PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
 

BY  REV.  T.  W. CHAMBERS,  D.D.
 

nvHE first edition of this historical memoir was issued
in 1853, and served a very useful purpose. The
present year completing a quarter of a millennium (since
the School was founded), it has been deemed advisable to
commemorate the fact by a new edition, with such cor¬
rections and additions as further investigation has sug¬
gested, and a continuation of the narrative to the close
of the quarter-millennial period.

The School is remarkable for the persistency with
which it has maintained its existence and its character
for two centuries and a half, amid the great and manifold
changes which occurred during that lengthened period.
The Dutch gave place to the English ; the trading estab¬
lishment became a colony ; the colony was transformed
into an independent State ; the small settlement on the
bay grew into a huge metropolis, made cosmopolitan by
the influx of strangers from every part of the world ;
theories and plans of education have succeeded each
other in public favor, until now one uniform system ex¬
tends over the whole State ; yet the unpretending School
first established in Fort Amsterdam by Wouter Van
Twiller, the Director-General, still continues, with the
same aims and the same mode of reaching them as at
the beginning. Men and times have changed ; but the
need and propriety of instruction for the young upon a
Christian basis have undergone no change.