"When any Schollar is able to Read Tully or such like classical Latin Authours ex tempore, and make and speake true Latin in verse and prose suo (ut aiunt) Marte, and decline perfectly the paradigmes of Nounes and verbes in the Greeke toungue, then may hee bee admitted into the College. . . ."

On June 28, 1703, Judge Sewall and his son Joseph drove from Charlestown to Cambridge, where the young scholar was to be examined for admission to the College.

Joseph and other sub-freshmen were examined orally by Tutor Remington and assigned a passage from the Aeneid, on which they had one week to write a theme. A week later, Vice-President Willard found Joseph's paper acceptable and admitted him, saying to the Judge, "Your Son is now one of us, and he is wellcom."

Harvard College in Joseph Sewall's day had changed little since the presidency of Henry Dunster. In 1643, the authors of New England's First Fruits had written: "One of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust."

"The Great End"

Eighteen years after Sewall had entered Harvard, the resident fellows echoed that statement: "Now the great End for which the College was founded, was a Learned, and pious Education of youth, their Instruction in Languages, Arts, and Sciences, and having their minds and manners form'd aright."

While the education of ministers was the College's immediate concern, the advancement and perpetuation of learning remained its ultimate goal. Colonial scholars regarded the English universities as a prototype to be emulated in all respects, and their standards for a liberal education became Harvard's standards for educating New England youth.

Until Eliot became president in 1869, the class, analogous to grades or forms in secondary school, was the unit of instruction. Each class took prescribed courses, and the President and tutors determined the curriculum.

Early Courses

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the first three academic years were devoted to studying Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. In addition, freshmen studied arithmetic; sophomores, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry; juniors, natural science; and seniors, ethics and philosophy. Oratory and some history were taught all classes, and the textbooks were written in either Latin or Greek.

Science then meant Aristotelian science, even though the Copernican system had been adopted by the 1660's. There were no laboratories until the eighteenth century, and the only piece of scientific apparatus the College owned until that time was a telescope presented by Governor Winthrop in 1672.

College rules required that "the Scholars shall never use their Mother-toungue except that in publike Exercises or oratory or such like, they bee called to make them in English." This rule created some communication difficulties, for the students often spoke a doggerel form of pig-Latin that was understandable only to themselves.

In 1680, two Dutch travellers had the misfortune of being exposed to this perversion. Passing near Old Harvard Hall they heard so much noise coming from the second floor that they thought a fight was in progress. Entering the building, they went upstairs, where they found "eight or ten young fellows, sitting around, smoking tobacco" in a smoke-filled room that to them looked more like a tavern than a college chamber.

The visitors attempted to speak to the students in Latin, but were unable to understand a word. They departed, believing Harvard undergraduates were illiterate.

For many years, the only instructor at the small College was the President, who taught all four classes. A few tutors were hired as enrollment increased, and the medieval tradition, that the proper teacher for undergraduates should be a recent graduate, was continued. The tutors not only taught every subject the College offered, but were also responsible for the students' intellectual, moral, and spiritual development.