BY W. F. D. BUTLER, B.A., MSC, LL.B. 57 



itself would commence on the lltli May. The actual 

 commencement of the School appears to be somewhat in 

 doubt. Some Launceston papers published in June of 

 that year refer to the intention to open the School on 

 Monday, 15th June, but Bishop Nixon, in a speech deliver- 

 ed in Hobart on that day, refers to the School as being al- 

 ready in operation. At any rate, it commeneccd veiy 

 quietly and unobtnisively, and, unfortunatch-. neither the 

 names of the first pupils nor the names of those present 

 at its commencement have been preserved. At the end 

 of the year, however, there were some 30 boys in attend- 

 ance, and at the first anniversary of Christ's College, on 

 1st October, 1847, it was reported that there were 27 boys 

 at the School. The School met in hired premises at tue 

 start, but on 1st May, 1847, the tender of James Fletcher 

 and George Field was accepted for the erection of the 

 School Buildings, and on the 17th of the same month the 

 foundation stone was laid by Lieutenant-Colonel Bloom- 

 field, in the presence of the W arden and Fellows of 

 Christ's College, so that, again, this School had the dis- 

 tinction of laying the foundation stone of its future home 

 some months prior to the laying of the foundation stone of 

 its sister school. 



In 1851 a new School-room was erected bv subscrip- 

 tions, and from then to the present day the history of 

 the school has been one of steady progress, under a succes- 

 sion of different Headmasters, and both it and its sister 

 School (the Hutchins School) can claim this tribute, re- 

 markable so far as Tasmanian schools are concerneed, that 

 neither of them has ever been shut down for a day since 

 their first opening. At this stage of their history the 

 present paper leaves their career, and for the future the 

 closincr lines of a memory of the Hutchins School by its 

 lirbt boarder, written in 1896, may well be quoted: — "It 

 "may be hoped, while another century is still young, that 

 "the broken coi'd may be renewed, and that Christ's Col- 

 "lege, with her two spinster sisters, may again occupy the 

 "pedestal of the Graces, grey-haired, and truly revered, 

 "still vesturedf with eternal youth, with their early foun- 

 "ders, their wise conductors, their prize traditions still in 

 "memory, we may continually gratefully say — Si monu- 

 "mentum petis, circumspice. " 



The Hifjh Schnnl. 



The beginning of this School has been already re- 

 ferred to in the reply of Sir Eardley "Wilmot offering the 

 present site of the Hutchins School for the site of a Gram- 

 mar School in reply to a petition from Dr. Lillie, Messrs. 



