The city of Lowell, Mass., which held its first town meeting in 1826, and was not incorporated until 1836, established a high school in 1831, midway between these events, and, to its lasting credit, on a co-educational basis. The first class which it graduated gave to Lowell its first woman principal of a grammar school, and to the country General B. F. Butler. This was one of the earliest high schools, and, so far as the writer can learn, the first that was co-educational. In connection with the first and ephemeral high school for girls, in Boston, we have unusual opportunities in the “Municipal History of Boston,” by Josiah Quincy, to learn the public sentiment of the time among the most intelligent and worthy, and to observe the struggle which it cost the more progressive to persuade those in power that girls had as great need of instruction, and as real claim on the public funds, as their brothers. In 1825 the school committee of Boston asked an appropriation from the city council for a high school for girls. A few years previous the monitorial, or mutual, system of instruction had been tried in a town school. Some claimed that it had been successful; its cost was certainly less than one-third that of the old system. Speaking of the formation of the plan for a high school for girls, Mr. Quincy says: “There being at that time a very general desire in the school committee to test the usefulness of monitorial instruction, it was proposed that the school should be conducted on that system; and in respect of expense the report supposed that one large room would be sufficient, at least for one year.” It was objected to the foundation of the school that the best scholars would be drawn away from the grammar schools, to the loss of their influence and of their services as monitors; in spite of this the city council voted an appropriation of $2000 to carry out the plan. “The anticipations of difficulty were, however, so strong and so plausible, that the project was adopted expressly as an experiment, if favorable, to be continued, if adverse, to be dropped, of course.” Difficulties appeared immediately. “Before the examination of candidates occurred, it becomes apparent that the result of a high school for girls would be very different from that of the high school for boys; and that, if continued upon the scale of time and studies which the original project embraced, the expense would be insupportable, and the effect upon the common schools positively injurious. “Instead of 90 candidates, the highest number that had ever offered in one year for the school for boys, it was ascertained that nearly three hundred would be presented for the high school for girls ... and it was evident that either two high schools for girls must be established the first year, or that more than one-half of the candidates must be rejected.”