Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/519

Rh care of Mr. Allison, a Dissenting Minister, well skilled in those languages and long practiced in teaching. But he refused the Rectorship, or to have anything to do with the government of the other schools. So that remains vacant, and obliges the Trustees to more frequent visits. We have now several young gentlemen desirous of entering on the study of Philosophy, and Lectures are to be opened this week. Mr. Allison undertakes Logic and Ethics, making your work his text to comment and lecture upon. Mr. Peters and some other gentlemen undertake the other branches, till we shall be provided with a Rector capable of the whole, who may attend wholly to the instructions of youth in the higher parts of learning as they come out fitted from the lower schools. .Our proprietors have lately wrote that they are extremely well pleased with the design, will take our Seminary under their patronage, give us a charter, and, as an earnest of their benevolence, Five Hundred Pounds sterling. And by our opening a Charity School, in which near one hundred poor children are taught Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, with the rudiments of religion, we have gained the general good will of all sorts of people, from whence donations and bequests may be reasonably expected to accrue from time to time. This is our present situation, and we think it a promising one; especially as the reputation of our schools increases, the masters being all very capable and diligent and giving great satisfaction to all concerned. I have heard of no exceptions yet made to your work, nor do I expect any, unless to those parts that savor of what is called Berkeleyanism, which is not well understood here. When any occur I shall communicate them.

With great esteem and respect, I am, dear Sir,

Your obliged humble -serv' t,

B. FRANKLIN.