PACHAIYAPPA'S COLLEGE.
The education of girls shared in the development; for in 1842 the first party of Nuns of the Presentation Order was brought out from Ireland, and a convent, with a boarding school and an orphanage,—the 'Georgetown Convent' of to-day—was established in Black Town. The 'Vepery Convent School' and some of the other successful convent schools in Madras are controlled by nuns of the same Order.
Education in India was given further impetus in the time of Lord Dalhousie. During his term of office (1848-1856) the present system of education, under a Director of Public Instruction, was introduced, and Government was empowered to make liberal educational grants, and to establish universities. The despatch in which the educational developments were announced has been called 'the intellectual charter of India.'
DOVETON PROTESTANT COLLEGE
Various institutions in Madras are representative of this later development. A Government 'Normal School'—which has grown into the 'Teachers' College' of to-day—was established in 1856, to increase the number and the efficiency of indigenous teachers; and the Madras University was incorporated in 1857, for the control and the development of higher education. Of large high schools still existing, the Harris High School in Royapettah was founded by the Church Missionary Society in 1856, for the education of Mohammedan boys, and was named after Lord Harris, who was Governor of Madras at the time; and the Hindu High School, in Triplicane, was founded in 1857. Doveton College, Vepery, for Anglo-Indian boys was opened in 1855. It owes its existence to a wealthy Eurasian, Captain John Doveton, who obtained his Captaincy in the service of the Nizam of Hyderabad, and who left a large sum of money to an earlier institution, the Parental Academy, which was afterwards called Doveton College in the deceased officer's honour. Within later years philanthropic and enterprising Indians have done much for education, and numerous schools both for boys and for girls have been established by their efforts.
An educational building of curious interest is the office of the Director of Public Instruction, in Nungumbaukam. It is commonly known as the 'Old College'. In the masonry of a large arch at the entrance, as well as on another arch within, quaint designs have been introduced—mysterious faces, and flags, and strange geometrical figures. The house was the property of a wealthy Armenian merchant named Moorat, who died more than a hundred years ago; and it may be supposed that the quaint designs were after the nature of family memorials. In the early part of last century the Armenian merchant's son sold the building to Government, who used it as a 'College for Junior Civilians.' Hence the designation 'Old College'; but the name does not mean that it was a building in which young civilians were trained, but means that it was a building in which there were 'colleagues' in residence, or, in other words, that, the 'General Table' having been dissolved, the 'College' was a mess-house for junior civilians. Later, its large hall was for many years a recognized assembly-room for amateur concerts, amateur dramatic entertainments, and other occasions of social reunion. The quaint devices on the gates are still preserved, and the name of the old 'College' still survives; but the associations have gone. Not even as a ghost does the long-robed Armenian merchant tread the floors; the junior civilians, with their ancient pranks and their antiquated jests, have departed; in the great hall the lilt of the song and the frenzy of the fiddles for the dance and the amateur mouthings of the drama are heard no more. A multitude of turbanned clerks are pouring forth the blue-black ink from their pens; schoolmasters haunt the portals to press their claims for educational grants for their own particular schools; and the click of a chorus of typewriters is the only music that is borne upon the breeze.