In the School-house on BEDFORD STREET, erected in 1843-4, for the Latin and English High Schools, the former is accommodated in the Hall H, and Class-rooms, C, C, C, C, on the left side, and the latter in the Hall and Classrooms on the other side.

II. MASTERSHIP OF FRANCIS GARDNER. 1852-1862.

FRANCIS GARDNER entered on the Mastership of the Latin School in 1852, having fitted for Harvard College under the instruction of Master Benjamin A. Gould, and been employed as an assistant in the same school under Masters C. K. Dillaway, and E. S. Dixwell. Under no former Master has the number of pupils been so large, the course of instruction more thorough, and the annual contribution to the colleges so high. The following account of the school has been drawn up by Mr. Gardner at our request:

"As the Latin School is maintained to prepare young men for a collegiate career, its course of studies is in a great measure prescribed by the colleges, and it simply remains for the government of the school to accomplish the desired object, with the greatest benefit to the pupil. In the following sketch we propose to give some account of the existing regulations of the school and the reasons for their adoption.

I. QUALIFICATIONS FOR ADMISSION, ETC.

Every pupil must have reached the age of ten years, and pass a satisfactory examination in reading, spelling, writing, and in the elements of arithmetic, geography, and grammar.

Inasmuch as from the very nature of the subject, the memory is a very important agent in the acquisition of grammar-the pupil being ignorant of the whole nomenclature-it has seemed best to employ those years, when the verbal memory is strongest, in the acquisition of this indispensable knowledge. Therefore, for nearly the whole of the last fifty years, the age for admission to this school has been fixed at nine or at ten years.

II. METHOD OF INSTRUCTION.

The studies of the school are divided into two departments, the Classic, including Latin, Greek, Mythology, Ancient Geography and History; and the Modern, including Mathematics, French, Modern Geography, History, English Grammar, Compositions, Written Translations, Reading, and Spelling. Immediately upon entering the school, the pupil has assigned him a lesson in Latin Grammar, for one of his two lessons for each day, the other being in the Modern Department. As it is assumed that his knowledge is very limited, he is called upon to commit to memory a very short lesson, great care being taken that he shall understand, not only the general meaning of each sentence, but the particular sig nification of each word. When he has committed this portion to memory, test questions of all kinds are put, in order to ascertain if he understands fully what he can repeat. The reason why the words of the book are required are twofold, because they express the ideas to be conveyed better than the pupil can give them in his own language, and because it is the shortest and easiest way of acquiring the desired knowledge; the test questioning making it impossible for the learner to acquire mere words without ideas. When the class has advanced as far as Syntax, they then begin to translate and parse, quoting from their grammars all that is applicable to the word under consideration. The rules of Syntax are learned as fast as they occur.

The test questioning is kept up during the whole course, so that upon every

"advance lesson" the pupil is responsible for all that he has previously learned upon the subject, whether grammar, mathematics, or geography.

III.

DISTRIBUTION OF TEACHERS AND SUBJECTS.

At the beginning of each year a class is assigned to a teacher who is to have its entire management, in both departments, for the whole year. This arrangement is found to produce better results than when frequent changes are made, or when the pupils pursue different studies with different instructors.

IV. HOURS OF RECITATION.

There is no fixed programme for the recitations, and the hours for them, experience having taught that what may be an excellent plan for one class would be a most injudicious one for another. The teacher is constantly employed in hearing recitations, and the only rule imposed on him is, that each class shall recite twice a-day, and shall receive its due share of his time and attention. If, in his judgment, one of the lessons of the day demands more of his time than the other, he gives it.

V. STUDY OUT OF SCHOOL HOURS.

To the youngest classes an out of school lesson is assigned daily, intended to Occupy the pupils one hour; to the highest classes a two hours' lesson is assigned. The great advantage of this is that the teacher thereby can profitably employ all his time in drilling his classes. Were they to study only in school, he frequently would be obliged to wait for them to prepare a lesson, whereas now each of the three classes has a lesson in readiness to recite, upon entering school.

VI. DURATION OF COURSE.

Six years is the time allotted to those who enter the school at ten years of age. Very many however enter at a later period, and finish their course in two, three or four years. But experience has incontestably proved that it is impossible for a boy who begins the study of Latin at fifteen years of age, to make so good a scholar, at the time of entering college, as he would have been had he begun his Latin at ten, no matter how thorough his education may have been between ten and fifteen.

