changes in the staff of masters did not lead to alteration in the conduct of the school. Each teacher was bound to carry on the established instruction by the established methods. All his personal peculiarities and opinions were to be as much as possible suppressed. To secure this a rigid system of supervision was adopted, and reports were furnished by each officer to his immediate superior. Over all stood the General of the Order. Next came the Provincial, appointed by the General. Over the school itself was the Rector, who was appointed (for three years) by the General, though he was responsible to the Provincial, and made his reports to him. Next came the Prefect of Studies, appointed, not by the Rector, but by the Provincial. The teachers were carefully watched both by the Rector and the Prefect of Studies, and it was the duty of the latter to visit each teacher in his class at least once a fortnight, to hear him teach. The other authorities, besides the masters of classes, were usually a House Prefect, and Monitors selected from the boys, one in each form.

The school or college was to be built and maintained by gifts and bequests which the Society might receive for this purpose only. Their instruction was always given gratuitously. When sufficient funds were raised to support the officers, teachers, and at least twelve scholars, no effort was to be made to increase them; but, if they fell short of this, donations were to be sought by begging from house to house. Want of money, however, was not a difficulty which the Jesuits often experienced.

The pupils in the Jesuit schools were of two kinds :

1st, those who were training for the Order, and had passed the Noviciate; 2nd, the externs, who were pupils merely. When the building was not filled by the first of these (the Scholastici, or Nostri, as they are called in the Jesuit writings), other pupils were taken in to board, who had to pay simply the cost of their living, and not even this unless they could well afford it. Instruction, as I said, was gratuitous to all. Gratis receive, gratis give,' was the Society's rule; so they would neither make any charge for instruction, nor accept any gift that was burdened with conditions.

Faithful to the tradition of the Catholic Church, the Society did not estimate a man's worth simply according to his birth and outward circumstances. The Constitutions expressly laid down that poverty and mean extraction were never to be any hindrance to a pupil's admission; and Sacchini says: "Do not let any favouring of the nobility interfere with the care of meaner pupils, since the birth of all is equal in Adam, and the inheritance in Christ.'*

The externs who could not be received into the building were boarded in licensed houses, which were always liable to an unexpected visit from the Prefect of Studies.

The age at which pupils were admitted varied from fourteen to twenty-four.

The school was arranged in five classes (since increased to eight), of which the lowest usually had two divisions. Parallel classes were formed wherever the

* Non gratia nobilium officiat culturæ vulgarium: cum sint natales omnium pares in Adam et hæreditates quoque pares in Christo.'

MODE OF TEACHING.

7

number of pupils was too great for five masters. The names given to the several divisions were as follow:

Jesuits and Protestants alike in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries thought of no other instruction than in Latin and Greek, or rather in literature based on those languages. The subject-matter of the teaching in the Jesuit schools was to be 'præter Grammaticam, quod ad Rhetoricam, Poësim et Historiam pertinet.' Reading and writing the mother-tongue might not be taught without special leave from the Provincial. Latin was as much as possible to supersede all other languages, even in speaking; and nothing else might be used by the pupils in the higher forms on any day but a holiday.*

Although many good schoolbooks were written by the Jesuits, a great part of their teaching was given orally. The master was, in fact, a lecturer, who expounded sometimes a piece of a Latin or Greek author, sometimes the rules of grammar. The pupils were required to get up the substance of these lectures, and to learn the grammar-rules and parts of the classical authors by heart. The master for his part had

* Even masters were not to be much addicted to their own language: 'Illud cavendum imprimis juniori magistro ne vernaculis nimium libris indulgeat, præsertim poetis, in quibus maximam temporis ac fortasse morum jacturam faceret.'-Jouvency.

to bestow great pains on the preparation of his lectures.*

Written exercises, translations, &c., were given on every day, except Saturday; and the master had, if possible, to go over each one with its writer and his appointed rival or æmulus.

The method of hearing the rules, &c., committed to memory was this:-Certain boys in each class, who were called Decurions, repeated their tasks to the master, and then in his presence heard the other boys. repeat theirs. The master meanwhile corrected the written exercises.†

One of the leading peculiarities in the Jesuits' system was the pains they took to foster emulation-cotem ingenii puerilis, calcar industriæ.' For this purpose, all the boys in the lower part of the school were arranged in pairs, each pair being rivals (amuli) to one another. Every boy was to be constantly on the watch, to catch his rival tripping, and was immediately to correct him. Besides this individual rivalry, every class was divided into two hostile

*Multum proderit si magister non tumultuario ac subito dicat, sed quæ domi cogitate scripserit.'—Ratio Studd. quoted by Schmid. And Sacchini says: 'Ante omnia, quæ quisque docturus est, egregie calleat. Tum enim bene docet, et facile docet, et libenter docet; bene, quia sine errore; facile, quia sine labore; libenter, quia ex pleno . . . Memoriæ minimum fidat: instauret eam refricetque iterata lectione antequam quicquam doceat, etiamsi idem sæpe docuerit. Occurret non raro quod addat vel commodius proponat.'

In a school (not belonging to the Jesuits) where this plan was adopted, the boys, by an ingenious contrivance, managed to make it work very smoothly. The boy who was hearing' the lesson held the book upside down in such a way that the others read instead of repeating by heart. The masters finally interfered with this arrangement.

camps, called Rome and Carthage, which had frequent pitched battles of questions on set subjects. These were the 'Concertations,' in which the boys sometimes had to put questions to the opposite camp, sometimes to expose erroneous answers when the questions were asked by the master* (see Appendix: Class Matches, p. 297). Emulation, indeed, was encouraged to a point where, as it seems to me, it must have endangered the good feeling of the boys among themselves. Jouvency mentions a practice of appointing mock defenders of any particularly bad exercise, who should make the author of it ridiculous by their excuses; and any boy, whose work was very discreditable, was placed on a form by himself, with a daily punishment, until he could show that some one deserved to change places with him.

In the higher classes a better kind of rivalry was cultivated by means of Academies,' i.e. voluntary associations for study, which met together, under the superintendence of a master, to read themes, translations, &c., and to discuss passages from the classics. The new members were elected by the old, and to be thus elected was a much-coveted distinction. In these Academies the cleverer students got practice for the disputations, which formed an important part of the school work of the higher classes.

There was a vast number of other expedients by

Since the above was written, an account of these concertations has appeared in the Rev. R. G. Kingdon's evidence before the Schools Commission (vol. v., Answers 12,228 ff.). Mr. Kingdon, who is Prefect of Studies at Stonyhurst, mentions that the side which wins in most concertations, gets an extra half-holiday.