The influence of these sages upon the laws of the country was almost rivalled by the efforts of Miss Sarah Pierce, in another department of learning. This lady opened a school for the instruction of females in the year 1792, while the law school was in successful operation, and continued it under her own superintendence for nearly forty years. During this time she educated between fifteen hundred and two thousand young ladies.[3] This school was for a long period the most celebrated in the United States, and brought together a large number of the most gifted and beautiful women of the continent. They were certain to be methodically taught and tenderly cared for, and under her mild rule they could hardly fail to learn whatever was most necessary to fit them for the quiet but elevated spheres which so many of them have since adorned. Miss Pierce lived to the advanced age of 83. She was small in person, of a cheerful, lively temperament, a bright eye, and a face expressive of the most active benevolence. She was in the habit of practicing herself all the theories that she taught to her pupils, and, until physical infirmities confined her to her room, would take her accustomed walk in the face of the roughest March wind that ever blew across our hills. The intelligence of her death cast a shade of sadness, over many a domestic circle, and caused many a silent tear to fall. While these two schools were in full and active life, Litchfield was famed for an intellectual and social position, which is believed to have been at that time unrivalled in any other village or town of equal size in the United States. [_From an Address by the Hon. Samuel Church, Chief Justice of Connecticut, at the Centennial Celebration of Litchfield, Aug. 13, 1851._]