younger children; and after passing through his noviciate he spent some time as an instructor in convents, notably at Würzburg (1785–1788). Then for ten years he was busy with religious duty. In 1798, full of Kantian ideas, he published an essay outlining a scheme of national Swiss education; and in 1804 he began his career as a public teacher, first in the elementary school at Fribourg (1805–1823), then (being driven away by Jesuit hostility) in the gymnasium at Lucerne till 1834, when he retired to Fribourg and devoted himself with the production of his books on education, De l’enseignement régulier de la langue maternelle (1834, 9th ed. 1894; Eng. trans. by Lord Ebrington, The Mother Tongue, 1847), and Cours éducatif (1844–1846). Father Girard’s reputation and influence as an enthusiast in the cause of education became potent not only in Switzerland, where he was hailed as a second Pestalozzi, but in other countries. He had a genius for teaching, his method of stimulating the intelligence of the children at Fribourg and interesting them actively in learning, and not merely cramming them with rules and facts, being warmly praised by the Swiss educationalist François Naville (1784–1846) in his treatise on public education (1832). His undogmatic method and his Liberal Christianity brought him into conflict with the Jesuits, but his aim was, in all his teaching, to introduce the moral idea into the minds of his pupils by familiarizing them with the right or wrong working of the facts he brought to their attention, and thus to elevate character all through the educational curriculum.
GIRARD, PHILIPPE HENRI DE (1775–1845), French
mechanician, was born at Lourmarin, Vaucluse, on the 1st of
February 1775. He is chiefly known in connexion with
flax-spinning machinery. Napoleon having in 1810 decreed a reward
of one million francs to the inventor of the best machine for
spinning flax, Girard succeeded in producing what was required.
But he never received the promised reward, although in 1853,
after his death, a comparatively small pension was voted to his
heirs, and having relied on the money to pay the expenses of
his invention he got into serious financial difficulties. He was
obliged, in 1815, to abandon the flax mills he had established
in France, and at the invitation of the emperor of Austria
founded a flax mill and a factory for his machines at Hirtenberg.
In 1825, at the invitation of the emperor Alexander I. of Russia,
he went to Poland, and erected near Warsaw a flax manufactory,
round which grew up a village which received the name of
Girardow. In 1818 he built a steamer to run on the Danube.
He did not return to Paris till 1844, where he still found some
of his old creditors ready to press their claims, and he died in
that city on the 26th of August 1845. He was also the author
of numerous minor inventions.
GIRARD, STEPHEN (1750–1831), American financier and
philanthropist, founder of Girard College in Philadelphia, was
born in a suburb of Bordeaux, France, on the 20th of May 1750.
He lost the sight of his right eye at the age of eight and had little
education. His father was a sea captain, and the son cruised
to the West Indies and back during 1764–1773, was licensed
captain in 1773, visited New York in 1774, and thence with the
assistance of a New York merchant began to trade to and from
New Orleans and Port au Prince. In May 1776 he was driven
into the port of Philadelphia by a British fleet and settled there as
a merchant; in June of the next year he married Mary (Polly)
Lum, daughter of a shipbuilder, who, two years later, after
Girard’s becoming a citizen of Pennsylvania (1778), built for him
the “Water Witch,” the first of a fleet trading with New Orleans
and the West Indies—most of Girard’s ships being named after
his favourite French authors, such as “Rousseau,” “Voltaire,”
“Helvétius” and “Montesquieu.” His beautiful young wife
became insane and spent the years from 1790 to her death in
1815 in the Pennsylvania Hospital. In 1810 Girard used about
a million dollars deposited by him with the Barings of London
for the purchase of shares of the much depreciated stock of
the Bank of the United States—a purchase of great assistance
to the United States government in bolstering European confidence
in its securities. When the Bank was not rechartered the
building and the cashier’s house in Philadelphia were purchased
at a third of the original cost by Girard, who in May 1812
established the Bank of Stephen Girard. He subscribed in
1814 for about 95% of the government’s war loan of $5,000,000,
of which only $20,000 besides had been taken, and he generously
offered at par shares which upon his purchase had gone to a
premium. He pursued his business vigorously in person until
the 12th of February 1830, when he was injured in the street
by a truck; he died on the 26th of December 1831. His public
spirit had been shown during his life not only financially but
personally; in 1793, during the plague of yellow fever in
Philadelphia, he volunteered to act as manager of the wretched
hospital at Bush Hill, and with the assistance of Peter Helm
had the hospital cleansed and its work systematized; again
during the yellow fever epidemic of 1797–1798 he took the lead
in relieving the poor and caring for the sick. Even more was his
philanthropy shown in his disposition by will of his estate,
which was valued at about $7,500,000, and doubtless the greatest
fortune accumulated by any individual in America up to that
time. Of his fortune he bequeathed $116,000 to various
Philadelphia charities, $500,000 to the same city for the
improvement of the Delaware water front, $300,000 to Pennsylvania
for internal improvements, and the bulk of his estate to
Philadelphia, to be used in founding a school or college, in
providing a better police system, and in making municipal
improvements and lessening taxation. Most of his bequest
to the city was to be used for building and maintaining a school
“to provide for such a number of poor male white orphan
children . . . a better education as well as a more comfortable
maintenance than they usually receive from the application of
the public funds.” His will planned most minutely for the
erection of this school, giving details as to the windows, doors,
walls, &c.; and it contained the following phrase: “I enjoin
and require that no ecclesiastic, missionary or minister of any
sect whatsoever, shall ever hold or exercise any duty whatsoever
in the said college; nor shall any such person ever be admitted
for any purpose, or as a visitor, within the premises appropriated
to the purposes of the said college. . . . I desire to keep the
tender minds of orphans . . . free from the excitements which
clashing doctrines and sectarian controversy are so apt to
produce.” Girard’s heirs-at-law contested the will in 1836, and
they were greatly helped by a public prejudice aroused by the
clause cited; in the Supreme Court of the United States in 1844
Daniel Webster, appearing for the heirs, made a famous plea
for the Christian religion, but Justice Joseph Story handed down
an opinion adverse to the heirs (Vidals v. Girard’s Executors).
Webster was opposed in this suit by John Sergeant and Horace
Binney. Girard specified that those admitted to the college
must be white male orphans, of legitimate birth and good
character, between the ages of six and ten; that no boy was
to be permitted to stay after his eighteenth year; and that as
regards admissions preference was to be shown, first to orphans
born in Philadelphia, second to orphans born in any other part of
Pennsylvania, third to orphans born in New York City, and
fourth to orphans born in New Orleans. Work upon the buildings
was begun in 1833, and the college was opened on the 1st
of January 1848, a technical point of law making instruction
conditioned upon the completion of the five buildings, of which
the principal one, planned by Thomas Ustick Walter (1804–1887),
has been called “the most perfect Greek temple in existence.”
To a sarcophagus in this main building the remains of Stephen
Girard were removed in 1851. In the 40 acres of the college
grounds there were in 1909 18 buildings (valued at $3,350,000),
1513 pupils, and a total “population,” including students,
teachers and all employes, of 1907. The value of the Girard
estate in the year 1907 was $35,000,000, of which $550,000
was devoted to other charities than Girard College. The control
of the college was under a board chosen by the city councils
until 1869, when by act of the legislature it was transferred to
trustees appointed by the Common Pleas judges of the city of
Philadelphia. The course of training is partly industrial—for
a long time graduates were indentured till they came of age—but it is also preparatory to college entrance.
