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During the war of 1812 Mr. King was twice called into the military service of the United States. In the autumn of 1813 he was chosen one of the representatives from the city to the legislature of the state; but after serving one term declined a re-election. Called by the affairs of his house to Europe he spent two years there, accompanied by his family, returning to the United States in 1817.

Two years after this date, in 1819, appeared the first number of the New York American, which was in the commencement conducted by James A. Hamilton, Johnston Verplanck, and Charles King. The paper was bold and aggressive, and made itself feared. At the close of the first year Messrs. Hamilton and King withdrew from any active and responsible connexion with the paper to the more pressing calls of their respective avocations, and Mr. Verplanck remained sole editor. He converted the weekly into a daily paper, still preserving its first name.

At that time the newspapers of the city were the old Gazette of Lang and Turner, and the Mercantile Advertiser of Butler, both mainly advertising sheets and records of ship-news, with perhaps a column or two daily of general intelligence. The Daily Advertiser by Theodore Dwight, and the National Advocate by M. M. Noah, were the two political morning papers. The evening papers were the Evening Post by William Coleman, the Commercial Advertiser by Zachariah Lewis and William L. Stone, and the Columbian by Charles Holt, and afterwards Nathaniel H. Carter. Among these, but very different in tone and aims from all of them, the New York American took its place. For three years Mr. Verplanck conducted the paper, at the end of which time Mr. King, whose commercial career was ended, became again his associate, and after a few months, upon Mr. Verplanck retiring into the country, the sole proprietor and editor of the New York American. It remained under his exclusive charge and management until 1847, when it was merged in the New York Courier and Enquirer.

But although sole editor, Mr. King had many and able correspondents and contributors. Among them were Joseph Blunt and Nathaniel B. Blunt, Charles F. Hoffman, A. Robertson Rodgers, Gulian C. Verplanck, John and William A. Duer, Rudolph_Bunner, Edmund H. Pendleton, John A. Dix, Henry Cary, the Rev. Dr. Bethune, Richard Ray; and among its correspondents from Washington, Rufus King, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Senator Mills of Mass., Senator Johnson of Louisiana, and Henry R. Storrs of the House of Representatives.

One position the American always held. At a period when coarse personalities were the habitual language of editorial contests, it always treated its newspaper opponents as impersonalities, directing its arguments, in its often very plain talk, against the newspaper by name and not against the editor. In another walk the American led the way to a liberal improvement of the newspaper, now generally adopted, in its full literary articles, in which each Saturday the books of the week were passed under review with copious extracts. Its independence, allied with a due sense of responsibility, were features

of Mr. King's editorship. The journal, too, was governed by a principle of taste involving a high question of morals, in its careful abstinence from vulgar and vicious means of excitement. It carefully rejected horrors, both physical and moral, from its columns; while the contrary practice, leading to immediate profit, has too frequently prevailed to the corruption of the public mind.

After a brief editorial connexion with the Courier and Enquirer, Mr. King, in the spring of 1848, withdrew to private life.

In November of that year he was elected President of Columbia College, and immediately entered upon the duties of that office, which he still occupies.

For the preceding ten or twelve years Mr. King had been a resident of the State of New Jersey, at Elizabethtown, whence he daily came to New York. His residence in New Jersey gave additional significance to the degree of LL.D., which was conferred upon him at a special session of the college at Princeton, immediately upon his election to the presidency of Columbia College. A few weeks afterwards Harvard College, where his father had been graduated nearly seventy years before, also conferred upon him the like degree of doctor of laws.

Of the old Profe-sors of this institution, the Rev. Dr. John C. Kunze held a Professorship of ancient languages from 1784 to 1787, and from 1792 to 1795. He was a native of Saxony, and had been educated at the Halle orphan-house and studied theology at the University of that city. From Halle he was called, in 1771, to the service of the Lutheran congregations, in Philadelphia, of St. Michael's and Zion's churches, where he continued fourteen years. He was one of the first of his educated countrymen in America to urge the propriety of educating the German youth in English. By maintaining a contrary course, the German and Dutch congregations, where the preaching was kept up in those languages, lost many of their members. From Philadelphia Dr. Kunze came to New York, and took charge of the German Lutheran church. At this time he composed a hymn-book of German hymns translated into English verse, in which he mostly preserved the metre of the original. He also composed a liturgy and catechism in English. position in New York, and the estimate set upon his learning, may be judged of from his appointments in Columbia College. On the formation of a second synod of the American Lutheran Church, he was elected its first President, a position which he accepted to carry out his liberal views in adopting the use of the English language in churches and in education. The benevolence of his character was celebrated. He died in 1807, after twenty-four years passed with his congregation at New York.*

His

Of John Kemp, the Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy from 1786 to his death in 1812, Professor Renwick, in his alumni address, speaks in high terms, attributing to him an important influence in moulding the views of De

History of the American Lutheran Church, from its commencement, in the year of our Lord 1685, to the year 1842. By Ernest L. Hazelius, D.D., Professor of Theology in the Theological Seminary of the Lutheran Synod of 8. C., pp. 108, 132.

