farther, Gallatin was convinced that the classics, properly taught without
use of translations or explanatory annotations, were "most admirably cal-
culated" to develop the intellectual faculties of youths and provided the
students with that discipline in using their own minds "without which
talents, even of a high order, become useless."

At the College, the majority of the students were, like Gallatin, the off-
spring of propertied families of the city, for virtually all sons of me-
chanics--"even the watchmakers so numerous in Geneva and noted for
their superior intelligence and knowledge"--dropped out at the age of
thirteen or fourteen. In the Academy, the youth was even more gilded.

Of fifty-odd schoolmates in the higher department, only one achieved
distinction in later life: Etienne Dumont, after a career as a cleric, be-
came secretary to Jeremy Bentham and translated his works into French.
Another student, several classes ahead of Gallatin, was François D'Iver-
nois, who became a political writer and diplomat of reputation in the
service of Switzerland and Great Britain.

Family and social position played their part also in the appointment
of professors at the Academy, but at least two of Gallatin's teachers were
men of distinction. Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, who taught philosophy,
was an eminent physician, mathematician, botanist, and a pioneer in geol-
ogy and meteorology--above all, a practical scholar. Even as he lectured
his eyes were turned toward Mont Blanc, whose summit, a decade later,
he was among the first to reach; he was a pioneer in scientific mountain-
eering. Louis Bertrand, who taught mathematics, had been educated at
Berlin and had a wide reputation; it was he who promoted the founding
of an observatory at Geneva.

For two years at the Academy, Gallatin and his schoolmates followed
a course of study known as "belles-lettres": two hours of lectures each
day on the classical languages, by a single instructor, supplemented by oc-
casional lectures on history by an honorary professor. For the following
two years, they studied "philosophy"--which meant more of the classical
languages (but no literature), plus algebra, geometry, and a little natural
science. All lectures except those on mathematics were in Latin, main-
taining the students' habit of speaking the classical tongue fluently, but,
as Gallatin put it, "without any eloquence." The style of instruction was
somewhat like that in an American one-room schoolhouse. During the
two years in "belles-lettres," Gallatin and his fellows heard the same series
of lectures twice in successive years; and this was true of "philosophy"
also. The great disadvantage of the arrangement, Gallatin thought in later
years, was that the instructor had to keep his lectures on a relatively
elementary level, so that he could be understood by the younger stu-

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