Page:The History of the University of Pennsylvania, Wood.djvu/92

86 away from the school of Philadelphia, whom the advantages of proximity, united with their local attachments, would otherwise have connected with it.

Another circumstance contributed to the same result. It is the custom in most colleges for the students to pursue their studies in private, and to be collected together in the presence of the professors for a short time only each day, for the recital of the prescribed lessons, or to attend the lectures which are usually given. But, by the regulations of the university, it was required that the scholars of the higher as well as lower classes should be detained for several hours, both in the morning and afternoon, within the walls of the seminary, where they were compelled to attend to their several subjects of study under the immediate eye of their teachers, being considered as too young or too giddy to be trusted to their own private exertions, and as needing some other incentive to exertion, than the desire of applause, fear of shame, or sense of duty.

From these causes it happened that the alumni of the university were not only few, but often of an age better adapted to the commencement than to the completion of a course of the higher studies; and the institution came to be regarded as a seminary of inferior grade, which, however well it might have been adapted to those circumstances of a young community in accordance with which it was originally established, had not kept pace with the general march of improvement, and was now behind many others of which it had formerly enjoyed the undoubted precedence.