and one or two others alone objected; while the majority of my fellow-citizens, the Councils, and the Legislature, all looked on at what I was doing, and were silent.’”

While erecting an edifice the most opposite to Girard’s intentions that could be contrived by man, the architect was permitted to follow the directions of the will in minor particulars, that rendered the building as inconvenient as it was magnificent.  The vaulted ceilings of those spacious rooms reverberated to such a degree, that not a class could say its lesson in them till they were hung with cotton cloth.  The massive walls exuded dampness continually.  The rooms of the uppermost story, lighted only from above, were so hot in the summer as to be useless; and the lower rooms were so cold in winter as to endanger the health of the inmates.  It has required ingenuity and expense to render the main building habitable; but even now the visitor cannot but smile as he compares the splendor of the architecture with the homely benevolence of its purpose.  The Parthenon was a suitable dwelling-place for a marble goddess, but the mothers of Athens would have shuddered at the thought of consigning their little boys to dwell in its chilling grandeurs.

We can scarcely overstate the bad effect of this first mistake.  It has constantly tended to obscure Mr. Girard’s real purpose, which was to afford a plain, comfortable home, and a plain, substantial education to poor orphans, destined to gain their livelihood by labor.  Always there have been two parties in the Board of Directors:  one favoring a scheme which would make the College a college; the other striving to keep it down to the modest level of the founder’s intentions.  That huge and dazzling edifice seems always to have been exerting a powerful influence against the stricter constructionists of the will.  It is only within the last two years that this silent but ponderous argument has been partially overcome by the resolute good-sense of a majority of the Directors.  Not the least evil consequent upon the erection of this building was, that the delay in opening the College caused the resignation of its first President, Alexander D. Bache, a gentleman who had it in him to organize the institution aright, and give it a fair start.  It is a curious fact, that the extensive report by this gentleman of his year’s observation of the orphan schools of Europe has not been of any practical use in the organization of Girard College.  Either the Directors have not consulted it, or they have found nothing in it available for their purpose.

The first class of one hundred pupils was admitted to the College on the first day of the year 1848.  The number of inmates is now six hundred.  The estate will probably enable the Directors to admit at length as many as fifteen hundred.  It will be seen, therefore, that Girard College, merely from the number of its pupils, is an institution of great importance.