The fathers of New England had solemnly imposed the duty of maintaining grammar schools of a high order in all important towns and cities, but this obligation was not met. With few exceptions, and those mostly the endowed schools, we have seen the reluctance of the people of Massachusetts to maintain a school suitable to fit boys for "ye universite." Indeed, it is not certain that any locality in that State save Boston has constantly complied with this provision of the ancient statutes.

But the plan of endowed Academies aimed to establish in each county of the State such a school as might bring within the reach of one day's travel by the ancient modes of conveyance, to all the youth of the State desirous of attending, advantages fully equal to those of the best schools of Boston. The founding of Academies on a basis at once permanent and respectable, furnished settled employment and sure pay in the teacher's calling. Graduates of col-7 *lege, who had a natural gift for teaching, now had a field of service. To be sure, one teacher was amply sufficient, at first for each Academy; for if a college like Yale, could be conducted by a faculty of president and three tutors, it might be presumed that the principal of an Academy needed no assistant. But this state of things belonged, as geologists say, to the paleontological era of education. And yet some of these first teachers of Academies, who labored single-handed and alone, were men of deserved repute in their calling. No teachers of our time are likely to secure greater respect from their contemporaries than did Master Moody of Dummer, Benjamin Abbott of Exeter, Eliphalet Pierson and John Adams of Andover, Caleb Butler of Groton, Ebenezer Adams of Liecester, and Simeon Colton of Monson. Than these preceptors in their respective Academies no grammar school of any populous city could furnish better candidates for the university, or better train young men and young ladies also for the useful callings and occupations of life. In former times, and more especially in our days, there must be great inequality of educational advantages in different localities, for there is, and must be always, a great inequality in the means and conditions of the people in different parts of the State. Wealth concentrates in cities, and brings with it every facility of instruction in all grades of local schools. But mental endowments and the capacity for knowledge are distributed in the town and city without partiality, the country having a larger proportion of those who excel in the schools than is found in the city.

No better proof is needed to show the value of the first established Academies, in their relation to popular uses, than the desire

to multiply schools under that name in nearly all the important towns. This desire was prompted chiefly by the higher English education they furnished; making them, in all the towns where they were located, an important auxiliary to the emental schools. Prompted by local enterprise, and aiming to secure the advantages which vicinity was supposed to give, schools called Academies sprang up in great numbers, having no endowments, without any other than a mere local policy, and with an irregular and intermittent existence; the patronage depending solely on the local popularity of the teacher.

In process of time some of the older incorporated Academies, as Marblehead, Bristol, and Framingham, became local schools, and lost their former character as schools for the public at large.

As the wealth and population of the country increased, a demand was made for a higher grade of strictly local schools in all the larger towns, and for that reason the unendowed Academies generally and very properly assumed the position and functions belonging now to the modern high school, which ought always to be supplementary to the common school system.

Most unfortunately for the progress of popular education some, who have labored to extend the high school system in view of its transcendent utility, have assumed a position of antagonism to Academies, calling in question their policy, regarding their day of service as past, and advocating the substitution of high schools in their place.

We most cordially sympathize with the expansion of the system of public instruction to the utmost limit of practical improvement. We fully recognize the advancement of popular education to that degree that in many respects the local high schools may be equal in rank to the condition and standing of the Academies in former days. But high schools must, if they fulfill their proper design, be adapted to the wants of their localities, and meet the average standard which the people of each locality may have the ability and the will to reach. We care not how many such schools exist, or how high a rank of real excellence they may attain, for their object is to supplement the elemental schools, and their rank as high schools is correlate to the lower grades in the public system of instruction to which they in common belong.

Of course it follows that the term high school is a very indefinite term, when regarded in its proper relation to the public system; since the high schools of Boston and Salem and Cambridge must be at the head of a greater number of grades than in the country,

where only two, or at most three, g

can be introduced.

And

yet the average capacity of pups in the cities must be met as well as those in the country, and the range of studies must not be so high as to render the school of no use to those for whose sake it is specially designed. It is the grade of schools every where and not the name that confers on them real rank.

Now it is clearly beyond the proper province, as it is beyond the ability of nearly all the high schools conducted as they are or ought to be in these days, to fit boys for "ye universitie" as the ancient grammar schools might do; since the standard of college education and of the preparatory schools is as much higher now than formerly, as is the rank of the best high schools of our times above the elemental schools half a century ago.

Far better is it for the pupils who wish to prepare for college, and far more economical is it for the community, that the Academies should continue to do that work well, than that the high schools should assume to do so great a work for so few in number, while the welfare of the great majority of their pupils is neglected.

In Boston and New York and large cities and towns, where wealth is abundant and the gradation of the public schools is perfect, the highest in the series may be a school preparatory for the university; for such places can well afford the expense, although the proportion of city boys who prepare for college is not one-half as great as it is in the country, and in the country not more than one in a thousand of the boys belonging to the public schools ever go to college.

