better comprehend the classics. He recommended the addition of geography, arithmetic, and natural science to the school course.

And Melanchthon, with all his enthusiasm for classical learning, thought the humanities insufficient to satisfy all the needs of culture. He advised the incorporation of physics, mathematics, and astronomy into the curriculum. "Although the nature of things cannot be absolutely known, nor the marvellous works of God traced to their original, until, in the future life, we shall listen to the eternal counsel of the Father," he writes, "nevertheless, even amid this our present darkness, every gleam and every hint of harmony of this fair creation forms a step toward the knowledge of God and toward virtue, whereby we ourselves shall also learn to love and maintain order and moderation in all our acts. Since it is evident that men are endowed by their Creator with faculties fitted for the contemplation of nature, they must, of necessity, take delight in investigating the elements, the laws, the qualities, and the forces of the various bodies. by which they are surrounded."

1

As has already been shown, however, the humanists took little interest in the study of subjects not discussed by classical authors. Absorbed in a world of books, as Mr. Quick suggests, they overlooked the world of nature. Galileo had in vain tried to persuade them to look through his telescope, but they held that truth could not be discovered by any such contrivances that it could be arrived at only by the comparison of manuscripts. "No wonder," remarks Mr. Quick,

1 Essays on educational reformers. By Robert Hebert Quick. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1893. pp. 560.

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that they had so little sympathy with children, and did not know how to teach them."

Fortunately for the history of education, there were critics in the sixteenth century who did not conform to the dogma of linguistic discipline, and who called attention to the need of educational reform. Whatever the merits of the classical languages, protested these critics, they must derive their value ultimately from the rank they take as literature. The protest of Rabelais early in the century was not only one of the first but one of the most effective charges against contemporary practices. In his famous satire he intrusted the young giant Gargantua to the care and training of the humanist educator Tubal Holofernes, who spent five years and a quarter in teaching him to say his A B C's backward; thirteen years on Donatus' Latin grammar and the composition of Latin verses and sentences; thirty-four years more in the study of Latin eloquence, after which the schoolmaster dies, when, as Rabelais concluded, Gargantua had grown more ignorant, heavy, and loutish. "In this confused and ribald allegory," says Mr. James P. Munroe,1 “Rabelais led the way out of ancient superstition into modern science. More than this, he taught in it that the study of Nature, observation of her laws, imitation of her methods, must be at the root of every true system of education. He showed that the Nature spirit is the true spirit of good teaching. Ever since his day civilized mankind has been trying to learn this lesson of his and to apply it in the schools. For three centuries

1 The educational ideal: an outline of its growth in modern times. By James Phinny Munroe. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1895. pp. 262.

the leaders in education, under his direct inspiration, have been slowly and painfully transforming the false pedagogy of the cloister into the true pedagogy of out-of-doors. Writers and teachers, schools and universities, have been engaged in a halting and irregular struggle to transfer education from a metaphysical to a physical basis, to lead it away from the habit of deductive speculation into one of inductive research. This transfer Rabelais made boldly and at once. He did not, of course, elaborate the educational ideal of to-day, but he plainly marked out the lines upon which that ideal is framed. He taught truth and simplicity, he ridiculed hypocrisy and formalism, he denounced the worship of words, he demanded the study of things, he showed the beauty of intellectual health, of moral discipline, of real piety. Best of all, he enunciated the supreme principle of Nature, which is ordered freedom."

Montaigne,1 also, in France, was equally severe in his criticisms on the humanists. He denounced in no uncertain terms the methods of introducing Latin to beginners and the harsh and severe discipline so common in the schools of Europe during the sixteenth century. "Education ought to be carried on with a severe sweetness," he wrote, "quite contrary to the practice of our pedants, who, instead of tempting and alluring children to a study of language by apt and gentle ways, do, in truth, present nothing before them but rods and ferules, horror and cruelty. Away with this violence! Away with this compulsion! There is nothing which more completely dulls and degenerates

1 Montaigne's Education of children. Translated by L. E. Rector. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1899. pp. xxiii +191.

the nature of a bright child." Again: "Our schools are houses of correction for imprisoned youths; and children are made incorrigible by punishment. Visit them when the children are getting their lessons, and you will hear nothing but the outcries of boys under execution and the thundering noises of their teachers, drunk with fury. It is a pernicious way to tempt young and timorous souls to love their books while wearing a ferocious countenance and with a rod in hand."

Montaigne was equally convinced of the pedagogic error of the humanists in regarding classical knowledge as synonymous with wisdom. "We may become learned from the learning of others," he said, "but we never become wise except by our own wisdom. We are truly learned from knowing the present, not from knowing the past any more than the future. Yet we toil only to stuff the memory and leave the conscience and understanding void. And like birds abroad to forage for grain, bring it home in their beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young, so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there out of several authors, and hold it at their tongue's end, only to spit it out and distribute it among their pupils."

Roger Ascham,1 in the quaint preface of his Scholemaster, also bears testimony against the harsh discipline of the sixteenth century. During the great plague in London, in 1563, Ascham and some friends were dining at Windsor with Sir William Cecil. While there he learned that many of the students at Eton had run away because of the severe punishments

1 The scholemaster. By Roger Ascham. Edited by Edward Arber. Boston: Willard Small, 1888. pp. 317.

administered at this famous public school. "Whereupon," says Ascham, "Sir William took occasion to wish that some discretion were in many schoolmasters in using correction than commonly there is, who many times punish rather the weakness of nature than the fault of the scholar, whereby many scholars that might else prove well, be driven to hate learning before they know what learning meaneth; and so are made willing to forsake their book, and to be willing to put to any other kind of living." This incident led to the composition of the Scholemaster, which was a guide for "the bringing up of youth," in which gentleness rather than severity is recommended, and "a ready way to the Latin tongue," in which an honest effort is made to simplify language teaching and adapt it to the tastes and interests of young learners.

Richard Mulcaster,1another Englishman and humanist of the sixteenth century, questioned seriously the wisdom of his associates and contemporaries in their exclusion of the mother-tongue from the course of study. In his Elementarie he asked: "Is it not a marvellous bondage to become servants to one tongue, for learning's sake, the most part of our time, with loss of most time, whereas we may have the very same treasure in our own tongue with the gain of most time? our own bearing the joyful title of our liberty and freedom, the Latin tongue remembering us of our thraldom and bondage. I love Rome, but London better; I favor Italy, but England more: I honor the Latin, but I worship the English." Mr. Quick is right in maintaining that "it would have been a vast

1 Positions. By Richard Mulcaster. Edited by Robert Hebert Quick. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1888. pp. 309.