Witt Clinton on topics of internal improvement and national policy.* Kemp's interest in the subject led him, in 1810, to make a journey to Lake Erie, to satisfy himself of the project of the canal, which he pronounced, in advance of the surveys, entirely practicable. Kemp served the college for a long period and with signal ability.

Peter Wilson was Professor of the Greek and Latin languages, with a short interval of service,¦ from 1789 to 1820, when he retired on a pension. He was a native of Scotland, and was educated at Aberdeen. He prepared a Greek Prosody which was long in use, and edited Sallust.

Verplanck speaks of Dr. John Bowden, the Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic from 1801 till 1817,"with a pupil's grateful remembrance, as a scholar, a reasoner, and a gentleman," and commemorates "his pure taste, his deep and accurate erudition, his logical acuteness, and the dignitied rectitude of his principles and character."t

The Rev. Dr. John M'Vickar, whose occupation of the Professorship of Moral Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Belles Lettres, dates from 1817, was born in 1787, and was a graduate of the college with the class of 1804. He then passed some time at Cambridge, in England. He was settled as a clergyman at Hyde Park, from 1811 to 1817.

In 1822, Professor M'Vickar paid an amiable tribute to the family with which he had become connected in marriage, by the publication of 4 Domestic Narrative of the Life of Samuel Bard, one of the old New York celebrities, the physician of Washington, whose father had been the companion of Franklin. This domestic narrative belongs to a valuable class of compositions in reference to the early history of the country, which are seldom executed with the same skill. Its picture of the old New York society, and of the friends gathered around its subject in his retirement at Hyde Park, is of permanent interest.

Dr. Bard deserves mention in the history of education in America, for his services to Columbia College after the war, in his lectures on Natural Philosophy, one of the fruits of his discipline at Edinburgh in the great days of its University; his earlier establishment of the Medical School in New York, then attached to the College, of which he was Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine from 1767 to 1776; his services to other medical institutions of the city; and his occasional addresses, chiefly on topics connected with his profession. He died at Hyde Park, May 24, 1821, in his eightieth year, twentyfour hours after the death of his wife, with whom he had lived for fifty-five years.

In 1825, Dr. M'Vickar published a volume, Outlines of Political Economy. In 1834, he published a memoir of Bishop Hobart with the title Early Years, followed in 1836 by The Professional Years of Bishop Hobart. He is also the author of numerous essays, addresses, reviews, and occasional publications. He has held important positions in the church and the diocese, and is a member of the Standing Committee. Of late

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years he has been chaplain to the station of the United States forces at Governor's Island. As a college professor, Dr. M'Vickar has pursued the higher interests of the subjects intrusted to his hands with signal tact and ability. His course of instruction is eminently clear and practical, while he quietly but efficiently leads the student in the discipline of taste and philosophy.

The connexion of Dr. Charles Anthon with the college, which has so greatly promoted and established its repute for classical studies, dates from the year 1820, when at the age of twentythree, having been a graduate of the college in 1815, and divided his law studies of the interim with ancient literature, he was appointed adjunct professor of Greek and Latin languages. In 1830 he took the title of Jay professor of these studies, and in 1835, on the resignation of Dr. Moore, succeeded to the leading chair in these departments. A grammar-school, in union with the college, having been projected in 1827, and having gone into successful operation in the building on the college grounds in Murray street erected for the purpose, Professor Anthon, in 1830, succeeded the first rector, John D. Ogilby, a good scholar, and with a warm generous nature, who subsequently entered the Episcopal ministry, and became eminent, as Professor of Ecclesiastical History, in the General Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary at New York.

