the stage line
between Northampton and Boston suffered so much from their pranks that
he refused to allow them to stop over night, and only consented to
give them dinner upon promise of good behavior.

The school became so popular that the best families in all parts of
the country sent their boys there, but, financially, it was not a
success, and after seven years' trial Bancroft was forced to abandon
it, though his partner struggled on a few years longer. If the
experiment had been entirely successful the cause of education might
have been advanced fifty years ahead of the old method, for both
founders were men devoted to the cause of education and longed to see
newer and broader methods supersede the old ones.

As a boy Bancroft had studied at the Exeter Academy; finishing his
course there he entered Harvard at thirteen, was graduated in his
seventeenth year, and a year later was sent abroad by Harvard to fit
himself for a tutorship in the University. During his four years'
absence he studied modern languages and literatures, Greek philosophy
and antiquities, and some natural history. But he made history the
special object of study, and bent all his energies to acquiring as
wide a knowledge as possible of the sources and materials that make
up the records of modern history. During his vacations he visited the
different countries of Europe, travelling in regular student fashion.
He would rise at dawn, breakfast by candlelight, and then fill the
morning with visits to picture galleries, cathedrals, and all the
wonders of foreign towns; after a light luncheon he would start again
on his sight-seeing, or visit some person of note, meeting during his
travels almost every distinguished man in Europe. At night, if not too
tired, he would study still politics, languages, and history, and when
he returned to America he had made such good use of his time that he
was equipped for almost any position in its intellectual life.

His obligations to Harvard led him to accept a tutorship there, which,
however, proved so distasteful to him that he only held it one year.
It was after this experience that he founded his school at Round Hill.
During the years that he was trying to make the Round Hill school a
model for boys' schools, the idea of his work as the historian of the
United States came to him. Undismayed by the scope of the work, which
he meant should include the history of the United States from the
time of the landing of C