To those parents who desire a thorough intellectual discipline for their boys, we wish to mention the school opened this Summer at Newton Centre, near Boston, by Dr. Charles Siedhof, lately from Germany. Dr. Siedhof was, for many years, the Rector of a Gymnasium in Hanover, and took rank among the ablest teachers in a land where instruction is conducted on a more thorough and liberal plan than in any other of Europe. He has left Hanover, voluntarily, because the mean policy of the Government made it impossible for him longer to fulfill to his own satisfaction the duties of his calling. He has opened now a school for the reception of twelve or fourteen pupils only, to whom he will devote the care formerly diffused among a much larger number. He is described to us by an excellent judge as a first-rate scholar and teacher in the Greek and Latin languages and literature, and is no less distinguished in natural history and philosophy. He makes his own instruments for practical study of the latter, and takes pleasure in teaching the pupil to do the same. Our informant adds that the tone of his mind is pure and fine, his standard high, his influence kindly, expansive and strengthening.
Such teachers we profoundly need to form men, who may become, in their turn, the means of liberalizing, refining, and elevating the intellectual life of this country. We profoundly need an infusion of the German patience, the German thoroughness, the German loyalty. We hope that, if Dr. Siedhof be one likely to impart or develop these virtues, he may have pupils from other States besides Massachusetts. His references are to Professors Beck and Felton of Harvard University; President Sears, Newtonn Theological Seminary, and Rev. C. R. Demme, Philadelphia, Pa. We do not speak from personal knowledge of Dr. Siedhof, but from the information we have received, should be eager to test his claims by experiment, in the care of children who seemed to promise rich results from a better culture than is easily found in this raw, half-leavened state of society and education.*
“School at Newton Centre, near Boston, Mass.,” New-York Daily Tribune, 31 July 1846, p. 2.
