Course of study, cost of tuition + other features of DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL’s California ’seminario’ were to be based on English “public school” system

+++  Since the course of study, cost of tuition, and other features of the California ’seminario’ were to be based on the British “public school” system, as Hartnell himself had experienced it and as Juan describes it in chronological detail, this correspondence provides an illumination introduction to the California venture.  ++  Back in 1825, Mr. Brotherston had estimated the expense of Juan’s first year in England: ++  ”His Board & Education will cost 50 L. p. ‘annum’ – by & by he may want some branches which are not taught at the school, which will cost something more.  At present he is studying English, French & Arithmetic – from which he will go on through a Complete Course of Mathematics.  He also at present studies Geography.  In regard to clothing & pocket money your wishes shall be attended to – about 70 L. will be I think his annual expense.’ ++  Toward the end of the year the boy received a visit from Captain John Lincoln, who reported to Hartnell in California: “He certainly is a prodigy of Nature in acquiring a Language; he speaks the English Language fluently has made great progress in French – he certainly has excelled some that have been in England 3 years from Peru.”  As Lincoln indicates, Juan was not alone in being a Spanish-Catholic from the New World sent to secure an education in the old.  Many young men from South America, including Bolivar and San Martin a generation earlier, attended schools on the continent or in Great Britain; but Juan appears in his day to have been the only from California studying in England.  Naturally he had homesick moods, which lengthened with the years.  ++  His letters are ingenious in their expression of pride at acquiring knowledge.  The earliest, dated May 4, 1826, is written in an English schoolboy’s hand:  ++  ’With regard to my studies, I think I get on pretty well; what I am at present learning is, in the first place the English language; in the next place I am learning Ewing’s Geography, which is I think one of the best in England.’ . . . ++++