The only closing examination is that made by the sub-committee of the school, in order to assign the Franklin Medals, and here the committee are required "to inspect the school records," to ascertain the standing of the candidates, as indicated by them. It is at the various colleges that the scholars undergo their examinations. If they fail there, any diploma or certificate of scholarship, which they might have received, would be but a mockery.

VIII. DISCIPLINE.

"As is the master, so is the school." Each teacher is held responsible not only for the order, but for the proficiency of his classes. There can be no order, no proficiency unless the teacher is really the master; unless the pupils are under his control. They perhaps may not know the fact, but unless it exists, there can be no satisfactory progress. The gentler the means by which this control is secured, the better for both teacher and pupil. He is the best teacher who produces the best results with the least application of force. But force of

-and somewhat wedded to the past. He struggled earnestly against the change then taking place in the pronunciation of u, and insisted on our saying monooment and natur. But I acquired, under his tuition, what was thought, in those days, a very tolerable knowledge of Lindley Murray's abridgement of English grammar, and at the end of the year could parse almost any sentence in the American Preceptor. Master Tilestone was a writing master of the old school. He set the copies himself, and taught that beautiful old Boston handwriting, which, if I do not mistake, has, in the march of innovation, (which is not always the same thing as improvement,) been changed very little for the better. Master Tilestone was advanced in years, and had found a qualification for his calling as a writing master, in what might have seemed, at first, to threaten to be an obstruction. The fingers of his right hand had been contracted and stiffened in early life, by a burn, but were fixed in just the position to hold a pen and a penknife, and nothing else. As they were also considerably indurated, they served as a convenient instrument of discipline. A copy badly written, or a blotted page, was sometimes visited with an infliction which would have done no discredit to the beak of a bald eagle. His long, deep desk was a perfect curiosity shop of confiscated balls, tops, penknives, marbles, and jewsharps; the accumulation of forty years. I desire, however, to speak of him with gratitude, for he put me on the track of an acquisition which has been extremely useful to me in after life-that of a plain legible hand. I remained at these schools about sixteen months, and had the good fortune, in 1804, to receive the Franklin medal in the English department.

After an interval of about a year, during which I attended a private school kept by Mr. Ezekiel Webster, of New Hampshire, and on occasion of his absence, by his ever memorable brother, Daniel Webster, at that time a student of law in Boston, I went to the Latin school, then slowly emerging from a state of extreme depression. It was kept in School street, where the Horticultural Hall now stands. Those who judge of what the Boston Latin School ought to be, from the spacious and commodious building in Bedford street, can form but little idea of the old school house. It contained but one room, heated in the winter by an iron stove, which sent up a funnel into a curious brick chimney, built down from the roof, in the middle of the room, to within seven or eight feet from the floor, being like Mahomet's coffin, held in the air to the roof by bars of iron. The boys had to take their turns, in winter, in coming early to the school-house, to open it, to make a fire, sometimes of wet logs and a very inadequate supply of other combustibles, to sweep out the room, and, if need be, to shovel a path through the snow to the street. These were not very fascinating duties for an urchin of ten or eleven; but we lived through it, and were perhaps not the worse for having to turn our hands to these little offices.

The standard of scholastic attainment was certainly not higher than that of material comfort in those days. We read pretty much the same books-or of the same class-in Latin and Greek, as are read now; but in a very cursory and superficial manner. There was no attention paid to the philosophy of the languages, to the deduction of words from their radical elements, to the niceties of construction, still less to prosody. I never made an hexameter or pentameter verse, till years afterwards I had a son at school in London, who occasionally required a little aid in that way. The subsidiary and illustrative branches were wholly unknown in the Latin School in 1805. Such a thing as a school library, a book of reference, a critical edition of a classic, a map, a blackboard, an engraving of an ancient building, or a copy of a work of ancient art, such as now adorn the walls of our schools, was as little known as the electric telegraph. If our children, who possess all these appliances and aids to learning, do not greatly excel their parents, they will be much to blame.

At this school in 1806, I had the satisfaction to receive the Franklin medal, which, however, as well as that received at the English school in 1804, during my absence from the country in early life, I was so unfortunate as to lose. I begged my friend, Dr. Sturtleff, a year or more ago, to replace them-these precious trophies of my school-boy days-at my expense, which he has promised to do. He has not yet had time to keep his word; but as, in addition to his other numerous professional and official occupations, he is engaged in editing the records of the Massachusetts and Plymouth Colony, in about twenty-five volumes folio, and is bringing out the work at the rate of five or six volumes a year, I suppose I must