"A majority of the citizens of Philadelphia as a political class, and not a majority, as a social community, as trustees of a fund for orphans, having thus got entire control of the Girard estate, they turned their attention to the plans of a College collected by their Democratic predecessors. Neither of the parties appears to have originally considered whether the plan described in the will ought not to be followed, if that could be done practically. The main desire of both so far seems to have been to build in the vicinity of this city a more magnificent edifice than any other in the Union.
"At this time, Mr. Nicholas Biddle was in the zenith of his power. Hundreds of persons, who at the present day find fault with him, were then his worshippers. He could command any post which he was willing to fill. I do not pretend that he sought any post, 'but it suited his inclinations to be at the head of those who were intrusted by Councils with the construction of the College. Over his colleagues in this, as in another memorable instance, he seems to have had an absolute control. The architect, also, whose plan had been preferred, appears to have considered himself bound to adapt it to Mr. Biddle's conceptions of true excellence. And you now behold the result,—a splendid temple in an unfinished state, instead of the unostentatious edifice contemplated by Mr. Girard.
"Is all this surprising V Why should Democrats think it so? It was by them that plans and pictures of architects were called for. Why should their opponents be astonished? It was by them that a carte blanche seems to have been given to Mr. Biddle in relation to the plans and the College. Is Mr. Biddle culpable? Is there no excuse for one so strongly tempted as he was, not merely to produce a splendid edifice, but to connect his name, in some measure, with that of its founder? While I am not an apologist for Mr. Biddle, I am not willing to cast blame upon him alone for the waste of time and money that we have witnessed. As a classical scholar, a man of taste, and a traveller abroad, it was not unnatural that he should desire to see near his native city the most magnificent edifice in North America. Having all the pride and sense of power which adulation is calculated to produce, the plain house described in his will may have appeared to him a profanation of all that is beautiful in architecture, and an outrage at once against all the Grecian orders. In short, the will of Mr. Girard to the contrary, Mr. Biddle, like another distinguished person, may have said, 'I take the responsibility.'"
"It is true that this responsibility was a serious one, but less so to Mr. Biddle than to the City Councils. They were the trustees, and ought to have considered Mr. Girard's will as law to them. They should have counted the cost of departing from it. They ought to have reflected that by departing from it many orphans would be excluded from the benefits of education. They should have considered whether a Grecian temple would be such a place as poor orphans destined to labor ought to be reared in. The Councils of 1832-3, therefore, have no apology to offer. But Mr. Biddle may well say to all our parties: 'You are all more in fault than I am. You Democrats gave rewards for plans. You Federalists submitted those plans to me, and I pointed out the one I thought the best, making improvements upon it. A very few persons, Mr. Ronaldson, Mr. Duane, and one or two others alone objected; while the majority of my fellow-citizens, the Councils, and the Legislature, all looked on at what I was doing, and were silent.'"
While erecting an edifice the most opposite to Girard's intentions that could be contrived by man, the architect was permitted to follow the directions of the will in minor particulars, that rendered the building as inconvenient as it was magnificent. The vaulted ceilings of those spacious rooms reverberated to such a degree, that not a class could say its lesson in them till they were hung with cotton cloth. The massive walls exuded dampness continually. The rooms of the uppermost story, lighted only from above, were so hot in the summer as to be useless; and the lower rooms were so cold in winter as to endanger the health of the inmates. It has required ingenuity and expense to render the main building habitable; but even now the visitor cannot but smile as he compares the splendor of the architecture with the homely benevolence of its purpose. The Parthenon was a suitable dwelling-place for a marble goddess, but the mothers of Athens would have shuddered at the thought of consigning their little boys to dwell in its chilling grandeurs.
We can scarcely overstate the bad effect of this first mistake. It has constantly tended to obscure Mr. Girard's real purpose, which was to afford a plain, comfortable home, and a plain, substantial education to poor orphans, destined to gain their livelihood by labor. Always there have been two parties in the Board of Directors: one favoring a scheme which would make the College a college; the other striving to keep it down to the modest level of the founder's intentions. That huge and dazzling edifice seems always to have been exerting a powerful influence against the stricter constructionists of the will. It is only within the last two years that this silent but ponderous argument has been partially overcome by the resolute good-sense of a majority of the Directors. Not the least evil consequent upon the erection of this building was, that the delay in opening the College caused the resignation of its first President, Alexander D. Bache, a gentleman who had it in him to organize the institution aright, and give it a fair start. It is a curious fact, that the extensive report by this gentleman of his year's observation of the orphan schools of Europe has not been of any practical use in the organization of Girard College. Either the Directors have not consulted it, or they have found nothing in it available for their purpose.
The first class of one hundred pupils was admitted to the College on the first day of the year 1848. The number of inmates is now six hundred. The estate will probably enable the Directors to admit at length as many as fifteen hundred. It will be seen, therefore, that Girard College, merely from the number of its pupils, is an institution of great importance.
Sixteen years have gone by since the College was opened, but it cannot yet be said that the policy of the Directors is fixed. These Directors, appointed by the City Councils, are eighteen in number, of whom six go out of office every year, while the Councils themselves are annually elected. Hence the difficulty of settling upon a plan, and the greater difficulty of adhering to one. Sometimes a majority has favored the introduction of Latin or Greek; again, the manual-labor system has had advocates; some have desired a liberal scale of living for the pupils; others have thought it best to give them Spartan fare. Four times the President has been changed, and there have been two periods of considerable length when there was no President. There have been dissensions without and trouble within. As many as forty-four boys have run away in a single year. Meanwhile, the Annual Reports of the Directors have usually been so vague and so reticent, that the public was left utterly in the dark as to the condition of the institution. Letters from masters to whom pupils have been apprenticed were published in the Reports, but only the letters which had nothing but good to say of the apprentices. Large numbers of the boys, it is true, have done and are doing credit to the College; but the public have no means of judging whether, upon the whole, the training of the College has been successful.
Nevertheless, we believe we may say with truth that invaluable experience has been gained, and genuine progress has been made. To maintain and educate six hundred boys, even if those boys had enlightened parents to aid in the work, is a task which would exhaust the wisdom and the tact of the greatest educator that ever lived. But these boys are all fatherless, and many of them motherless; the mothers of many are ignorant and unwise, of some are even vicious and dissolute. A large number of the boys are of very inferior endowments, have acquired bad habits, have inherited evil tendencies. It would be hard to overstate the difficulty of the work which the will of Girard has devolved upon the Directors and teachers of Girard College. Mistakes have been made, but perhaps they have not been more serious or more numerous than we ought to expect in the forming of an institution absolutely unique, and composed of material the most unmanageable.
There are indications, too, that the period of experiment draws to an end, and that the final plan of the College, on the basis of common-sense, is about to be settled. Mr. Richard Vaux, the present head of the Board of Directors, writes Reports in a style most eccentric, and not always intelligible to remote readers; but it is evident that his heart is in the work, and that he belongs to the party who desire the College to be the useful, unambitious institution that Girard wished it to be. His Reports are not written with rose-water. They say something. They confess some failures, as well as vaunt some successes. We would earnestly advise the Directors never to shrink from taking the public into their confidence. The public is wiser and better than any man or any board. A plain statement every year of the real condition of the College, the real difficulties in the way of its organization, would have been far better than the carefully uttered nothings of which the Annual Reports have generally consisted. It was to Philadelphia that Girard left his estate. The honor of Philadelphia is involved in its faithful administration. Philadelphia has a right to know how it is administered.