Should a young man care to pursue his studies beyond the elementary school, his only opportunity to do so was in one of the academies, where the classics formed the sum and substance of the instruction. The tendency to revert to the established forms of European education, or the papal system, is plainly visible. [Sidenote: Footprints of the papal education] The first colleges had been planted to give a Christian training, and doubtless had a start which might have resulted in the greatest strength to the church, and to the nation in a secondary way; but the introduction of these grammar schools or academies, with a course of study in the _classics_ made necessary by the universities, threw the majority of the young people into a _classical instead of a practical line of instruction_. Looking at it from one standpoint, no wiser move could have been made to turn the tide of educational reform again toward papal education. Can we here trace the footprints of the Jesuits, whose policy since the days of Loyola had been to overthrow Protestantism by a false system of education? [Sidenote: Protestantism and republicanism weakened] The effect of the mixture of the pure and the impure methods, traceable in indistinct lines at the very beginning, now assumed more definite proportions. The growth of academies was remarkably rapid, and when attention is called to such men as Franklin, the Adamses, John Hancock, and the generation of “’76,” who received most of their education in these schools, it may seem like sheer presumption to condemn their work. The results, however, as seen in later years, warrant the charge that at that time was taken a long step from the principles of the Reformation, which meant to this country a weakening both in Protestantism and republicanism. [Sidenote: Union of Christian and papal systems] These academies were denominational, it is true; still they offered this prescribed course of instruction. Almost immediately appear signs of the result of this union of Christian education with scholasticism. For instance, we read that “Brown University, though founded as a Baptist institution, was nevertheless one of the first schools of the period to emphasize the growing sentiment for a thoroughly undenominational collegiate training.” Why should a denominational college give an undenominational course of instruction, and why, above all denominations, should the Baptists do so, to whom such a flood of light had come, and who always with pride pointed back to Roger Williams and the State of Rhode Island as the ancestors and embodiment of all that is Protestant and republican? But this is not the only indication of this decline from early principles. [Sidenote: Harvard loses sight of original object]