cerned, was limited to an acquaintance with Webster's Spelling Book, Murray's English Reader, Daboll's Arithmetic as far as the Rule of Three, and the Bible.

Two things occurred about this time, which entirely changed his career in life. The first was the establishment of a Sunday school in the neighborhood. Two pious ladies from Philadelphia, who were spending the summer with their friends in Wilkesbarre, in connexion with a lady of the village, after exploring the wild region, known as "Laurel Run," and finding it sadly destitute of religious privileges, resolved to establish there a Sunday school. As there was no schoolhouse, nor place of worship of any kind in the neighborhood, nor any dwelling-house at all suited to the purpose, it was determined to hold the school in a barn. The whole apparatus of this school consisted of a few boards laid across old barrels and boxes, to serve as benches, a few tracts and books which the ladies brought with them in a satchel, and the blue and red "tickets" then given as premiums for attendance. John was present the first day the school was opened, and is believed not to have been absent a day, so long as it was continued. He was assigned to the care of one of the ladies from Philadelphia, Miss Mary R. Gardiner. Besides possessing a thoroughly religious spirit, Miss Gardiner was a lady of high culture, whose gentleness and refinement of manners, and scrupulous neatness of person, contrasted strangely with the coarse materials with which she was surrounded. To this lady the boy was indebted, not only for the religious impulse, which resulted in his becoming a Christian, but for the coception of a higher style of humanity than any with which he had before come in contact. There was something within him which responded at once to what he saw so beautifully exemplified in this Christian lady, and which he thenceforth longed with an unquenchable desire to have accomplished in himself.

The other occurrence, that affected materially his subsequent career, was a dangerous and protracted illness. He was attacked with a lameness in the left knee, which proved to be the formidable disease known as "white swelling." The disease was cured, but by a painful and tedious process, and with a very narrow escape, on his part, from being lamed for life. He emerged from this illness more delicate and feeble apparently than ever. So incapable was he judged to be, for any employment requiring physical strength, that it was determined by his friends to seek for him, by some means, such additions to his stock of knowledge, that he might be able to gain a livelihood as the teacher of a country school.

Sickness, and the increased physical debility which followed it, and

which threatened to become permanent, thus changed his destination from that of a mechanic, to that of a teacher. The Sunday school in the barn, and the generous impulses there awakened, changed it still further from that of a country schoolmaster, to the position of extended usefulness to which he has since risen.

When between thirteen and fourteen years of age, he took his first lessons in what he considered the advanced sciences of Geography and English Grammai, the very names of which were till then unknown to him. So extraordinary, however, was the progress which he made in these studies, that the attention of some of the good people of Wilkesbarre was attracted towards him, and by degrees he was encouraged to hope that in some way he might obtain a regular college education. At length, in his fifteenth year, he entered the Wilkesbarre Academy and began the study of Latin. Some one gave him a Latin Grammar. Another lent him a Dictionary. He bought a Virgil with money obtained by the sale of straw hats which he had plaited with his own hands. Living in a home where even candles were a luxury, he read the story of Dido and Æneas, in the Virgil thus procured, by the light of pineknots picked up in the woods on his way home from school. The whole of the Æneid was read by him in this manner, he himself while thus studying being obliged to lie at full length on the floor in order to get the proper benefit of the light upon the hearth.

When he first began to attend the academy, he lived at home and walked to school a distance of about two miles. Subsequently an arrangement was made by which he paid for his board in the family of a clergyman in the village, by doing sundry jobs of work mornings and evenings. The amount of work, which this sickly but stouthearted boy undertook, in order to pay for his board while preparing for college, would hardly be believed. The particulars, as communicated to the writer of this article, have satisfied him that they were not much less in amount and laboriousness than the full work of a regular day laborer. Besides this, during the school hours, throughout his whole course in the academy, he paid for his tuition by assisting the master in hearing the lessons of the younger classes.

After a life of three years thus spent, he was found to be not only thoroughly fitted for college, but ruddy and glowing with health, his lameness all gone, and his whole man, physical, intellectual, and moral, invigorated by the stern but wholesome ordeal through which he had passed.

Mr. Hart entered the Sophomore class of Princeton College in the fall of 1827, and graduated in the fall of 1830, with the Valedictory oration and the first honor in the class for general scholarshin.

About the time of completing his college course, Mr. Hart received an invitation to be the Principal of the Natchez Academy, in Mississippi. He entered upon the duties of this position in October, 1830, and remained there one academic year. Having in view, however, the preaching of the Gospel, as his ultimate profession, he returned to Princeton in the fall of 1831, and entered the Theological Seminary of that place. About a year after beginning his theological studies, he received the appointment of tutor in the college. The duties of the tutorship were discharged in connexion with attendance upon the theological classes, for the next two years.

In 1834, he was appointed adjunct Professor of Ancient Languages. A large part of the instruction of the college classes in Greek now devolved upon him, and he gave himself to the task with renewed zeal. His ardor in prosecuting the studies of his department communicated itself to the students, many of whom, besides learning the stated lessons of the day, attended voluntarily at extra hours to the prelections of the professor upon authors not included in the college course. He read in this way, to a select class of students, a large portion of the Attic Orators, and of the Dialogues of Plato. One of the changes in the classical course of the college, which Professor Hart was mainly instrumental in bringing about, was the substitution of entire treatises, such as the "Memorabilia," the "Anabasis," the "Oration on the Crown," &c., in the place of the fragmentary Collectanea formerly in use.

