THE BOSTON LATIN SCHOOL.


The one educational institution in this country which has the honor of
ante-dating Harvard College by a few years, and of thus being the very
oldest in the land, is the Boston Latin School. For two hundred and
fifty years it has been a part, and an important part, of the town and
city of Boston, influencing all its other institutions, social,
literary, moral, political, and religious, and largely giving to the
metropolis, directly or indirectly, its wide-spread fame as the "Athens
of America."

The establishment of this School has its origin in a vote of which the
following is a transcript:

"... 13th of the 2d moneth 1635 ... att a General meeting upon public
notice ... it was generally agreed upon, that our brother Philemon
Pormout shall be intreated to become scholemaster for the teaching and
nourtering of children with us."

At this time, Boston was a village of perhaps, fifteen hundred
inhabitants, and it was a hundred years later before it had reached as
many thousands.

The first school-house was on the north side of School street, close by
the burying-ground which had already received the mortal dust of several
of the early settlers. It was a century before King's Chapel was built,
but at the foot of School street, near the site of the Old South
meeting-house, was Governor Winthrop's imposing mansion; and nearly