The long series of Professor Anthon's classical publications dates from this time, commencing with an edition of Horace, in two octavo volumes, in 1830, laden with the rich stores of learning of this fruitful topic, and enlivened by the enthusiastic labor of the youthful scholar. It was by far the best specimen of scholarship in this walk of literature which the country had then seen, and still maintains its place as a valuable library edition, while in a slightly curtailed form it is generally in use with teachers and pupils. To the Horace succeeded similar annotated editions of Sallust, Cicero, Cæsar, the Eneid, the Eclogues, and Georgics, six books of the Iliad, the Germania and Agricola of Tacitus, Xenophon's Anabasis and Memorabilia, the Treatise on Old Age and Tusculan Disputations of Cicero.*

Among other services to classical studies was Anthon's displacement of the old meagre edition of Lemprière's Dictionary, which, at the date of his Jay professorship, was the best work in use of its kind. It was first enlarged by him in several editions-each an improvement on the previous one-and afterwards entirely superseded by his Classical Dictionary in 1841. In his works in illustration of the ancient languages and literature; his several elementary and other grammars; his volumes on the composition and prosody of both tongues; his manuals of Ancient Geography, and his Greek and Roman Antiquities, he has brought together the amplest stores of foreign scholarship.

A glance at the old copies of Lemprière, and at the grammars and other books of classical instruction in use in the country in the first quar

The first publishers of Dr. Anthon's books were G. and C. Carvill, in Broadway. In 1835, the extensive classical series was undertaken by the Harpers, and now forms one of the largest sections of the volume of their trade catalogue.

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ter of the century, will show the rapid develop-lic services. He was one of the United States ment which dates from the beginning of Dr. Commissioners in the survey of the North-Eastern Anthon's labors. In the preface to his present boundary. His writings are numerous. Classical Dictionary, he tells us of the surprise created with the trade, when, in 1825, he pro-phy, Practical Mechanics, and a Treatise on the

posed making some alterations in the text of Lemprière, and how he received for answer, that "one might as well think of making alterations in the Scriptures as in the pages of Dr. Lemprière." When an opportunity was once gained to exhibit the new stores of German and English acquisition, the progress was rapidly onward. The books of Dr. Anthon became distinguished for the fulness and accuracy of their information, and still hold their ground by their ample illustrations of the text. As a critic of the ancient languages he is ingenious and acute, while his scholarship and reading cover the vast field of classical investigation in various departments of philosophy, history, art, and literature. The personal influence and resources of Dr. Anthon, his vivacity and quickness of illustration, are commensurate with these extended labors, which sit lightly upon an iron constitution. He still, as rector of the grammar-school and in his Professor's chair, pursues and enlivens the daily toil of tuition, communicating to his pupils an enthusiasm for his favorite studies. His literary labors in the illustration of the classics are still in progress; editions of Ovid's Metamorphoses and Terence's Comedies having been interrupted only for a short time, by the fire which destroyed the premises of the Messrs. Harper, in December, 1853.

Professor James Renwick, a graduate of the College of the year 1807, filled the chair of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Chemistry from 1820 to 1854. During this time he occupied a prominent position as a man of science through his contributions to the journals and leading reviews, his lectures before scientific associations, and his occasional engagements in pub

published works on Chemistry, Natural PhilosoSteam-Engine, which are in use as College textbooks. To Sparks's series of American Biographies he contributed the Lives of Rittenhouse, Robert Fulton, and Count Rumford; and to Harpers' Family Library a Life of DeWitt Clinton, whose "Character and Public Services" he had made the subject of a discourse before the Alumni of the College in 1829.

Dr. Henry J. Anderson received his appointment as Professor of Mathematics, Analytical Mechanics, and Physical Astronomy, in 1825, and resigned it in 1843. His highly trained scientific culture did honor to the institution. In 1828 he contributed to the American Philosophical Society a paper on the Motion of Solids on Surfaces, in the two Hypotheses of perfect sliding and perfect rolling, with a particular Examination of their small oscillatory motions.* Since his retirement from the College he has travelled in Europe, and been attached to Lieut. Lynch's Exploring Expedition to the Dead Sea and the River Jordan, as the geologist of the company. His Geological Reconnoissance of part of the Holy Land, made in April and May, 1848, including the Regions of the Libanus, Northern Galilee, the Valley of the Jordan, and the Dead Sea, has been published by the Government.

Professor Henry Drisler, adjunct professor of Greek and Latin, has been connected with the College since 1843. His frequent association with Dr. Anthon in the preparation of his editions of the classics appears from the introductions to those works, while his edition of the Greek-English Lexicon of Liddell and Scott, bearing date 1846, is an additional proof of the fidelity of his scholarship.

