She was soon followed by a partnership comprising Mrs. Williams and Miss Carey, who guaranteed "French and English in all its branches, including writing and arithmetic." In 1842 Mrs. Large advertised the opening of a Ladies' Boarding School, in "Great Bourke Street, opposite Batman's Hill," a rather wide indication. She offered "the most suitable accommodation for genteel boarders."
Towards the end of the year 1841, Mr. William Brickwood, of the University of Oxford, was prepared to receive a select number of young gentlemen boarders at St. Ninian's, Brighton, for £50 per annum if aged under 12, and £60 for older; but books and washing were to be accounted "extras."
The half-acre allotment whereon the Argus office now flourishes was purchased by the late Mr. Thomas Napier for £129 4s., and on a portion of it he had erected a tolerably capacious building for the time, which was known as Napier's Rooms. Amongst other purposes to which the tenement was turned was that of a school, and a private institution of this sort was opened there in 1842 by Mr. J. H. Craig, who died at Warrnambool in 1884. Craig was a man of considerable ability, but his penmanship was his specialty. A Mr. W. Lingham was Craig's assistant, and the thing not paying in such an out-of-the-way locality, Craig, the following year, removed to more central premises at the Western side of Queen Street, between Little Bourke and Lonsdale Streets. In 1844 he joined Brickwood's Educational Establishment (before noticed), at the Napier Rooms, as writing master, and also officiated clerically for Mr. David Lennox, the Superintendent of Bridges, under whose surveillance Prince's Bridge was erected. Craig was affectionately remembered by his pupils in after years, and at his death more than one publicly testified to his goodness and worth.
Drawing as an educational accomplishment put in an appearance in 1840, and in January '41 a Mr. G. H. Haydon, teacher of drawing, through advertisement, "begs to inform the inhabitants of Melbourne and its vicinity that he has removed his residence to Lonsdale Street, where he continues to give instruction in the art of drawing. He flatters himself that the manner in which his drawings are executed will secure him the patronage of a discerning public."
A scholastic acquisition was found in 1844, when Mr. and Mrs. Clarke opened at Yarra House (now Port Phillip Club Hotel) an establishment for young ladies, where the treatment was to be "parental and liberal, the management firm and kind, and the moral and physical training sedulously regarded." Singing was to form an essential part of the programme, and the Hullah system was to be introduced.
In the fall of the same year a Mr. J. R. M'Laughlin conducted what he denominated "The Melbourne Analytic Seminary for General Education," in a tenement off the south-east corner of Swanston and Little Collins Streets. A dancing class was attached, under the instruction of Mr. Joseph Harper, a pronounced Professor of Terpsichoreanism, and in February, 1845, the "Seminary" had so far progressed that an elocution master was advertised for. Mr. M'Laughlin himself was an elocutionist of no mean account. None of your "elegant extracts" or "literary gems" for him; for he could supply his own prose and verse, and some of the lucubrations so turned out were certainly above mediocrity. Occasionally his versification was very readable, and effusions from his muse are to be found in some of the Melbourne newspapers. Two of his declaiming "show" pupils, well primed and got up for state occasions, were Master P. A. C. O'Farrell and his brother initialled as D. Q. C. They were both well-educated, well-behaved youths, of much promise, who started well in life, but misapplied opportunities such as few other of the earlier young colonists had. M'Laughlin himself would have done remarkably well but for the rock upon which others of his contemporaries had foundered. He, like them, was too fond of the tavern, and through it he came to grief. More the pity, for he was endowed with rare mental gifts, a good heart, and free hand-much too free-in ministering to propensities which he had neither the inclination nor the courage to resist.
One of the best remembered of the "old masters" was Mr. G. W. Groves, who succeeded Mr. Craig in the Northern Queen Street School. He had been a sea captain, and his Geographical Essays were extremely interesting from the experience brought to bear upon the elucidation, seasoned with personal recollections of various countries mentally revisited. Groves was also useful as a