The Boston Latin School, the oldest grammar school in the land, has always sustained the very first rank as a classical seminary. It has for a constituency one of the largest and most enlightened of American cities. The wealth of that city is equal to nearly onethird of the entire valuation of the State of Massachusetts. The Latin School is the only classical seminary in that city sustained by public taxation. It has the best teachers which the highest salaries can procure, and all the advantages which the best instruction and the best discipline can give.

According to the report of the Committee on the Latin School of Boston (Dr. N. B. Shurtleff, chairman) to the Boston School Committee, September, 1861, which was published in this Journal, Vol. XII, page 559, it appears that the average number prepared for college, for the ten years previous, at the Boston Latin School, was 16.8 per annum; and of these the average number of those received from the public schools was 77, while the number re

ceived from other schools was 91, making the whole number 16.8 as the annual average of this celebrated school, or seventy-seven who entered the school from the public schools of the city, and ninety-one from private schools. As to those who entered from private schools, amounting to more than half of the whole, it may be presumed that this great accession from schools not belonging to the public system must be due to the excellence of the Latin School, and the fact that its tuition is free to all residents of the city.

From the same report it appears "that for the forty-six years previous to 1861, comprising the masterships of Gould, Leverett, Dillaway, Dixwell, and Gardner for ten years, the average number fitted for college was 12.56 per annum."

The report then asks, "Do not these figures show how eminently useful the Latin School has been in its highest vocation-the production of classical scholars? During the last forty-six years nearly six hundred young men from this school have been admitted to honorable standing in the several universities and colleges in New England.

Such is the claim of Dr. Shurtleff, in behalf of the Latin School of Boston, upon the sympathy and support of a city the largest, the most populous, and the wealthiest in New England. She may justly be proud of this, the oldest grammar school of the land, as the richest gem in her crown of honor as the Athens of America, the home of noble scholars and princely merchants. Let her sustain this school, for she can well afford it, as a part of her system of public instruction so often a matter of boast as the best in the United States, although from that system only seven and seventenths per annum of the graduating class of college candidates are received from the far-famed public schools of Boston. And yet this result, though put forth to the world by the Boston School Committee as a matter of boasting, will be received with surprise as very small for a city whose population in 1861 was nearly 178,000, whose valuation for 1860 was $312,000,000, in whose public schools there were 28,000 pupils in 1861, of which only one pupil in 3,636 was fitted for "ye universitie" in one year, in conformity with the ancient statutes.

Compare now, with this record, the results of classical training in the number of candidates for college annually sent forth from Phillips Academy at Andover.

We have only the statistics for the last twenty-eight years, the period of Dr. S. H. Taylor's preceptorship. We make no estimate of Dr. Pierson's administration, or of his successors, Mark Newman;

John Adams, Osgood Johnson, and others, who were at the head. of the school for the sixty years previous to Dr. Taylor's accession. We refer not to the results of the English school always sustained at Phillips Academy, of which Wm. H. Wells and J. S. Eaton have been masters, nor to the Normal Seminary connected with Phillips Academy for many years, the first established in America. We refer only to the department of the classics from which, in the last ten years, 46-9 per annum have been fitted for college. In the previous eighteen years the average number fitted was 25, and for the entire period of twenty-eight years the average has been 33 per annum. This number does not include two hundred who advanced as far in their course of study as through the first or second term (three in a year) of the last year's course of study, more than half of whom were pretty nearly fitted for college and others within two terms of study."

Thus more than one thousand young men have been sent from Andover to the different colleges, in a little more than a quarter of a century, by one eminent instructor. This one fact is enough to show the vitality of this institution as a power in the land. But the endowment on which all the departments of Phillips Academy rest as their basis does not exceed $75,000, while the funds at Exeter do not vary much from $100,000.

But in these days all the colleges and nearly all Academies are no less schools of science than of the classics. All the best colleges. have scientific departments, and the Academies having the greatest patronage are furnished with instruction and apparatus for the preparation of young men for the higher scientific institutions. So extensive has the routine of scientific studies become, that they can not be pursued with profit unless in well endowed institutions where a course of study is established and adhered to. Hence, in Williston Seminary the amplest provision is made for this branch of studies as well as the classical department. As these branches can not be well taught without special teachers and expensive cabinets and apparatus of every kind, the best Academies have been furnished with facilities of teaching in these respects as the high schools with few exceptions have not been.

But the public schools have endeavored, not only to provide classical but scientific instruction also, in obedience to a popular demand for a class of studies deemed specially practical; and the consequence has been that in many places the public schools have been overburdened with an excess of branches of study, while the branches essential as the foundation of real mental culture have