Page:The History of the University of Pennsylvania, Wood.djvu/96

90 prosperity, a sure evidence of the lasting benefit which must flow to the seats of learning, from multiplying such sources of pleasant and affectionate association. The Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania was founded in the year 1813, and still exists. The attention of the public is annually called to it by an address, commemorative of its origin, delivered by some one of its older members, appointed for the purpose.

Notwithstanding all these changes, there yet remained, in the plan and arrangement of the seminary, some errors which it was important to rectify. The period of three years, to which the college term was restricted, was insufficient for the completion, without extraordinary talent and industry, of the prescribed course of studies; and the proper qualifications for a degree could not therefore be so rigidly insisted on, as if a due portion of time had been allotted. Nor was the number of professors proportionate to the task of instruction, embracing as it did almost the whole circle of the sciences. Some branches were necessarily omitted or imperfectly taught; and thus, to the want of time, was added another cause for insufficient preparation on the part of the student. It naturally followed from these circumstances, that the requisites of graduation were considered lower, and consequently the honour of a degree less, in the university, than in most of the prominent colleges of the United States; and, as the regulation requiring a long attendance of the students upon the professors remained unaltered, and the grammar school, though entirely separate in its government and conduct from the college, was still maintained in the same building, and therefore frequently confounded with the higher department, the institution was not yet able to rise entirely out of that