lard, afterwards President of Harvard College and the best Greek scholar of his day.*

In 1763, the Dummer School at Byfield in Newbury, the oldest of the New England Academies, was founded, and Samuel Moody was its first master. This event marks a new era in the history of classical elucation in this country. For the first twenty years of its history it was called the "Dummer School," and its teacher was called "Master," a title which, as the accomplished historian of Dummer Academy has well observed, is still thought good enough for the President of a college in Oxford and Cambridge." Dummer School, under the administration of Master Moody, was the best type of an English grammar school that had existed on American soil since the days of Ezekiel Cheever. It was placed by the founder under the control of the town or parish committee, who were to manage its funds and had the power of appointing but not of removing the teacher, whose tenure of office was for life unless the overseers of Harvard College should judge the incumbent “immoral or incompetent."

For nineteen years Master Moody managed the school according to his discretion, the trustees under the will "doing nothing and having nothing to do." During that period he prepared for college some of the most eminent men of their times, among whom were President Webber, Professors Pierson and Tappan of Harvard, and Prof. John Smith of Dartmouth; also Chief-Justices Parsons and Sewell, Rufus King, William Prescott, Nathaniel Gorham, and Samuel Phillips, the founder of the Academy at Andover. The fact that these and other distinguished men of the last century most gratefully honored the Byfield preceptor so long as they lived, proved the personal excellence and power of their instructor.

There is no doubt that the long and successful career of Master Moody at Byfield led to the establishment, near the close of the Revolution, of the Phillips Academies at Andover and Exeter and of Leicester. Each of these schools originated as foundation schools established by eminent civilians, but differing from the Hopkins and the Dummer Schools in granting no special advantage to the towns in which they were located. This feature was one which distinguished the Academy from the ancient grammar school, which generally seems to have been local so far as to favor specially the town or precinct where it was established, though the children of neigboring towns were admitted generally at a higher rate of tui

* See Cleveland's Centennial Address, page 20 † See Cleveland's Address, page 22.

tion. This was the case at Dummer and at the Hopkins Schools, though, as it appears from the decision of Chief-Justice Shaw in the case of Hadley vs. Hopkins Academy already referred to, that the benefactions of Governor Hopkins were not to be restricted to a single locality. He made "New England his heir."

The Phillips foundations were called "free," and in that respect they were like those of the first grammar schools in New England and those of the fatherland. It has been most unwarrantably assumed that a free school was one in which the tuition was gratuitous; but in this sense not even the common English rudimental schools of the first generation were free, for though supported in part by public appropriations, yet the parents of the children provided also a part of the tuition in nearly all the schools of every grade.

Not many years ago the claim was set up, that the tuition at Andover Phillips Academy should be gratuitous, on the ground that the school was declared to be "free" in the constitution of the founder. But it was proved that such could not be the meaning of the term "free," since as early as the first year of the history of the school it appeared that tuition was paid by the pupils in accordance with a rule established by the consent of the founder himself.

But if the Academies of New England were not free in the sense of affording gratuitous privileges, as the meaning of the term now is, when applied in such phrases, as "free churches," "free seats," "free libraries," and "free schools," they were most truly free in the sense of being open to all alike, without respect of race, rank, or sect, or residence, and were therefore as broad in their domain of influence and usefulness as the world itself. They were free to all comers from places near and distant, even from foreign lands. They were free in their allowance of equal privileges to all on the same conditions, while the schools and universities of England were nearly all exclusive, a condition of admission being that the candidate must belong to some particular church, or society, or guild. The earliest educational systems of the Puritans were free from all such conditions and limitations.

But they did not consider that school privileges should be conferred on the young as an entire gratuity, and hence, in the earliest school laws, while it was made the duty of towns under penalties to establish common schools, it was left discretionary with the towns as to the special method of supporting the schools, a part of the expense of tuition always being defrayed by the pupil. The endowments of Colleges and Academies were designed to cheapen the tuition so as to render it possible for all to enter by the payment of

moderate tuition fees, inasmuch as a school of a high grade, when wholly supported by tuition, must be beyond the reach of all classes except those of abundant wealth. Hence it is, that all colleges and schools of a high grade in this and other lands are eleemosynary institutions, the rich and the poor meeting together on the same charitable foundations. The prejudice that prevails in some quarters, on the ground, that endowed schools are designed for the rich, and that institutions, supported by public taxation, are for the special benefit of the poor, is wholly groundless, since the history of the endowed schools of every grade in England and in the United States, shows that the policy of providing for the poor, or those of inade quate means of liberal education, was the end or design of this class of schools; while on the other hand, if the schools depended alone on the public for support, the disbursements would be so meager, that the quality of education in all the higher departments of learning would be so low, as to be worthless to the possessor and useless to the State.

