Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/259

Rh the great Episcopal movement in 1722, which involved also other sons of Yale, including Dr. Johnson, the Trustees voting this " in faithfulness to the trust reposed in them; " and this action was recognized by its subjects as legitimate and quite proper, and so far from hard feelings being engendered by it those who left and those who staid still remained friends, and the former honored their Alma Mater equally with the latter. As the Philadelphia institution began at a day and in a province where clerical influence was not foremost in the control and where church and state were absolutely separate from tuition, the way was open for Provost Smith, who had not yet attained his thirtieth year, to propound a scheme free of early colonial traditions and build anew a richer and a broader curriculum, and offer it to parents for the higher education of their sons. Had he begun his College work on the Yale plan, he would have been without originality and its influence would have been purely local; a new departure was called for, and his was the genius and courage to attempt it. In the success of this scheme, Provost Smith found his highest gratification; and as his pupils took their places in the world thoroughly trained mentally for their various calls, it is quite easy to recognize how the ancient languages gradually took precedence of the English, not it may be to the exclusion of the latter, but sufficiently to the extent that the pupil's mind apprehended less the value and importance of his own tongue than he might have done had the views of the Founders prevailed. But so far as his influence may have extended in this, the educated community generally was equally with him in greater sympathy with the pursuit of the classics of the ancients than with those of the mother country. The establishment of the first Professorship in Yale, in 1755, that of Theology, appeared to remove this from a general to a special study, and marked a new era in the spirit of the generally accepted curriculum. 5 And the same thought of making 5 Professor Fisher, Yale College, ii. 17. "Both Harvard and Yale wer e modeled in general after the English Colleges; Yale having before it, also, the exam" pie of its older sister. It is only necessary to look at the course of study at Harvard in the early days to see that theology was a prominent and even a principal study. Ibid., ii. 15.