bytery for their sufficiency, qualifications, or deportment in their office. In a word, all connection between the Church and the Burgh schools was broken by this Act, which forms, consequently, an important era in their history.

As a matter of fact, however, the Town-Council, in the large towns more especially, were the supreme rulers of the schools established by public authority in the burghs. As one means of encouraging them, they strictly interdicted private teachers, and from the earliest times down till the end of the last century, we find them exercising their powers with great rigor and cruelty. In Edinbugh, in 1519, forty years before the Reformation, it was enacted that no indweller within the burgh should have his children taught Latin at any other than the Grammar School, under a penalty of ten shillings Scots. More than a hundred years afterwards, in 1630 and 1660, we find successive rectors attributing their ill success, and the falling off in the number of their scholars, to the toleration of unlicensed teachers, and the following resolution was in consequence passed in 1665:-That no persons, upon any pretence whatever, shall teach grammar within the city or liberties, except those who are authorized by the Town-Council, and that no inhabitants of the city shall send their children to any other than the public schools; offending teachers to be personally imprisoned, and fined, at the discretion of the magistrates, and offending parents to pay quarterly to the master of the High School as much as other scholars of the like quality are usually accustomed to pay. That this Act might find the more ready obedience, it was further ordained,—That the master of the High School, or any of his doctors authorized by him, should have power from the magistrates to command any two or more, if need be, of the town officers, to apprehend and imprison such as, by their contumacy and disobedience, should be found guilty of the breach thereof.

In this attempt to suppress Adventure schools, the Edinburgh magistrates were backed up by the Privy Council in 1680. The latter issued a proclamation in that year, interdicting all private Latin schools in the city or suburbs; and the individuals against whom the proclamation was directed were forced to make the following declaration:-" We, whose names are subscribed, keepers of Latin schools within this city, bind and oblige us to conform to the Court ordinance, that we shall, before the term of Whitsunday next, cease and forbear to keep Latin schools, by teaching children within the city or privileges thereof; and shall not in time coming take upon us, each of us, for our own parts, to teach Latin or keep a public or private school for that effect in any time coming, under such a penalty as the Town-Council shall think fit to impose upon us." It would seem, however, as might naturally be supposed, in a large city like Edinburgh, that these enactments were not absolutely successful, and needed constantly to be repeated, for, in 1724, the question of Adventure schools again came up before the Council, and a series of resolutions was passed upon the subject, to the effect that Private schools,

as then increased in number, under bad mangement, and wanting order and discipline, were not only prejudicial to the public masters and public teaching, but also hurtful to the manners and education of the youth; that none ought to be allowed to teach grammar within the privileges of the city without authority from the Council; and that the five High School teachers, with five private teachers in addition, tried and licensed, were sufficient for the youth of the city.

Nor were the other burghs slow to follow the example set them by the metropolis. In Ayr, on the appointment of a rector to the Grammar School in 1666, all other Latin teachers were interdicted except him and his doctor, and intimation was sent through the town" by tuck of drum," that the youth might be entered in the public school, and a like prohibition was extended to unauthorized teachers of music and English, or, as it is called, Scotch, in 1683. Burntisland, in the seventeenth century, allowed no private schools, except those of women, who were permitted to teach "lasses and young children." Peebles also, in 1658, prohibited women who kept schools from teaching any male child, under a penalty of twenty shillings Scots for each offense. In 1690 there is the following entry in the Town-Council records of Banff:-"The Magistrates and Town-Council, taking into consideration the great decay of the Grammar School, partly occasioned by the inhabitants detaining their children from it, yea, even those that are able and in a condition, without their prejudice, to maintain them thereat, and others putting them out of town to landward schools, ordain therefore that all the inhabitants' children be immediately put thereto, only to such schools as are set up by the Magistrates' authority, strictly prohibiting any person to take upon hand to teach children without the Magistrates' and Council's order, and that such of the inhabitants' children as are come to age, and so not fit for schools, be put to trade, under the pain of banishment." In Dumfries, as late as the year 1767, we find a notice in the Town-Council records, forbidding an unauthorized teacher of writing to exercise his calling, and after he had thus been deprived of his means of living, ordering him "to find sufficient caution that he and his family shall not be a burden on the place, under the penalty of £10 sterling."