But we are inclined to the opinion, that the original designation of the term free, as applied to the ancient grammar schools of England and this country, did not have respect either to the cost or to any conditional restriction of the privileges of learning to any class or sect, but to the nature and tendencies of learning in its effects on the mind of the scholar and on the state of society. The classical schools in ancient times were called free, for the same reason that the education obtained in them has always been called liberal, from the old Latin designation, libera schola, the word having reference to the results not to the methods of education as tending to liberalize and refining the human mind, and especially as giving enlargement of views and freedom from the dominion of unreal prejudices and the phantoms of superstition.

It is most certain, that this sense of the word free, accorded perfectly with the ultimate aims of the patrons of liberal learning, who, at the close of the American Revolution, were moved to establish that class of middle schools called Academies, under a constitution or system of government, on the same plan as that of colleges and universities, and yet more directly popular in their influence, serving the same uses for the entire population which were furnished by the grammar schools to a few favored localities.

It is worthy of special consideration that the motives of the founders of Phillips Academy at Andover and Exeter, and at Leicester, had respect to the advantage not of any one location, but of the entire public. Indeed the charters of the first Academies

nearly all contained express provisions to prevent localization, by requiring a majority of the trustees to be non-residents of the place where such institutions were located; while in the charter of Phillips Academy at Andover the liberty of removal to any other town in the State was granted whenever, in the judgment of the trustees, the public good might require a change of location. Colonel Crafts of Sturbridge, the founder of Leicester Academy, at one time contemplated the location of the school in his own town; but finally chose Leicester as the seat of the new seminary in view of considerations wholly irrespective of the special advantages which one town rather than another might receive.

It is worthy of notice also, in this connection, that those Academies in New England, which had their origin in the intent to subserve the good of the public at large have always had a continued and unfailing patronage, while those, which were established to serve the special wants of a particular locality, have failed of constant prosperity by reason of their narrow and restrictive policy.

It is a question of some interest, as related to the special design of Academies, why they were called by that somewhat ambitious appellation. It is certain, that its use as applied to a class of strictly middle schools is peculiar to the United States. In Europe the word Academy, has long been applied to associations of learned men, who are proficients not novices in the arts and sciences; and thus used the term approximates to its classic meaning, as the name of a place of resort for philosophers, not tyros in knowledge, in which the gravest themes in morals and politics were the subjects of discussion.

In England, the word Academy has long been applied to schools under the patronage of the Dissenters. Excluded from the universities and the ancient grammar schools, which were all under the control of the established church, the Dissenters, as soon as they were allowed to do so by the famous "Act of Toleration," built meeting-houses and schools for their exclusive use, especially for the training of ministers. These schools were both classical and professional, and in this respect they were quite similar to the colleges of New England, Harvard and Yale, the great design of which was to train up ministers, the only profession deemed of much consequence during the first three or four generations of the colonial period.

How early the word Academy was used by the English Dissenters we can not now determine, but we find the earliest suggestion of this term as an appellation for a classical school "for boys between

the ages of twelve and one-and-twenty," in John Milton's famous "Tractate on Education," addressed to Samuel Hartlib.*

In this plan of an "Academy" Milton says it should be "big enough to lodge one hundred and fifty persons all under the government of one head-master, who shall be thought of desert sufficient and ability either to do all or wisely to direct and oversee it done. This place should be at once both school and university, not needing a remove to any other house of scholarship except it be to some peculiar college of law or physic where they mean to be practitioners."

In the range of studies for Milton's plan of a school the classics were not ignored, though he was in favor of what is sometimes called practical learning. He would have the sciences taught as the subject matter of instruction, but by means of classic authors as far as possible. Indeed, his course of study in the classics is more extensive than has ever prevailed in any American college, and this course he recommended for boys between twelve and one-andtwenty. So, too, his notions about exercise by means of gymnastics and military drills were coincident with what are now deemed novelties, though as old as Greek culture in its best days.

No doubt the views of Milton had an influence with the English Nonconformists when they were allowed to have schools of their own, which, in their several grades, served for them the place of the grammar schools and universities from which, down to our day, they have been utterly excluded.

And some of the Puritan seminaries attained a wide celebrity a century before schools under the same appellation were known in America. There was a noted Academy at Kibworth in Leicestershire, at which Doddridge entered in 1718, and under the tuition of Mr. John Jennings received his classical and theological education.

Another celebrated Academy was at Northampton, over which Doddridge himself long presided. There was an Academy at London under the tutorship of Mr. Thomas Rowe, where Dr. Isaac Watts was educated, whose influence as a theologian with the ministers in New England in the last century was hardly less than it was in England.

We may be sure then that the schools of the English Independents would be regarded with favor in this country, being identical in aim with the leading seminaries of this country, for the colleges, Harvard and Yale, until the beginning of the present century, made it their great aim to provide the churches with what was called a

* Milton's Tracate in Amer. Jour. of Ed., Vol. II 178