rector of Trinity Church, and certain public officials of the City of New York. It seems to have been a favorite idea in that colony that various elements and interests should be represented in a board of educational control. This idea is found yoked up with the close corporation in the early organization of King's College. The state did not settle down to simpler forms of organization until the earlier tendency had reached a ridiculous climax in the first University act of 1784. The religious activity of the second quarter of the eighteenth century had given a great impetus to the establishment of colleges in the middle and northern colonies. It was a time when many private academies of the log college type were opened. But on the whole, it was not a time. when education flourished. The colleges were not largely attended. The willingness of the people to listen to moving pulpit orators who had not been regularly trained in the schools, combined with other influences to weaken the demand for an educated ministry. The interests of the Latin grammar schools were bound up with those of the colleges to which they were tributary. They suffered because the colleges suffered. But it was not only the little academies, and the change in religious conditions with which they were associated, that worked disadvantage to the regular colleges and grammar schools. There was observable a great increase of civic and secular spirit which had little regard for the strict ecclesiasticism of the established institutions. In Massachusetts and Connecticut, the more zealous orthodoxy of the time was doubtful concerning the established education, believing it to be tainted with heresy. In Virginia, Presbyterians, Baptists, and secularists alike were against William and Mary College and the church establishment of which it formed a part. The time was not come when a school system, at once civic and non-sectarian, could be seriously considered. So the signs all pointed to a splitting up of educational interests, and the setting up of institutions, compactly organized, each standing by itself, free from entangling alliance with the shifting, crumbling, or hopelessly unchanging institutions of church and state about it. The close corporation met this need, and provided at the same time for effective business management. We have seen that the later colonial colleges tended strongly toward this type of administration; and it became the prevalent type in the rising academies. It appears that a new spirit was coming into American education, which, however gradually, was transforming old institutions and making new ones, and becoming really itself through this process. One of the most notable of these institutions was the academy. The American institution bearing that name did not come into being, however, apart from all European precedent. The study of its origin will take us into one of the most important by-ways in the history of English education, with which the next chapter will have to do. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES CHEEVER'S Accidence was the most famous if not the only text-book for secondary schools published in this country during the colonial period. Interesting notes upon it appear in BARNARD'S Am. Journ. Ed., I., pp. 310-311; and XXVII., pp. 73-74. It was widely used, not only in colonial times, but well down into the nineteenth century. The latest edition was issued in 1838. The Rev. Samuel Bentley, D.D., of Salem, who died in 1819, said of it, "Before Mr. Cheever's Accidence obtained, Mr. John Brinsley's method had obtained, and this was published in 1611,1 three years before Cheever was born. It is in question and answer, and was undoubtedly known to Cheever, who has availed himself of the expression, but has most ingeniously reduced it to the form of his Accidence, 134 small 4to pages to 79 small 12mo, with the addition of an excellent Table of Irregular Verbs from the great work of the days of Roger Ascham." Loc. cit. primer, and after completing it the John Ward's edition of Lilly came The Accidence served as a Latin pupil was put into Lilly's grammar. into use shortly before the Revolution. It was published in London, in 1755, and was in three parts. The first part (71 numbered pages) was 1 I do not think there was any earlier edition than that of 1612. A short introduction of grammar, generally to be used: Compiled and set forth for the bringing up of all those that intend to attain to the knowledge of the Latin tongue. The second part was the real Lilly, all in Latin (pp. 139). The third was Propria quae maribus, quae genus, as in praesenti, syntaxis, qui mihi, construed (80 pages). This last-named division begins with "Dicas you may call, propria proper names, quae which tribuuntur are given maribus to males, mascula masculines; and so on to the end. CATO'S Distichs had been a text-book from the Middle Ages down. Nothing is known of the author. It has been surmised that he lived under the Antonines. FR. ZARNCKE, Der deutsche Cato. ... (Leipzig, 1852, pp. 6+ 198), gives a history of medieval translations of this work. It was edited by Erasmus, with commentaries. In the library of Columbia University there is a copy of the sixth edition of a book edited by N. BAILEY, and bearing this title : Cato's distichs de moribus. With a numerical clavis, and construing and parsing index. . . . To which is added, An English translation of Erasmus's Commentaries on each distich. London, 1771, pp. 132. The following are examples of these distichs: "Si Deus est animus, nobis ut carmina dicunt, Hic tibi praecipue, sit pura mente colendus." Nil temerè uxori de servis crede querenti; "Nè dubites, cum magna petas, impendere parva; This is paraphrased, "One good turn deserves another." "Uxoris linguam, si frugi est, ferre memento: Namque malum est nil velle pati, nec posse tacere." This is accompanied with the ambiguous paraphrase, "A talkative Wife, if honest, is to be borne with.' There is also in the library of Columbia University an extensive treatise (pp. 640) on Cato, including the commentaries of numerous authorities, together with the Greek metaphrase of Maximus Planudes. It was published at Amsterdam in 1759, and bears the title, Historia critica Catoniana EUTROPIUS (fl. 380 A.D.) was the author of a brief history of Rome, in ten books. It is published with an extensive proaemium by H. DROYSEN, in the Monumenta Germaniae historica, I., part 1. This text has long been out of use in the schools of this country; but it has recently been issued by the American Book Company in an edition prepared by DR. J. C. HAZZARD. In the Library of Congress there is a copy of The charter, and statutes, of the College of William and Mary, in Virginia, in Latin and English. Williamsburg, 1736, pp. 122; which I have used in preparing the present chapter. CHAPTER VIII THE ENGLISH ACADEMIES PLATO taught his disciples in the grove of Academus, and his school was called in consequence The Academy. But how did the name come to be applied to humble institutions for secondary education on this Western Continent? The history of the word is of interest chiefly because of the light which it may throw on the history of the institution. The commonly received account is that offered some years ago by Dr. Henry Barnard; and, though open to criticism at several points, it may well serve as our point of departure in this inquiry: "The earliest English or American use of academy, as applied to an institution of instruction for youth, we find in Milton's letter to Samuel Hartlib, in 1643, where the Academy, by which he designated his institute for a complete and generous culture, covers the whole field of the grammar school, the college within the university, and the university. The Non-conformists applied the term to their boarding schools, which in grade of instruction, resemble nearly the English Public School, or the endowed grammar school. In this sense Defoe uses the term in his Essay upon Projects first published in 1699,1 and at the same time employs it, in the general English usage, to designate an association of philologists to improve and perfect the English tongue like the French academy. In the essay cited, Defoe gives the plan of an Academy for Music, with hints for cheap Sunday concerts; an Academy for Military Science 1 The copy of the Essay upon projects, in the Boston Public Library, is dated 1697. |