Precisely such a school has been maintained here during these centuries. It leaves the higher education to be given where it is best given, by college or university. It does not seek to divert the mind from the essentials to the frills of education. Its aim is to give solid ground on which to build in future years; not to anticipate what can then be better taught under different conditions.

In one thing, the trustees have gone beyond the directions prescribed by Davenport. He was thinking only of the intellectual and moral advancement of the boys who were to come under their charge.

They have always been careful to provide facilities for healthful play. Around the original schoolhouse spread the broad plain of the "marketplace" or Green, their playground for a hundred years, and later the playground of the students at Yale until 1858, when the increasing population of the city made it necessary to stop its use for such a purpose. The brick schoolhouse on Church street occupied, as does the present one on High street, a corner of an ample lot. So in the rear of the Crown street schoolhouse was a spacious playground.

In addition to these opportunities for exercise and sport, since 1896, by the generosity of one of its younger Alumni, the large "Pratt Field," in the suburbs of the city, has become the property of the School, and with its training house gives every facility needed for athletic games.

These three things, then, education for boys only; education in fundamentals only; play going on with work; these have been, and I hope always will be, among the distinctive characteristics of the Hopkins Grammar School.

The will of Governor Hopkins, under which it was set up, was made in London in the distant day when Oliver Cromwell was lord protector of the commonwealth. There has been time since then for the development of school traditions; and we to whom, through a long succession, has come the administration of this trust, are not insensible to what they mean.

The Rev. Nicholas Street, a trustee under the original deed of trust of June, 1660, as well as under the second one of 1668,

served on the board with Governor Jones. Jones served with Joseph Moss; Moss with Isaac Dickerman; Dickerman with Samuel Bishop; Bishop with Dr. Aeneas Monson; Monson with Professor Kingsley; and Kingsley with President Woolsey, who was on the board when I received my appointment to it. In a line of unbroken continuity the seven trustees thus have perpetuated themselves from generation to generation, in the manner prescribed by John Davenport, six lives only intervening between the appointment of Mr. Street in 1660 and my own in 1869.

In 1859, the New Haven High School was organized and six years later, when the late President Daniel C. Gilman was a member of the New Haven Board of Education, he procured the appointment of a committee of that board to consider the possibility of some scheme of union with the Grammar School. A similar committee was appointed by the trustees, but after full consideration the project was deemed impracticable.

In 1887 similar committees were appointed, with a like result.

The trustees have felt, that under the statutes of the foundation and the will in execution of which they were framed, they were not at liberty to surrender their control of the nature and character of the instruction given. Different rules were prescribed to govern the schools at Hartford, Hadley and Cambridge from those provided for us by John Davenport.

It would indeed be a sad day in the history of American education if this ancient School were ever to disappear. It is one of the four oldest institutions of learning in the United States. The Boston Latin School was founded in 1635, Harvard College in 1636, and the Roxbury Latin School in 1645. Next after these, and first of all outside of Massachusetts, comes the Hopkins Grammar School of New Haven.

The half century that has passed since our Bicentennial has been one of advancing prosperity. Our schoolhouse accommodations have been more than doubled; the Pratt Field has been secured; and the classes and the staff of instructors have both been larger than ever before in the history of the School.

It has shown itself able to live and thrive and grow in the face of a city high school free to every inhabitant, and open to those not belonging here, at a charge less than that the trustees are forced to make. And why? I should say mainly on account of these nine things:

1. It is purely a boys' school.

2. It is purely a preparatory school,-preparatory for college or university.

3. It is mainly a preparatory school for Yale College and the Sheffield Scientific School; and it is so near to them as to be permeated by their spirit and almost identified with their existence.

4. It prepares for itself through its junior department. Here boys of ten are taken, and given the right start toward a liberal education, under the Rector's eye.

5. It stands for religion and the worship of God.

One of the rules adopted by the trustees in 1684 was "that, the scholars being called together, the Master shall, every morning, begin his work wth a short Prayer for a blessing on his labours & theire Learning."

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It is believed that this practice has been steadily maintained ever since.

6. It provides for play as well as work.

7. It receives boys from any part of the country, or the world, and can house them in a pleasant dormitory, under a master's care. This frees it from a local or provincial character. A few years ago, a well-known Englishman, who had sent, at large expense, an educational commission of his countrymen to inspect the American system of education, and determined to send his own sons to Yale, put them first, to finish their preparation, at the Hopkins Grammar School. This year's catalogue shows students from Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Vermont, and Central America.

8. Its students come mainly from pleasant homes, and belong to households of cultivated people. Bringing with them similar ideals and tastes, and ways of speech, their school life 93 MSS. School Records, I, 18.