. Historic homes and institutions and genealogical and personal memoirs of Berkshire County, Massachusetts . of our youth. These criticisms, in which there was certainlyno excess of reserve, ai)pear to have had some effect. At the next com-mencement the editor found a better state of things. It furnished,he said, a happy contrast to many uf those which at former periods ithas been our unwelcome duty to record. He was happ\ to And that onthis occasion the temple of science had not been prostituted to the lowpurposes of calumny and slander. The reformation seems to havegone on apace. A. B., who


. Historic homes and institutions and genealogical and personal memoirs of Berkshire County, Massachusetts . of our youth. These criticisms, in which there was certainlyno excess of reserve, ai)pear to have had some effect. At the next com-mencement the editor found a better state of things. It furnished,he said, a happy contrast to many uf those which at former periods ithas been our unwelcome duty to record. He was happ\ to And that onthis occasion the temple of science had not been prostituted to the lowpurposes of calumny and slander. The reformation seems to havegone on apace. A. B., who was present at the commencement of 24 BERKSHIRE COUNTY 1809, wrote to Tlic Siiii in a hioiily comijlimentarv strain. Insteadof being- compelled to attend to the hackneyed snlijects of the day. hesaid, the audience was led by the hand of genius through the fieldsof science, giorv, patriotism and virtue! The last four or five vears of President Fitchs administrationwas a period of depression and decline. Various influences no doubtcontributed to this condition of affairs—the rebellion of 1808, the down-. Old Observatory. fall of General F. J. Skinner, a leading trustee of the college and itstreasurer from 1793 to 1798, as well as the fact that the question beganto be mooted whether a mistake had not been made in the location ofthe collegfe. How much influence this preliminary agitation for removalmay have had in causing- the resignation of President Fitch in 1815, isnot quite certain. It was definitely asserted in the controversy whichfollowed that the trustees, finding him in the way of their schemes, rudelypushed him out of it. Berkshire. a prominent figure in the news- BERKSHIRE COUNTY 25 paper warfare, wrote to The Pittsficld Sun of Ancjnst ti. t8iq. that thepublic saw with qrief and indio-nation an rild and faithful servant* * * driven from an institution which he had fostered tomeet the buffets of the world and the caprices of fortune. * * *Age. prudent and timid, draws i


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