The real estate owned by Columbia College is

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THE CHARLESTON LIBRARY; NEW YORK SOCIETY LIBRARY.

property in the nineteenth ward, once occupied as the Botanic Garden, which was granted to the College by the Legislature in 1814. The latter, now lying in the Fifth Avenue, includes twentyone acres, comprising two hundred and twentyfive building lots, exclusive of the streets, and is set down in round numbers at four hundred thousand dollars in value. This has been hitherto unproductive, but is now in process of grading by the College, and will soon yield a large income. In addition to this real estate the College derives a rent of upwards of nineteen thousand dollars from other property in the third ward, under lease. The annual expenditures of the College, for the last fifteen years, have been about twenty-two thousand dollars; and the income from students, who pay an annual fee of ninety dollars each, about nine thousand dollars.*

THE CHARLESTON LIBRARY-THE NEW YORK SOCIETY LIBRARY.

THE three oldest public library associations in the country, disconnected with colleges, are the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Library Society of Charleston, S. C., and the New York Society Library. Of the first we have already spoken. The second was founded in 1748 by an association of seventeen young men, who in that year united in raising a fund to "collect new pamphlets" and magazines published in Great Britain. They remitted ten pounds to England, and by the close of the same year expanded their plan to that of a public library. In 1750 their numbers had increased to one hundred and sixty. A charter was obtained in 1755; a bequest of the valuable library of John M'Kenzie, an eminent lawyer of the city, received in 1771; and the vested fund, exclusive of the amount expended in books, amounted in 1778 to £20,000. On the fifteenth of January, of the same year, the collection was destroyed by fire, only 185 out of from five to six thousand volumes being preserved, with about two thirds of the M'Kenzie collection. As its other property was greatly depreciated during the war, but little remained of the institution at the peace. In 1792 a new collection was commenced, which in 1808 amounted to 4,500, and in 1851 to 20,000 volumes. A building, originally the Bank of South Carolina, was purchased for the use of the institution in 1840.

The New York Society Library was chartered in 1754. The foundation of the collection may, however, be dated back, in advance of all other American institutions of a similar kind, to the commencement of the century, the Rev. John Sharp, chaplain to the governor of the province, the Earl of Bellamont, having in 1700 given a number of volumes for the use of the public, which were deposited in a room provided for the purpose. Those of the collection which remain are preserved in the library, and consist of ponderous tomes of theology, bearing the autograph of the original donor.

Nothing more is known of the history of the collection until twenty-nine years later, when the Rev. Dr. Millington, rector of Newington, England, bequeathed his library to the Society for

Report of Committee of the Senate, March 10, 1855.

387

the Propagation of the Gospel, by whom it was presented to the New York library. The entire collection remained without further additions of importance in the hands of the corporation, who do not appear to have been good curators of the books intrusted to them.

The establishment of King's College, 1754, seems to have led a number of eminent citizens to unite in an association to form a library "for the use and ornament of the city, and the advantage of our intended college." Funds were collected, and a number of books purchased, which were placed in the same room with those already in the possession of the city. In 1772 a charter was obtained, and the institution assumed the title it has since borne of "The New York Society Library." In 1774 the records of the society were broken off, and not resumed until fourteen years after. During the occupation of the city by the British the soldiery were in the habit, in the words of a venerable citizen, who remembered the circumstance, of "carrying off books in their knapsacks, which they sold for grog.' Little or nothing is said to have been left of the collection at the peace but the folios, which either proved too bulky for the knapsacks or too heavy for the backs of the pilferers, or were perhaps too dry for exchange for fluids on any terms whatever. In December, 1788, the shareholders at last bestirred themselves, issued a call, came together, elected officers, and in the next year obtained a renewal of their charter.

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The room in the old city hall, on the site of the present custom-house at the corner of Wall and Nassau streets, being found too small for the convenient accommodation of the collection, additional subscribers were obtained, and a spacious and elegant building erected for its exclusive accommodation in Nassau street, opposite the Middle Dutch church, now the post-office, to which it was removed in 1795.

In 1836 the rapid growth of the city, and the entire abandonment of its lower portion to mercantile purposes, rendered a removal of the library desirable. The building was sold, and a new edifice erected at the corner of Broadway and Leonard streets. In 1853 another removal was deemed advisable. The building was sold to the Messrs. Appleton, by whom the lower floor was converted into the finest and largest retail bookstore in the United States, and probably in the world, thus preserving in a measure the literary associations of the locality. The library was removed to apartments in the Bible-House, which it still occupies. Land has been purchased at the corner of Thirteenth street and University place for a new edifice, which has not yet been commenced.

