tract of nearly four hundred acres of land on the Delaware river, three miles below Bristol. The main building, two hundred and ninety-six feet long, was quite imposing, the central part being fronted with tall Ionic columns. During its early years, under the presidency of Rev. Chauncey Colton, the College had as many as one hundred and fifty students, of whom nearly fifty were in the Freshman class; but this prosperity was short-lived. It is not known that a single regular class was graduated. From a College the institution changed to a classical school, then to a military school, and finally to a Soldiers' Orphan School for colored children. It is now wholly dead.

In the year 1832, the Philadelphia Baptist Association established a Manual Labor Academy at Haddington, in Blockley township, Philadelphia county, which four years later was chartered as Haddington College. About 1838 it was removed to Germantown. Here Rev. Henry K. Green was the principal teacher, and such well-known citizens as Horatio Gates Jones and Charles J. Wister, of Philadelphia, and A. Herr Smith, of Lancaster, were among the students. The institution lived only a few years.

In 1849, the Allegheny Conference of the church of the United Brethren in Christ, founded a school at Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland county, under the corporate name of Mount Pleasant College. It was first incorporated by the Court, but subsequently, in 1851, the Legislature granted an Act of incorporation. In 1858, Mt. Pleasant Union College was incorporated, and purchased the property of Mt. Pleasant College. By an Act passed in 1862, another change was made, and Mt. Pleasant Union College became Westmoreland College, and its management was vested in the Westmoreland Classis of the Reformed church. The institution never met with much successs as a College, and, in 1871, the property was sold to William B. Neel. A few years later it went into the possession of an Association of Baptists, who soon after opened the building as a Seminary for both sexes, under the name of the Western Pennsylvania Classical and Scientific Institute.

There was at one time, at least on paper, a "Kittanning University," near Kittanning; and in continuation, the Columbia University was chartered by the Legislature in 1868. This institution being ambitious, advertised a course of study fully as comprehen

sive as that of Harvard, but the building occupied was a rented one, there was no endowment, and death occurred in two years. Quite similar is the story of New Castle College, at New Castle, chartered in 1875. Both sexes were admitted, and the institution proclaimed the establishment of a classical, a scientific, a preparatory, a commercial, a telegraphic, a musical, an art, and a Normal department. The full-blown bubble was attractive for a season, but in a year or two it burst.

After the removal of Marshall College from Mercersburg to Lancaster, in 1853, a preparatory classical school was organized, in the vacant College buildings, which had gone into the hands of individuals, under the name of Marshall Collegiate Institute. It was fairly successful. In 1865, the property was again secured by the Reformed church, the school was reorganized and an Act of the Legislature was obtained granting it a College charter. It was now called Mercersburg College. Rev. Thomas G. Apple, now President of Franklin and Marshall College, was the first President. The attendance soon ran up to more than one hundred students. In 1871, the Theological Seminary followed Marshall College from Mercersburg to Lancaster and took with it Dr. Apple. This was a sad blow to the newly-organized College at Mercersburg. Dr. E. E. Higbee, now Superintendent of Public Instruction, resigned his professorship in the Theological Seminary, and accepted the presidency of the College, left vacant by the resignation of Dr. Apple. An heroic struggle was made to regain the lost ground and to build up the College. A full collegiate course of study was maintained and small classes were regularly graduated; but the institution suffered severely for want of funds and from other causes. In 1880, it was compelled to close its doors. They were again opened in 1881; but as a College it has not succeeded and is not likely to succeed.

H. T. Wells established a private institution of learning at Burlington, New Jersey, in 1860. Some time after it was moved to Andalusia, Bucks county, where it was chartered by the Legislature in 1866 under the name of Andalusia College. It can hardly be said to have ever exercised the functions of a College, and after a lingering existence as a Boarding School for boys, it died. Even more brief is the story of Rittenhouse College, chartered by the Legislature in 1850 to be located at or near Bedford, where the

trustees were authorized as soon as they had obtained sufficient subscriptions to purchase ground and erect buildings; of the Porter University, at Tarentum, Allegheny county, chartered by the Legislature in 1866, and named after John M. Porter, a public-spirited citizen, who left a legacy to establish an institution of learning; of the Cherry Tree Male and Female College, Westmoreland county, chartered by the Legislature with full collegiate powers in 1869, of which little or nothing is known; and of St. Gregory College, St. Mary's, Elk county, established by the Benedictine Order as a branch of St. Vincent College, and chartered by the Legislature in 1871. A building was provided, but the College was never opened. All of these died in early infancy and have no history. A more prolonged search would doubtless reveal other attempts at building Universities and Colleges on the sand, but it is thought little profit could come from exposing the wrecks.

HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN.

It is only within the last fifty years that much has been done in Pennsylvania for the higher education of women. Before that time there were a few Female Seminaries and Boarding Schools, but the opinion was general that higher education was unnecessary, if not hurtful, for women. Under the stimulus of a State appropriation a large number of Female Seminaries sprang into existence soon after the adoption of the common school system, but when the appropriation ceased many of them were compelled to suspend operations. The strongest survived, and others have been established since, so that the State is now well supplied with institutions of this character. In addition, nearly one-half of the Colleges of the State, originally intended for the male sex alone, now open their doors to women; the State Normal Schools, without exception, admit both sexes to equal privileges; many of our best Academies and Seminaries follow the example of the Normal Schools, and the public High Schools are generally as free to girls as to boys.

The only Colleges in the State, it is believed, specially designed for women and chartered with power to confer degrees, are the following: Pennsylvania Female College, Collegeville, Montgomery county, chartered in 1853; Beaver College and Musical Institute, Beaver, chartered in 1853; Pittsburgh Female College, Pittsburgh, chartered in 1854; Irving Female College, Mechanicsburg, Cumberland county, chartered in 1857; Allentown Female College, char

tered in 1867; Cottage Hill Female College, York, chartered in 1868; Wilson Female College, Chambersburg, chartered in 1869, and St. Mary's College, North East, Erie county, chartered in 1881. To this list it is proper to add the new College for women at Bryn Mawr, Montgomery county, founded by Joseph Taylor, M. D., whose magnificent buildings, rivaling those of any College in the country, are now approaching completion.

The Female Colleges of Pennsylvania are doing an excellent work and striving hard to elevate the course of study for girls, but they find it exceedingly difficult in practice to maintain a standard of scholarship equal in kind and quantity to that prescribed by the best Colleges for the male sex, and the most that can be said for them is that they are growing in that direction. Most of them have no regular College classes, in the sense of pursuing a full four years course in the classics, mathematics, literature and science; and the few that have such courses find but a small number of students willing to follow them to the end. In truth, as a body, our Female Colleges are little more than high-grade Female Seminaries, and scarcely outrank, in any way, many other institutions of learning for girls that are content to be known by a less pretentious title. No distinction, therefore, can well be made between them in the brief words we shall speak in the proper place concerning both Female Colleges and Female Seminaries.

CHAPTER XXI.

TECHNICAL AND SPECIAL EDUCATION.

WHAT PENNSYLVANIA HAS DONE FOR HER FARMERS, MECHANICS AND ARTISTS. PROVISION MADE FOR THE DEPENDENT CLASSES.

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S a supplement to what has been said of Higher Education, few pages must be devoted to a class of institutions whose purpose it is to impart an education of a technical or special character, or an education more directly concerned with the practical affairs of life.

Many of the early friends of a common school system, doubtless remembering that Penn's Frame of Government contained the injunction that all children should "be taught some useful trade or skill," coupled with the principle of universal education, the principle of manual labor. The decade of years that witnessed the establishment of free schools witnessed also the establishment of Manual Labor schools and of Manual Labor departments in the existing Colleges. The Manual Labor Academy, of Germantown, was established by a stock corporation in 1829, under the direction of a board of trustees, with Rev. John Monteith as Principal. Connected with it were a farm and a work-shop. In 1830-31, an Agricultural School was started on the Bolton farm, near Bristol, Bucks county, and placed under the charge of F. A. Ismar, a pupil of the celebrated Swiss educator, De Fellenberg, of Hofwyl. A bill to establish a State Manual Labor Academy at or near Harrisburg, was reported favorably from the Committee on Education in the House of Representatives during the session of 1833, and had strong support. At about the same time, in accordance with the popular sentiment on the subject of education, the students at Jefferson, Allegheny, Lafayette, Madison and Pennsylvania Colleges were trying the experiment of having students work a part of the time on farms or in shops. Governor Wolf, in his message of 1833-4, speaks strongly of "the popular and approved Fellenberg system of uniting labor and study." Samuel Breck, in reporting from the Joint Committee on Education that framed it, the free school bill of 1834, argues