetts, where a distinguished professor of biblical learning has been known to draw Episcopalians and students of other sects to his lectures, no persons being excluded, by subscription to articles of religion, from entering and studying in any college. The multiplication of academical establishments, in consequence of every State, and every sect of Christians in each State, being ambitious of having schools of their own, is an evil, but one which would be greatly aggravated were the general as well as the theological education in the universities alike sectarian; or if students of classical literature, mathematics, law, and medicine, all required teachers who agreed with them in every article of faith. It has been remarked, by a living satirist, that the force of sectarian animosity, like that of gravity, increases inversely as the squares of the distance; but, in spite of the occasional ebullition in recent times of an intolerant spirit on both sides of the Atlantic, there are many auspicious signs of the approach of an era when differences of religious opinion will less interfere with national systems of education, both in schools and colleges.... In no subject do the Americans display more earnestness than in their desire to improve their system of education, both elementary and academical. They have sent missionaries to Europe, who have published elaborate reports on the methods of teaching now employed in Britain, Vol. 51, No. 3, March 1975
45 2
EDUCATION AND PHILANTHROPY IN 1842
Germany, Holland, and France, and they seem ready to adopt whatever appears worthy of imitation in these different models. The great difficulty under which they labour, and one inevitable in new country, and common to them and the British American colonies, is the early age at which young men quit college, sooner by at least two years than in England. Lyell, Charles: Travels in North America; 'with Geological Observations on the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia. London, Murray, I 845, vol. I, pp. 263-68.
Bull. N. Y. Acad. Med.
EDUCATION AND PHILANTHROPY IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1842 MMUNIFICENT bequests and donations for public purposes, whether charitable or educational, form a striking feature in the modern history of the United States, and especially of New England. Not only is it common for rich capitalists to leave by will a portion of their fortune towards the endowment of national institutions, but individuals during their lifetime make magnificent grants of money for the same objects. There is here no compulsory law for the equal partition of property among children, as in France, and, on the other hand, no custom of entail or primo-geniture, as in England, so that the affluent feel themselves at liberty to share their wealth between their kindred and the public; it being impossible to found a family, and parents having frequently the happiness of seeing all their children well provided for and independent long before their death. I have seen a list of bequests and donations made during the last thirty years, for the benefit of religious, charitable, and literary institutions, in the State of Massachusetts alone, and they amounted to no less a sum than six millions of dollars, or more than a million sterling. There are popular libraries in almost every village of Massachusetts, and a growing taste for the reading of good books is attested by the sale of large editions of such works as Herschel's Natural Philosophy, Washington Irving's Columbus, and Plutarch's Lives. Of each of these, from five to twenty thousand copies have been sold. It will seem still more remarkable, that no less than sixteen thousand copies have been purchased of Johnes's Translation of Froissart's Chronicles, illustrated by wood-engravings, and twelve thousand of Liebig's Animal Chemistry. These editions were very cheap, as there was no author's copyright; but it is still more surprising, that about four thousand copies of Prescott's Mexico should have been sold in one year in the U.S. at the price of six dollars, or about twenty-six shillings. When, in addition to these signs of the times, we remember the grants before alluded to, of the New England and other states in behalf of public schools and scientific surveys, we may indulge very sanguine hopes of the future progress of this country towards a high standard of general civilization. Bull. N. Y. Acad. Med.
EDUCATION AND PHILANTHROPY IN
I8842
4s I
The universities of the United States are annually increasing in number, and their discipline in New England (to which my inquiries on this head were chiefly confined) is very strict; a full staff of professors, with their assistants or tutors, superintending at once the moral conduct and intellectual culture of the students. In each university, there is a divinity-school, appropriated to some particular religious denomination, which is Presbyterian or Independent at Newhaven, in Connecticut, where there are about six hundred students; and Unitarian at Harvard, College, near Boston, where there are about four hundred. But youths belonging to various sects resort indifferently to Newhaven, Harvard, and other colleges, to pursue their ordinary academical studies. After obtaining their first degree, they enter, if intended for the ministry, some theological faculty established in the same or in another university, or constituting a separate institution for the professional training of future divines. The Episcopalians have a flourishing college of this kind in the State of New York. The Independents, or Congregationalists, have one at Andover in Massachusetts, where a distinguished professor of biblical learning has been known to draw Episcopalians and students of other sects to his lectures, no persons being excluded, by subscription to articles of religion, from entering and studying in any college. The multiplication of academical establishments, in consequence of every State, and every sect of Christians in each State, being ambitious of having schools of their own, is an evil, but one which would be greatly aggravated were the general as well as the theological education in the universities alike sectarian; or if students of classical literature, mathematics, law, and medicine, all required teachers who agreed with them in every article of faith. It has been remarked, by a living satirist, that the force of sectarian animosity, like that of gravity, increases inversely as the squares of the distance; but, in spite of the occasional ebullition in recent times of an intolerant spirit on both sides of the Atlantic, there are many auspicious signs of the approach of an era when differences of religious opinion will less interfere with national systems of education, both in schools and colleges.... In no subject do the Americans display more earnestness than in their desire to improve their system of education, both elementary and academical. They have sent missionaries to Europe, who have published elaborate reports on the methods of teaching now employed in Britain, Vol. 51, No. 3, March 1975
45 2
EDUCATION AND PHILANTHROPY IN 1842
Germany, Holland, and France, and they seem ready to adopt whatever appears worthy of imitation in these different models. The great difficulty under which they labour, and one inevitable in new country, and common to them and the British American colonies, is the early age at which young men quit college, sooner by at least two years than in England. Lyell, Charles: Travels in North America; 'with Geological Observations on the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia. London, Murray, I 845, vol. I, pp. 263-68.
Bull. N. Y. Acad. Med.
