Page:The History of the University of Pennsylvania, Wood.djvu/93

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UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
87


Chapter XIII.

New Regulations.—Institution of the Philomathean Society.—Improved State of the School.—Establishment of the Department of Natural Science.

In the year 1810 a reformation was commenced by a complete separation of the seminary into two parts, the boundaries of which were distinctly marked, and their objects accurately defined. The students of the college, arranged into three classes—the freshman, junior, and senior—were placed under a faculty composed of three professors, who filled respectively the chairs of moral philosophy, of natural philosophy and the mathematics, and of the languages. Of these professors one was the provost, and the second the vice-provost of the university. The term of study was confined to three years; and the course of instruction embraced, together with the Latin and Greek classics, all those higher branches of learning and science which are usually taught in colleges. By a special determination of the board it was provided, that whenever punishments might be necessary, they should be directed exclusively to "a sense of duty, and the principle of honour and shame." From this it would appear, that the students might previously have been subjected to occasional bodily chastisement—a degradation to which high-minded young men could not be expected to submit; and the liability to which, if it really did exist, must have had a great ef-