·

Whether the endowment of what was at that period the Boys' School, was originally intended for boys ~mly, or for children of both sexes, is doubtful, but ~f it ~~s mean~ for both boys and girls it shared 1ts privileges with many of the old foundations. It would be interesting to have statistics of the number and date of these foundations. The endowments were often very small, but few people realise how numerous o~ how ancient they were, and bow nearly they provided for the needs of popular education in former

days. Indeed, the difficulties of modern education have arisen, not so much from the; neglect of our forbears, as from the enormous increase· of population, dating chiefly from the peace which followed the battle of Waterloo, and the tendency to concentration of. that· population into great t~wns, which n:iarked • the nineteenth centnry. The mcrease was mdeed so rapid (the population more than trebled itself· in that hundred years), that it quite outstripped the existing provision for education, before the growing difficulty was fully realised. · . , , , · . ·

A notable instance, one of the few cases· in which the original application of funds to both boys and girls was never forgotten, is· the " Blue Coat School"-,. Christ's Hospital. Even now, though the Girls' Blue Coat School at Hertford is growing year by year in public estimation, there are many people who have· no idea that from its foundation girls and boys shared in the benefits of Christ's Hospital-that it was then, in fact, what it is no longer, a Co-educational or mixed school. ,

This fact was mentioned on the occasion of opening the new buildings at Hertford on July 23, and was alluded to by the .Prince of Wales in his reply to th-e address of welcome presented by the .Lord Mayor as treasurer of the " religious, Royal and ancient founda.~ tion of Christ's Hospital," to His Royal Highness. " We are told," said the Prince, "that it was a girl's name that headed the Hospital's earliest register, but apparently, until the close of the eighteenth century, when the girls were sent from the London school to Hertford, there was no separate school for them."