Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/192

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

of the Atlantick cities for the convenience of remitting. There is a publick library and a university, called Transylvania, which is incorporated and is under the government of twenty-one trustees and the direction of a president, the Rev. James Blythe, who is also professor of natural philosophy, mathematicks, geography and English grammar. There are four professors besides: the Rev. Robert H. Bishop, professor of moral philosophy, belles lettres, logick and history; Mr. Ebenezer Sharpe, professor of the languages; Doctor James Fishback, professor of medicine, &c. and Henry Clay, Esq. professor of law. The funds of the university arise from the price of tuition, (which {163} is lower than in any other seminary of learning in the United States) and from eight thousand acres of first rate land, granted to it by the state of Virginia; five thousand of which are in the neighbourhood of Lexington, and three thousand near Louisville at the falls of Ohio. The legislature of Kentucky have also granted to it six thousand acres of valuable land, south of Green river. Its yearly income from the lands, now amounts to about two thousand dollars, which will probably be soon much increased.[126]

There are no fewer than three creditable boarding schools for female education, in which there are at present above a hundred pupils. An extract from Mrs. Beck's card, will convey some idea of the progress of polite education in this country.

"Boarders instructed in the following branches, at the rate of two hundred dollars per annum, viz. Reading, spelling, writing, arithmetick, grammar, epistolary correspondence, elocution and rhetorick; geography, with the use of maps,