A catalogue of the library was printed before the Revolution, but no copies have been preserved, nor is the extent of the collection at that time known. A catalogue was printed in 1793, when the library contained five thousand volumes. The collection increased to thirteen thousand in 1813, to twenty-five thousand in 1838. The last catalogue, published in 1850, states the

Reminiscences of New York, by John Pintard, published in the New York Mirror.

number of volumes at that time to be thirty- | his energy achieved the first Philadelphia college." five thousand. The number is now forty thousand.

The original price of shares was fixed at five pounds, the shares being perpetual, but subject to an annual payment of ten shillings. The present price is twenty-five, with an annual payment of six dollars. The number of members in 1793 was nine hundred, it is now one thousand.

The proprietors elect annually fifteen of their number as trustees, to whom the entire charge of the affairs of the corporation is intrusted.

John Forbes filled the office of librarian from 1794 to 1824. He was succeeded by his son, the present librarian, Philip J. Forbes, to whom the institution is under obligations for his long services as a faithful curator of its possessions, and a judicious co-operator with the trustees for their increase.

The collection includes valuable files of the newspapers and periodical publications of the present century, and good editions of classic writers of every language. In 1812 the society received a valuable donation from Francis B. Winthrop, Esq., of a collection of early theological and scientific works, mostly in the Latin language, collected by his ancestor John Winthrop, the first governor of Connecticut.

THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

THIS institution is an illustration of the growth and development of liberal education in the city of Philadelphia. It had its origin mainly in the efforts of Franklin, by whose exertions the Academy of Philadelphia was organized, and went. into operation in 1750. A public school had been established in 1689 by the Society of Friends, at which Latin and mathematics were taught, and of which George Keith was the first teacher. In 1743 Franklin, sensitive to the wants of the times, communicated the plan of an Academy, as he states in his autobiography, to the Rev. Richard Peters, which he revived in 1749 in conjunction with Thomas Hopkinson and others, when he issued his pamphlet entitled "Proposals relative to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania," the publication of which he tells us, in his politic way, he took care to represent, in his introduction, "not as an act of mine, but of some publicspirited gentleman, avoiding as much as I could, according to my usual rule, the presenting myself to the public as the author of any scheme for their benefit." A body of trustees was formed, including the most influential men of the city, among whom were Franklin himself, James Logan, Thomas Hopkinson, Richard Peters, Jacob Duché, Philip Syng, Charles Willing, and others, "men of character and standing and learning; or where, as with the greatest of them, mere scholarship was wanting, of masculine intelligence, and pure, vigorous American mother wit;" while "the master spirit then, as the master spirit in every effort to do public good, from the hour when he landed penniless at Market-street wharf, till the distant day when, at the end of almost a century, he was carried amidst mourning crowds and tolling bells to his modest and almost forgotten grave, was Benjamin Franklin. His mind conceived and

Franklin has himself told the story of his adroitness in taking advantage of the arrival of Whitefield to secure a permanent location for the school. A building was erected to provide accommodation for travelling preachers under similar circumstances with the great Methodist, and was placed under the control of members of the several denominations. One of them was a Moravian, who had not given satisfaction to his colleagues; and on his death it was resolved to leave that sect out, and as there was no religious variety to draw from, Franklin secured his election on the ground of being of no sect at all. Having thus attained a position in both boards, he effected a junction of the school and the meeting-house in the same building, and to this day, in the present halls of the University, accommodation is afforded, if called for by itinerant preachers. In 1751 the academy opened in the new building with masters in Latin, English, and mathematics. Charles Thomson, the future Secretary of Congress, was during four years a tutor in the school. In 1753 a charter was obtained for "the Trustees of the Academy and Charitable School in the Province of Pennsylvania." Logic, rhetoric, natural and moral philosophy were added to the instructions, and the Rev. William Smith, then full of youthful ardor in the cause of education, was employed to teach them. An additional charter in 1755 conferred the power of granting degrees, and instituted a faculty with the title of "The Provost, Vice-Provost, and Professors of the College and Academy of Philadelphia, in the province of Pennsylvania." By this act the Rev. William Smith was appointed the first Provost, and the Rev. Francis Alison Vice-Provost. Both, by disposition, education, and experience, were well fitted for the calling.

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