66

CLOSING OF BRISTOL COLLEGE.

Bristol College was bought by its founders for $20,000. It was a beautiful place between the Delaware and Neshaminy rivers, containing 300 acres, with a splendid house, built by a rich China tea merchant. It was most substantially built, the walls were very thick, and the roof was covered with copper. One room was a cube of twenty feet and was used as a chapel.

Bristol College did not come into friendly relations with the Bishop of Pennsylvania, though he was Bishop White. It failed because, having no endowment, and being conducted with no view of making money, much was going out in its purchase and extension and little came in. It relied on aid from the clergy named above, in Philadelphia, and on Dr. Milner of New York, who, on account of the great fire there, was unable to raise money for it, so that it had to suspend. Bishop Onderdonk offered to redeem it if it should be put under Diocesan control, but Dr. Tyng refused the offer and it closed in February, 1837. Bristol College passed through many changes; once it was in the hands of the Roman Catholics, then it was sold to the colored people.

With such an able and devoted faculty as Bristol College had, with its beauty and convenience of position, its high and noble aim, it should have had a long career of honor and usefulness, for it did a great work in its short life of four years. I have never understood why it was allowed to perish, when other colleges have lived on for years.

I must add extracts from two letters written me not long before his death, by my valued and life-long friend, Major John Page, whose sons, Rev. Frank Page, Thomas Nelson Page and Rosewell Page of the Richmond bar, are well known :

MY DEAR OLD FRIEND:

Your letter gave me unqualified pleasure.

OAKLAND, VA., April 30, 1900.

One of the pleasures of my past days is to think of the dear old friends I have known, among the chief of whom I count you. I have known you for sixty-four years and have always respected and loved you. I ever think of you and the brave days of Bristol College. Never in life have you been out of my recollection, and now I rejoice that your honored old age is so comfortable, and that you can look back on a long and useful life. I remember with much pleasure the visit my son Tom and I paid you. I, like you, have had great comfort in my children. They have all turned out well.

You have always filled a post of honor, and have had much to do with the training of our younger clergy, among them my own son, Rev. Frank Page. I know no one who can look back on their past days with more satisfac

tion than you; your long and useful course of educating young men for the ministry must be a source of pleasure. I have just passed my seventy-ninth birthday, the 26th of April.

I subscribe myself

Your sincere friend,

JOHN PAGE.

Writing to Rev. T. J. Packard, Major Page adds:

I remember your father ever since the fall of 1834, and he seemed to me as old then as he does now, the oldest young man, or to put it more politely, the youngest old man, I ever saw. He was looked up to there with admiration and respect, shall I say, awe? as much as now. Dr. Packard was always considered a very learned man. He was always kind and considerate of us boys, for we were nothing but boys. I remember reading Livy at Bristol College under him, and the little I know of Latin and Greek is very much due to his instruction and infusion of interest in the study of the classics.

[Rev. Frank Page after my father's death wrote this tribute.-ED.]

My father always had the greatest affection for him. Dr. Packard was an inspiration to us. His illustrations, his quaint sayings, his reverence for sacred things, his humility, his scholarship, his cordiality in his own house, I remember as if it were yesterday. In fact, I cannot think of the Seminary without him. I always had the greatest regard for him.

CHAPTER IX.

COMING TO VIRGINIA.

"Ah! little kenned my mither
When a bairn she cradled me,
Through what lands I should wander,
And the death that I should dee."

WHILE teaching at Bristol I was elected in April, 1836, Profes

of Sacred Literature in the Theological Seminary of Virginia. I think it was through the agency of Professor William N. Pendleton, my colleague, and through the Virginia students there, twenty-five in number, whose names I have mentioned, that I was suggested for the place. It certainly seems the leading of Providence that I, a stranger from a distant State, should be brought here. The Rev. Charles B. Dana, rector of Christ church, Alexandria, one of the Trustees of the Seminary, had been at Andover, and he had written to Professor Stuart in regard to my qualifications. The latter wrote a letter, saying that I had "made unusual progress in the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures," and that I was "fit for any Faculty." Professor Stuart told me later on, some years before his death, that all his life he had been trying to teach the Bible, and that I must do the same.