In a word, adventure teachers, up to the beginning of the present century, were everywhere discouraged, as poachers on the ground of those licensed by public authority; and both in town and country, by magistrates and presbyteries, they were treated with great indignity, almost in some cases as vagrants, by which term they are actually designated in Church records, at least down to the year 1802.

Internal Economy of the Ancient Burgh Schools..

The earliest directions for the discipline, studies, fees, and other details of internal administration are those of the Aberdeen school in 1553. It

The following Account is taken from Third Report of the Scotland Education Commission, submitted to both Houses of Parliament in 1868, Special Report of Inspector Fearon on the Burgh Schools of Scotland, 1869.

lays down a series of laws from the first hour of meeting in the morning till the hour of dismissal in the evening. Preparatory to the business of the day, each boy as he entered the school was to offer a short prayer, the form of which was prescribed to him. The school work commenced at seven o'clock, and the first duty of the head master on his entrance was to chastise offenders, either by word or by stripes. This was followed by prelection and by lessons that lasted till nine o'clock, when all were directed to hasten to breakfast. Lessons were resumed from ten to twelve, when all were again dismissed. Work began once more at two, and lasted till six, when the boys ended the day with prayer, as they had begun it.

The enactments in the same directory relating to the scholars entered into minute details. Elementary scholars and neophytes were to observe a Pythagorean silence for a whole year. The seniors, if they spoke at all, were to avoid their own language, but were allowed full liberty in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and Gaelic. They were to engage in no play except in the presence of an usher. All games of chance for serious stakes, money, books, or part of a boy's dinner, were strictly forbidden, except in the case of the senior boys, who might play for trifles, such as leather pins or thongs. A catalogue of offenses that subjected the youth to punishment closed this rigorous directory. The disobedient, those who came late to school, those who had not prepared their lessons, those who unnecessarily shifted from form to form, those who ran about the school, the authors of mischief (an alarmingly vague expression), were the main classes of transgressors.

In the Elgin directory of 1649 (issued by the Presbytery, however, and not by the Magistrates), work began at six o'clock in the morning and went on till six in the evening, with two hours' intermission-one for breakfast and one for dinner. Tuesdays and Thursdays were halfholidays, on which the boys had play from two to four; and Saturday's work was light in comparison with that of the other days of the week. Its programme was as follows:-"Disputes begin at seven o'clock, first in the supreme class (the master being auditor), and the disputants standing the one at the one end and the other at the other end of the school (deep silence' meanwhile). Thereafter, a little before eight, the examinators or auditors of the several classes dispute before nine, the master taking account of victors and vanquished, and praising or censuring accordingly. Betwixt ten and twelve all are taken up in writing their author for the next week, and an account is taken before twelve o'clock. At one, afternoon, all meet, and they are dismissed to play at two, afternoon, till five, when they are called, and an account taken of the general censure." The rules for boys were much the same as in Aberdeen. They are not allowed to play except in the presence of an usher or censor, and the offenders liable to punishment were absentees from school, swearers, English speakers, perturbers, vaguers, the idle, late comers;" and a general class of offenses, involving all other breaches of the law,

is grouped under the expression "delinquencies within and insolencies without the school."

Even Sunday itself was not a day of rest to the teacher. In the Elgin directory the arrangements were as follows:-"Upon the Lord's day masters and scholars shall convene in school at eight o'clock in the morning, and after prayer in the English tongue to be had by the master, the several classes shall be exercised, the seniors in the exposition of a sacred lesson which has been taught betwixt one and two o'clock of the preceding Saturday, out of Buchanan's Paraphrases of the Psalms, or Ursine's or Calvin's Catechisms; and the juniors, in getting by heart some select English psalms, or the ordinary allowed Catechism. Thereafter, at the second bell, all shall go in comely order to church, accompanied with masters before and doctors behind, if any be. Again, they are to return to school in the afternoon at the first bell, where they are to be exercised till the second bell in reading their foresaid sacred lesson, and at the second bell to repair to the church orderly, as in the forenoon. After noon they shall return incontinent after the same order, with master and doctors, to school, when, after a short prayer had by the master, expressing thanks to God for the liberty of his own day, and the use of his ordinances, and supplication for his effectual blessing unto them, the master settling himself in desk, and all the scholars in deep silence, he, according to his discretion, shall call up some of every class, and require of them their observations of both the sermons, and enlarge points to them occasionally for their capacities as they have been taught; and after a large hour's space, having ordained them to keep within doors, exercised in the study of their sacred lessons and meditations of what they have been hearing, he shall dismiss them with psalms and prayer."

