Slide 26
"The Bishop's Palace" as drawn by
Henry Caswall, 1828
The Bishop’s Palace consists of a few logs laid together and roofed with shingles. The Bishop is a most delightful man, by birth an American and native of Vermont. He has just sold his little farm to procure money to pay the workmen. Mrs. Chase is a delightful and wonderful woman about 35 years old. The Bishop is scarcely 60, and without a single grey hair. The college will be a fine building 170 feet long with a tall steeple. The terms will not exceed 80 pounds at the utmost during the whole time I remain in the college, viz until I am 21, when, the Bishop says, I may take orders. Food is so cheap that we live quite luxuriously. The students are never employed in manual labor, indeed all is much the same as at an English college. The school boys have no bounds but range in the forest at liberty. Few however venture far off, for fear of losing themselves, in which case they might be starved. Prayers are held 7 times a day, and on Sunday the young men meet and pray in the evening, and afterwards one of them preaches ex tempore for an hour on a given chapter in the Bible. They do this in turns, and they instituted a the meeting of their own accord, and not thro’ the suggestions of the Bishop. They have also instituted a society of arts and sciences. A fine printing-press with types has just arrived and the Bishop has been so kind as to send for a journeyman printer to teach printing to some of the senior collegians including myself. Everything here is harmony and good order, benevolence and piety. Indeed I think if happiness can exist in this world it exists here. The good Bishop himself tells me that he considers it an apt type of a future world. It is impossible to see the students, both collegians and school-boys, without admiration; tho’ as free as the wild deer they live together in the greatest love and peace. Here is no fighting, no quarreling, no swearing. Yet they are natives of many parts of the world,-- a Hindoo, a Greek, several French, a few Welsh and Irish, but for the most part American. I am the only Englishman. The Bishop (whom I love more every hour) took me round his domain. He has had 8000 acres of forest, of which he has brought 800 into cultivation. He shewed me his sawmill, which he has erected from his own design; also his Indian corn mill, and wheat mill, which he has erected upon Owl Creek from his own plans.