only for brief periods. Salaries in 1850 ranged from $600 to $800, but by 1869 they had reached $1,500 for professors and $2,000 and the use of his house for the President.
The traditional classical curriculum of the 1830’s and ’40’s underwent few changes. The classes in intellectual and moral philosophy, political economy, and evidences of Christianity continued to occupy a prominent place in the upper-class program. Taught for the most part by Presidents Eaton, Taylor and Dodge, they played a vital role in shaping student thinking in the fields now known as psychology, ethics, government, economics, and religion. Like similar courses in the curricula of other American colleges, they were designed to provide practical standards for deciding moral issues. Instruction was focused on the ideas of the “common sense”
Scottish philosophers and the Englishmen, William Paley and Joseph Butler, plus the teachings of the Bible. Among the textbooks most often used were Francis Wayland’s Moral Science and Political Economy, Thomas C. Upham and Joseph Havens’s works on mental philosophy, and Butler’s Analogy.
In related courses under Professor Beebee, juniors studied Richard Whatley’s Logic and Lord Kames’s Criticism, and sophomores, Whatley’s Rhetoric; all three texts had been in use since the 1840’s. Professor Lewis introduced Henry Copee’s Logic and Karl W. F. von Schlegel’s History of Literature. To supplement regular classroom instruction, he required all students of the College to attend special exercises in the chapel once a week at which they read their essays and gave original orations. The response to his drill was enthusiastic and its effect was soon evident in the high quality of the performances at the literary societies’ public exhibitions.
Various members of the faculty, as the need arose, gave private lessons in French and German in addition to their regular duties, until qualified students relieved them of the burden in the middle ’50’s. Jean F. P. Wehrung, a native of Strasbourg, France, who was a student in the Academic Department, gave instruction in German, and Auguste Armagnac, of Port au Prince, Haiti, also in the academic department, instruction in French. In 1855, Carroll E. I. Dudley, a freshman with a flair for language, inaugurated the teaching of Spanish which he seems to have learned while residing-in the Southwest with a missionary uncle. Modern language instruction remained a sideline, however, until Professor Knapp’s appointment when the faculty prescribed