The directory of Peebles Grammar School in 1655, was almost identical with that of Elgin, both for Sunday and week-days, and will be found in the special report on the school. The regulations of Dunbar in 1679 entered minutely into the question of discipline, and defined the exact temper and method with which punishment should be inflicted. "If children," they say, "may be won by words or threatenings, it is expected that the masters will make use of prudence in their actions, and spare the rod as long as it may consist with the good of the children; but if neither fair words nor threats will gain them, then shall the masters show, both by their words and countenance, an aversation to passion and a dislike to the action, with suitable expressions to that purpose, in which humor they may correct; so that they may be as angry as they will when they intend not to correct, but not to be passionate when they correct, mere necessity for the welfare of the children compelling them to it, but not for every trifle to stupefy them with strokes." The same regulations also limited the ordinary play time to an hour and a half on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the afternoon on Saturday.

Early Morning and Sunday Work.

In Edinburgh the hour of meeting was first changed about 1640 from

six to seven o'clock. In 1696 a further innovation was made in the winter months, when the school did not open till nine o'clock. The afternoon attendance was also gradually curtailed, and the school hours in 1754 were, in winter, from nine till twelve, and again from three till five; and in summer from seven till nine, from ten to one, and from three to five. In 1790 the summer hour of meeting was the same. This is incidentally mentioned by Lord Cockburn in his Memorials of his Time. "They had the barbarity," he says, "to make us be in school during summer at seven in the morning. I once started out of bed, thinking I was too late, and got out of the house unquestioned. On reaching the High School gate, I found it locked, and saw the yards through the bars silent and motionless. I withdrew alarmed, and went near the Tron Church to see the clock. It was only about two or three. Not a creature was on the street, not even watchmen, who were of much later introduction. I came home awed, as if I had seen a dead city, and the impression of that hour has never been effaced."

We find traces of the Sunday work imposed on teachers in Edinburgh in 1597, in the regulations of that year, which prescribe the teaching on Sundays of the Catechism in Latin, and of Buchanan's Psalms, but say nothing of the master's accompanying the boys to church. But in Aberdeen the masters continued to do so down at least till the year 1797. There is a letter of that year from Dr. Adam, Rector of Edinburgh High School, to Mr. Dun, his contemporary in Aberdeen, which shows the difference in practice then between the two schools. "The same reasons," he says, "which induce your patrons to devolve on parents the care of instructing their children in the principles of religion, should have led them to leave your scholars to the charge of their relations likewise on Sunday. It is hard that your attendance in a particular place should always be exacted on that day, and that you should not have it in your power to attend what church and hear what clergyman you think proper. Our masters have no charge of their pupils on Sunday. We do indeed usually prescribe to those boys that are sufficiently advanced a lesson to be learnt on Sunday and said on Monday morning, either in Castalio's Sacred Dialogues or in Buchanan's Psalms, and we also occasionally exercise them on the principles of religion, but we have no absolute regulations requiring it."

Traces of the custom of boys and masters going together to church are to be found in Elgin and Peebles at the end of last century. The master of the Grammar School of the former burgh, in 1793, was threatened with dismissal if he did not desist from preaching on Sundays, and was only continued in office on condition that in place of preaching he should "every Lord's day convene his scholars, instruct them in the principles of religion, and attend divine worship with them in the loft erected for their accommodation." The order to the schoolmaster of Peebles in 1799 was exactly to the same effect. But time and circumstances, which have modified the school hours on week-days and in