uished 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 orphan