from England, Dr. McDowell was chosen to that position in the following year and continued in office, until the State withdrew its aid to the college in 1805.  He was a man of great learning and was very successful at St. John’s and later at the University of Pennsylvania as provost.  Under him, St. John’s flourished greatly and many men of a national reputation were enrolled among its students, from the time the first class graduated in 1793.

The same disaster fell on St. John’s, as on Washington College.  The Legislature withdrew the annual grant given by the State.  The same doubt as to the constitutionality of this withdrawal existed here, and the State confirmed its position in the same way, by increasing its appropriation in 1832,[10] on condition of the college’s accepting it in full satisfaction of all claims against the State under the original charter.  Of late years Maryland has been quite generous to St. John’s, but it has never quite recovered the station and prestige it lost by the taking away of the State’s grant in 1805.

In the first despair over the Act of the Legislature, the Visitors and Governors voted to discontinue the college, but their courage soon returned and the Rev. Bethel Judd, elected principal in 1807, was able to graduate a class in 1810.  After his withdrawal in 1812, matters were in a disturbed state for some years and no classes were graduated until 1822, when Rev. Henry L. Davis, the father of Maryland’s famous orator, Henry Winter Davis, was principal.  After that year there were no graduates until 1827, when Rev. William Rafferty was head of the college.  The struggle for existence was a hard one and the wonder is that the college succeeded as well as it did.

With 1831, however, began a third and more successful period in the history of St. John’s.  In that year the Rev. Hector Humphreys, then only thirty-four years of age, was chosen president.  He was a native of Connecticut and a graduate of Yale College in 1818, and was called to St. John’s from the professorship of Ancient Languages at Washington (Trinity) College in his native State.  The effect of his energy and devotion was soon recognized, and, largely through his efforts, was passed the compromise of 1832.  The curriculum was enlarged, the instruction made more thorough, and classes were yearly graduated, with but six exceptions, until his death in 1857.  His energy was very great, his learning wide and accurate.  In 1834, after travelling about the State in the interests of the college, he succeeded in raising about $11,000, which were used in the erection of a second building for the college, which most appropriately has since been called by his name.  During his administration, the professors’ houses were also built, as was Pinkney Hall, a third building for the use of the college.  Dr. Humphreys also secured cabinets and philosophical apparatus for the college and gave instruction in Political Economy, Latin and Greek, Chemistry, Geology,