the children something to look at. (3) The school buildings must be light, airy, and cheerful, and well furnished with apparatus, as pictures, maps, models, collections of specimens. (4) The subjects taught must not be too hard for the learner's comprehension, and the more entertaining parts of them must be especially dwelt upon. (5) The method must be natural, and everything that is not essential to the subject or is beyond the pupil must be omitted. Fables and allegories should be introduced, and enigmas given for the pupils to guess. (6) The authorities must appoint public examinations and reward merit.

Nature helps herself in various ways, so the pupils should have every assistance given them. It should especially be made clear what the pupils are to learn, and how they should learn it.

The pupils should be punished for offences against morals only. If they do not learn, the fault is with the teacher.

One of Comenius's most distinctive principles was, that the knowledge of things should be communicated together with the knowledge of words. This, together with his desire of submitting everything to the pupil's senses, would have introduced a great change into the course of instruction, which was then, as it has for the most part continued, purely literary. We should learn, says Comenius, as much as possible, not from books, but from the great book of Nature, from heaven and earth, from oaks and beeches.

When languages are to be learnt, he would have them taught separately. Till the pupil is from eight to ten years old, he should be instructed only in the

COURSE OF INSTRUCTION.

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mother-tongue, and about things. Then other languages can be acquired in about a year each; Latin (which is to be studied more thoroughly) in about two years. Every language must be learnt by use rather than by rules; i.e. it must be learnt by hearing, reading, and re-reading, transcribing, attempting imitations in writing, and verbally, and by using the language in conversation. Rules assist and confirm practice, but they must come after, not before it. The first exercises in a language should take for their subject something of which the sense is already known, so that the mind may be fixed on the words and their connections.* The Catechism and Bible History may be used for this purpose.

Considering the classical authors not suited to boys' understanding, and not fit for the education of Christians, Comenius proposed writing a set of Latin manuals for the different stages between childhood and manhood: these were to be called, Vestibulum,' 'Janua,' Palatium,' Thesaurus.' The Vestibulum' and Janua' were really carried out.

In Comenius's scheme there were to be four kinds of schools for a perfect educational course:-1st, The mother's breast for infancy; 2nd, the public vernacular school for children, to which all should be sent from six years old till twelve; 3rd, the Latin school or Gymnasium; 4th, residence at a University and travelling, to complete the course.

As the Ludus literarius seu schola vernacula was a very distinctive feature in Comenius's plan, it may be worth while to give his programme of studies. In this

Comenius here follows Ratich, who, as I have mentioned above (p. 38,) required beginners to study the translation before the original.

school the children should learn-1st, to read and write the mother-tongue well, both with writing and printing letters; 2nd, to compose grammatically; 3rd, to cipher; 4th, to measure and weigh; 5th, to sing, at first popular airs, then from music; 6th, to say by heart sacred psalms and hymns; 7th, Catechism, Bible History, and texts; 8th, moral rules, with examples; 9th, economy and politics, as far as they could be understood; 10th, general history of the world; 11th, figure of the earth and motion of stars, &c., physics and geography, especially of native land; 12th, general knowledge of arts and handicrafts.

Each school was to be divided into six classes, corresponding to the six years the pupil should spend in it. The hours of work were to be, in school, two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon, with nearly the same amount of private study. In the morning the mind and memory were to be exercised, in the afternoon the hands and voice. Each class was to have its proper lesson-book written expressly for it, so as to contain everything that class had to learn. When a lesson was to be got by heart from the book, the teacher was first to read it to the class, explain it, and re-read it; the boys then to read it aloud by turns till one of them offered to repeat it without book; the others were to do the same as soon as they were able, till all had repeated it. This lesson was then to be worked over again as a writing lesson, &c. In the higher forms of the vernacular school a modern language was to be taught and duly practised.

From this specimen of the Didactica Magna' the

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THE JANUA LINGUARUM.'

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reader will see the kind of reforms at which Comenius aimed. Before his time the Jesuits alone had had a complete educational course planned out, and had pursued a uniform method in carrying this plan through. They too, already were distinguished for their endeavours to make learning pleasant to their pupils, to lead, not drive them. But Comenius, advancing so far with the Jesuits, entirely differed from them as to the subjects to be taught. The Jesuits' was as purely a literary training as that in our public schools. Comenius was among the first who laid stress on the teaching about things, and called in the senses to do their part in the work of early education. Thus he was the forerunner of Pestalozzi, and of the champions of science as Tyndall and H. Spencer among ourselves.

It was not his principles, however, that first attracted the notice of Comenius's contemporaries, but his book, 'Janua Linguarum Reserata,' in which, with very imperfect success, he endeavoured to carry out those principles.

For the idea of the work Comenius was beholden to a Jesuit, as he candidly confesses. It seems that one Batty, a Jesuit of Irish birth, engaged in the Jesuit college of Salamanca, had endeavoured to construct a 'Noah's Ark for words;' i.e. a work treating shortly of all kinds of subjects, in such a way as to introduce in a natural connection every word in the Latin language.* The idea,' says Comenius,' was better than the execution. Nevertheless, inasmuch

*This book attracted some notice in this country. An edition, with English instead of Spanish, was published in London about 1515.

as they (the Jesuits) were the prime inventors, we thankfully acknowledge it, nor will we upbraid them with those errors they have committed."* The plan commended itself to Comenius on various grounds. First, he had a notion of giving an outline of all knowledge before anything was taught in detail. Next, he could by such a book connect the teaching about simple things with instruction in the Latin words which applied to them. And thirdly, he hoped by this means to give such a complete Latin vocabulary as to render the use of Latin easy for all requirements of modern society. He accordingly wrote a short account of things in general, which he put in the form of a dialogue, and this he published in Latin and German at Leszno about 1531. The success of this work, as we have already seen, was prodigious. No doubt the spirit which animated Bacon was largely diffused among educated men in all countries, and they hailed the appearance of a book which called the youth from the study of old philosophical ideas to observe the facts around them.

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The countrymen of Bacon were not backward in adopting the new work, as the following, from the title-page of a volume in the British Museum, will show: The Gate of Tongues Unlocked and Opened; or else, a Seminary or Seed-plot of all Tongues and Sciences. That is, a short way of teaching and thoroughly learning, within a yeare and a half at the furthest, the Latine, English, French and any other tongue, with the ground and foundation of arts and sciences, comprised under a hundred

*Preface to Anchoran's trans. of Janua.