Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1 (wikilinked).djvu/140

1800. man from incessant contact with these cruel and, coarsening associations.

The depth of gratitude due to Pennsylvania as the model democratic society of the world was so great as to risk overestimating what had been actually done. As yet no common-school system existed. Acade­mies and colleges were indifferent. New Jersey was no better provided than Pennsylvania. The English­man Weld, a keen if not a friendly critic, visited Princeton,—


 * "A large college," he said, "held in much repute by the neighboring States. The number of students amounts to upwards of seventy; from their appearance, however, and the course of studies they seem to be engaged in, like all the other American colleges I ever saw, it better deserves the title of a grammar-school than of a college. The library which we were shown is most wretched, con­sisting for the most part of old theological books not even arranged with any regularity. An orrery contrived by Mr. Rittenhouse stands at one end of the apartment, but it is quite out of repair, as well as a few detached parts of a philosophical apparatus enclosed in the same glass-case. At the opposite end of the room are two small cupboards which are shown as the museum. These contain a couple of small stuffed alligators and a few singular fishes in a miserable state of preservation, from their being repeatedly tossed about."

Philadelphia made no claim to a wide range of intellectual interests. As late as 1811, Latrobe, by education an architect and by genius an artist wrote to Volney in France,—