Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/272

268 be it recorded ten Indians. The two city colleges, New York and Philadelphia, even under experienced leaders supported by strong local influences, suffered for want of that home college life which the other institutions offered. Harvard in this period made an annual average of about forty-one graduates, Yale about thirty-three, Princeton about twenty and William and Mary about sixteen, while Philadelphia with two vacant years, 1758 and 1764, averaged in the twenty a little over seven, and Columbia with its first Commencement in 1758, averaged in the nineteen years but about five and one-half. Of the graduates in this period eight became signers of the Declaration of Independence, William and Mary furnishing Wythe, Jefferson and Braxton; Philadelphia, Hopkinson and Paca; Harvard, Hooper and Gerry; and Princeton, Benjamin Rush a Philadelphia!!. Of the College Alumni before 1757, there were ten of the signers, of which Harvard furnished Samuel Adams, Ellery, Williams, Paine and John Adams; Yale, Livingston, Lewis Morris, Wolcott and Hall (these two classmates of 1747); and Princeton, Stockton. The churchmanship of King's College did not attract pupils from the general community, as Yale and Princeton on either side not only furnished to them a more welcome theology but a college home life. Philadelphia with its liberal Constitutions and catholic minded Trustees yet eventually fell under the taint of Episcopacy, for in Christ Church were centred those most active in its control and management. But its standard was elevated, and many of the best minds of Pennsylvania and Maryland and Delaware sought the Muses in its College, rugged as were the steps that led into its Portico. It was to the honor of the College and to the credit of the young Provost, that the maintenance of his high standard of 1756 secured to the graduates a higher rank in general studies, i. e. in Philosophy, than their compeers of other Colleges at the time.