Page:The History of the University of Pennsylvania, Wood.djvu/91

Rh, and the pupils of which had no other connexion with the university than such as arose from the office held by their teacher. With such an organization, the pursuit of any systematic course of instruction, if possible at all, must have been liable to continual interruptions, alike injurious to the scholar, and derogatory to the credit of the school.

Another evil existed in the want of proper classification among the students. The distinction between the collegiate and academical parts of the institution, which had never been sufficiently marked, was now scarcely perceptible. Almost every branch of knowledge considered essential in a course of education, from the lowest to the highest, was included in its scheme; and if we except the two philosophical classes, the students of every grade were mingled together, not only under the same roof, but in the same apartment, and under the same teachers; so that the boy learning the simplest rules of arithmetic, or the first lesson in grammar, was neighbour to the young man engaged in the highest mathematical and classical studies. In this absence of discrimination, an impolitic disregard was exhibited to that strongest feeling of the youthful breast, the desire of distinction; which gives to the priority of a few years in age, or a slight superiority of attainment, a degree of importance, the influence of which we are apt, in manhood, to forget or undervalue. To be associated as pupils in the same establishment, even to be seen coming out of the same door with children but just out of their petticoats, was to the elder students, who began to look upon themselves as young men, a highly disagreeable necessity; but to be mingled in the close fellowship of a schoolroom, was a degradation to which only the force of parental authority could induce them to submit. All whose own inclinations were consulted, were naturally induced to prefer some other seminary, where their claims to a proper consideration would be respected; and numbers were thus