I accepted the position and went at once to Andover to perfect myself. I read and studied hard, but late in the summer I had typhoid or nervous fever, which left me very weak and prevented my coming to the Seminary till the middle of October, after the session had begun. Meanwhile I was ordained Deacon by Bishop Griswold, in St. Paul's church, Boston, of which Rev. John S. Lindsay, D. D., is now rector, on July 17, 1836, together with W. H. Hoit, Charles Mason and George Waters, just at the very time when the venerable Bishop White was dying. Bishop Griswold preached on the text, "We have this treasure in earthen vessels," the same sermon as at Dr. Lippitt's ordination seventeen years before. We were presented by Dr. J. S. Stone, who examined us. Dr. Stone I had known before at Andover, where he used to come to preach, and he was one of our most eminent and useful ministers. On that same day in Virginia Bishop Moore ordained Francis H. McGuire, Alex. M. Marbury, Launcelot B. Minor, R. E. Northam, John Payne (afterwards Bishop of

Africa), Thomas S. Savage and I. E. Sawyer, most of whom I knew intimately later on. My first sermon was preached at Hanover, Massachusetts, for which I received five dollars, covering my expenses there.

The day I was ordained I took tea with Jeremiah Mason, the great lawyer of New England, whose son Charles was ordained with me. Jeremiah Mason used to stay with my brother when on his circuit. Charles Mason was a very attractive man and good minister. I have a volume of his sermons. About that time I met Amos Lawrence, a philanthropist and a man of great wealth, a millionaire, which was then a great distinction. In a letter of my father to his daughter, written March 30, 1848, he speaks of Mr. Lawrence, who was a kind friend of his: "Mr. Amos Lawrence is still thinking of the family for good. He has recently paid into the treasury of the Am. Board Society $150 to make my five children life members, thirty dollars each, besides doing other kindnesses. My idea is that he is distributing his wealth very properly, and in return I hope he will enjoy in abundance those true riches which are liable neither to rust, decay or flight." From 1831 to the close of his life in 1855 he devoted himself to deeds of charity, giving liberally to educational institutions in various parts of the country. He founded and maintained a Children's Infirmary in Boston and his private charities were abundant. Bishop William Lawrence of Massachusetts, his grandson was assistant to my brother George, at Lawrence, a place named from the family, and always showed the consideration and thoughtful attention that marks the highest type of Christian gentleman.

The Episcopal Church was very weak in New England, and Bishop Edward Bass, the first Bishop of Massachusetts, had only labored six years, when he passed away in 1803, the year my brother George was born. The centennial of his consecration in 1897 was marked by an interesting life of him written by Rev. D. D. Addison.

He had his fund of jokes, and some of these have been preserved. Although born in Dorchester, he had some objection to living there. Upon being remonstrated with for deserting his native place, he simply replied, "The brooks of Dorchester are not large enough for Bass to swim in."

His first marriage displeased many of his parishoners, and caused a ripple of gossip to pass through the town, so much so

that Bishop Bass concluded to preach about it. For some time he could not fix upon an appropriate text, but his search was gratified when he found this one, from which he preached the following Sunday-Gen. xx. 2, "Surely the fear of God is not in this place, and they will slay me for my wife's sake." Nothing more was said about his wife after this, and his second wife provoked no comment at all. Her name was Mercy, and before his marriage he preached on the text, "He that followeth after mercy findeth life," or as some put it, "I love mercy and I will have mercy."

Bishop Griswold, Bishop of the Eastern Diocese, embracing Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, was of marked character and influence. He was an evangelical Low Churchman, of earnest, spiritual nature. He was first a lay-reader, and was so acceptable that he was urged to take orders. He was ordained in 1795 Deacon, and in October, Priest, at the last ordination of Bishop Seabury. He was poor and had to support his family by the work of his hands until ordained, and, not being able to afford candles, he would stretch himself on the hearth and study by the light of the fire late into the night, after toiling all day. After his ordination his salary was so small that he had to teach a district school in winter, and he worked in summer at seventy-five cents a day harvesting. While farming he got a beard of wheat in his throat, and at last being made to cough, it came out, but it affected his voice and produced an impediment in his speech. Bishop Griswold was remarkably simple and unpretending in his ways; this in one in his position had a great effect on people, and he won many to the Episcopal Church; about two hundred and fifty ministers from other churches were ordained by him.

Prof. E. A. Parks of Andover in a sermon in 1844 satirized severely the motives of those entering our ministry. He said: "Proclamation has been made in high places that within the last thirty years about three hundred clergymen and licentiates of other denominations have sought the ministerial commission from the hands of bishops; that two-thirds of all the present clergy of the Church have come from other folds'; and that of two hundred and eighty-five persons ordained by a single bishop in New England [this was Bishop Griswold] two hundred and seven were converts from other denominations." He was silent and reserved, but when he spoke always said something to the point. When a