is no doubt that a school of learning is a charity. It is one of
those mentioned in the statutes. Such a school of learning as was
contemplated by the statutes of Elizabeth is a charity; and all such
have borne that name and character to this day. I mean to confine myself
to that description of charity, the statute charity, and to apply it to
this case alone.

The devise before us proposes to establish, as its main object, a school
of learning, a college. There are provisions, of course, for lodging,
clothing, and feeding the pupils, but all this is subsidiary. The great
object is the instruction of the young; although it proposes to give the
children better food and clothes and lodging, and proposes that the
system of education shall be somewhat better than that which is usually
provided for the poor and destitute in our public institutions
generally.

The main object, then, is to establish a school of learning for
children, beginning with them at a very tender age, and retaining them
(namely, from six years to eighteen) till they are on the verge of
manhood, when they will have expended more than one third part of the
average duration of human life. For if the college takes them at six,
and keeps them till they are eighteen, a period of twelve years will be
passed within its walls; more than a third part of the average of human
life. These children, then, are to be taken almost before they learn
their alphabet, and be discharged about the time that men enter on the
active business of life. At six, many do not know their alphabet. John
Wesley did not know a letter till after he was six years old, and his
mother then took him on her lap, and taught him his alphabet at a single
lesson. There are many parents who think that any attempt to instil the
rudiments of education into the mind of a child at an earlier age, is
little better than labor thrown away.

The great object, then, which Mr. Girard seemed to have in view, was to
take these orphans at this very tender age, and to keep them within his
walls until they were entering manhood. And this object I pray your
honors steadily to bear in mind.

I never, in the whole course of my life, listened to any thing with more
sincere delight, than to the remarks of my learned friend who opened
this cause, on the nature and character of true charity. I agree with
every word he said on that subject. I almost envy him his power of
expressing so happily what his mind conceives s