The Romantic era at the turn of the 19th century was for Scotland a golden age of literature, winning the Royal High School an international reputation and an influx of foreign students, among them French princes. The historian William Ross notes: "Walter Scott stood head and shoulders above his literary contemporaries; the rector, Alexander Adam, held a similar position in his own profession." By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, an old scholar remembered, 'there were boys from Russia, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Barbadoes, St. Vincent, Demerara, the East Indies, besides England and Ireland.' The Royal High School was used as a model for the first public high school in the United States, the English High School of Boston, in 1821.