While engaging with so much zeal in the prosecution of the Greek, Mr. Hart gave considerable attention also to Oriental studies, particularly to the Hebrew, and the Arabic, the latter of which he studied privately under the tuition of Professor J. Addison Alexander.

Mr. Hart was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of New Brunswick, in the fall of 1835, and during the ensuing season he preached occasionally in the College Chapel and elsewhere in the neighborhood. It was his intention in due time to be ordained as a minister of the Gospel, and to remain permanently connected with the college. But in the following year, 1836, an event occurred which changed entirely his plans. This was an offer of the proprietorship and control of the Edgehill School in the neighborhood of Princeton. In the management of this institution, which was exclusively a boarding school for boys, Mr. Hart thought he saw a field of special usefulness, and with the advice of some of his friends he embarked in the undertaking. It was obvious to him, on entering upon a work of so engrossing a character, that it would preclude the idea of his entering upon the ministry. He accordingly abandoned the purpose before going to

Edgehill, and subsequently communicated this intention to the Presbytery, and returned to them his license, with a request that it should be formally cancelled, which was done. The Edgehill School, under Mr. Hart's management, became widely known, and was very successful. He continued in the management of it five years.

In September, 1842, he was elected Principal of the Central High School of Philadelphia, in the place of Professor A. D. Bache, the present Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey. The High School had been established in October, 1838, with four Professors, equal and co-ordinate, but without any Principal or official head. In consequence of this radical defect in its organization, the school was practically a failure. After a year and a half of precarious and doubtful existence, the institution was remodelled. Professor Bache became its first Principal, and continued in this office two years and a half, namely, from January, 1840, to July, 1842. Mr. Hart has been Principal since that time, or for sixteen out of the twenty years of its existence. This, then, has been his chief work. In this school alone, he has had the charge of no less than 3792 students, of ages ranging from 12 to 21; and no one who has ever been much in the school, or known anything of Mr. Hart's habits of mind, and the energy with which he pursues any favorite object, can doubt that during these sixteen years of active exertion, in his own chosen field of labor, he has left an impress upon his generation which will not soon pass away.

The

A leading idea with Mr. Hart, in regard to teaching, has ever been the indispensable necessity of the teacher's rousing the pupil himself to decided co-operation and activity, in order to his making acquisitions of permanent value. This idea he developed, soon after his accession to the High School, in a public Lecture to the Controllers and Teachers of the Public Schools, on the subject of "Attention." main point which he makes in this lecture, is thus stated :"The subject of study, in the case of young persons, is often of less importance than the manner of study. I have been led sometimes to doubt the value of many of the inventions for facilitating the acquisition of knowledge by children. That, the acquisition of which costs little labor, will not be likely to make a deep impression, nor to remain long upon the memory. It is by labor that the mind is strengthened and grows. And while care should be taken not to overtask it, by exertions beyond its strength, yet mere occupation of the mind with useful and proper objects, is not the precise aim of education. The educator aims not to make learned boys but able men. To do this he must tax their powers. He must rouse them to manly exertion. He

must lead them to think, to discriminate, to digest what they receive, to work. There must every day be the glow of hard work-not that exhaustion and languor which arise from too protracted confinement to study-which have the same debilitating effect upon the mind that a similar process has upon the body-but vigorous and hardy labor, such as wakens the mind from its lethargy, summons up the resolution and will, and puts the whole internal man into a state of determined and positive activity. The boy, in such a case, feels that he is at work. He feels, too, that he is gaining something more than knowledge. He is gaining power. He is increasing in strength. He grapples successfully to-day, with a difficulty that would have staggered him yesterday. Every hour so spent, is an hour of conquest. There is no mistaking this process-and no matter what the subject of study, the intellectual development which it gives, is worth infinitely more than all that vague floating kind of knowledge, sometimes sought after, which seems to be imbibed from the atmosphere of the school-room, as it certainly evaporates the moment a boy enters the atmosphere of men, and of active life."

Mr. Hart's own teaching has ever been in accordance with these views; and his class-room, whenever he is engaged directly in giving instruction, is a scene of extraordinary activity.

But the chief function of the Principal of such an institution as the High School, is not teaching. His business is rather to guide and direct the energies of others, so as out of different and sometimes discordant materials, to produce harmonious practical results. The best commentary upon Professor Hart's administrative abilities is to be found in the actual workings of the High School during the sixteen years of his presidency. The annual reports of the Controllers and the frequent descriptions of the school by intelligent foreigners, who have visited it, have made its character in this respect a matter of history. It is universally regarded as a model of efficiency.

A very striking testimony to Mr. Hart's ability as an administrator, was given by his associates, a few years after his accession to the principalship. The question of the presidency of the Girard College being then under discussion, one of the directors of that institution judging that the Professors of the High School would have a better opportunity than any persons else for being acquainted with Mr. Hart's executive ability, addressed to them a letter with a view of obtaining from them an expression of their opinion. The director received in reply a joint letter, signed by all the Professors, from which the following extracts are made :

"The intimate relations which have existed between ourselves and