R.'s method and Ascham's.

imitated from the Terence, and differing from the original only in the number or person used.

Raumer gives other particulars, and quotes largely from the almost unreadable account of Kromayer, one of Ratke's followers, in order that we may have, as he says, a notion of the tediousness of the method. No doubt anyone who has followed me hitherto, will consider that this point has been brought out already with sufficient distinctness.

§ 21. When we compare Ratke's method with Ascham's, we find several points of agreement. Ratke would begin the study of a language by taking a model book, and working through it with the pupil a great many times. Ascham did the same. Each lecture according to his plan would. be gone over "a dozen times at the least." Both construed to the pupil instead of requiring him to make out the sense for himself. Both Ratke and Ascham taught grammar not by itself, but in connection with the model book.

But the points of difference are still more striking. In one respect Ratke's plan was weak. It gave the pupils little to do, and made no use of the pen. Ascham's was better in this and also as a training in accuracy. Ascham was, as I have pointed out, a "complete retainer." Ratke was a "rapid impressionist." His system was a good deal like that which had great vogue in the early part of this century as the "Hamiltonian System." From the first the language was to be laid on "very thick," in the belief that "some of it was sure to stick." The impressions would be slight, and there would at first be much confusion between words which had a superficial resemblance, but accuracy it was thought would come in time.

§ 22. The contest between the two schools of thought of which Ascham and Ratke may be taken as representatives

Slow progress in methods.

has continued till now, and within the last few years both parties have made great advances in method. But in nothing does progress seem slower than in education; and the plan of grammar-teaching in vogue fifty years ago was inferior to the methods advocated by the old writers.*

*See Mr. E. E. Bowen's vigorous essay on "Teaching by means of Grammar," in Essays on a Liberal Education, 1867.

I have returned to the subject of language-learning in § 15 of Jacotot in the note. See page 426.

1. ONE of the most hopeful signs of the improvement of education is the rapid advance in the last thirty years of the fame of Comenius, and the growth of a large literature about the man and his ideas. Twenty-three years ago, when I first became interested in him, his name was hardly known beyond Germany. In English there was indeed an excellent life of him prefixed to a translation of his School of Infancy; but this work, by Daniel Benham (London, 1858), had not then, and has not now, anything like the circulation it deserves. A much more successful book has been Professor S. S. Laurie's John Amos Comenius (Cambridge University Press), and this is known to most, and should be to all, English students of education. By the Germans and French Comenius is now recognised as the man who first treated education in a scientific spirit, and who bequeathed the rudiments of a science to later ages. On this account the great library of pedagogy at Leipzig has been named in his honour the "Comenius Stiftung."

§ 2. John Amos Komensky or Comenius, the son of a miller, who belonged to the Moravian Brethren, was born,

Early years. His first book.

at the Moravian village of Niwnic, in 1592. Of his early life we know nothing but what he himself tells us in the following passage :—“Losing both my parents while I was yet a child, I began, through the neglect of my guardians, but at sixteen years of age to taste of the Latin tongue. Yet by the goodness of God, that taste bred such a thirst in me, that I ceased not from that time, by all means and endeavours, to lat our for the repairing of my lost years; and now not only for myself, but for the good of others also. For I could not but pity others also in this respect, especially in my own nation, which is too slothful and careless in matter of learning. Thereupon I was continually full of thoughts for the finding out of some means whereby more might be inflamed with the love of learning, and whereby learning itself might be made more compendious, both in matter of the charge and cost, and of the labour belonging thereto, that so the youth might be brought by a more easy method, unto some notable proficiency in learning."* With these thoughts in his head, he pursued his studies in several German towns, especially at Herborn in Nassau. Here he saw the Report on Ratke's method published in 1612 for the Universities of Jena and Giessen; and we find him shortly afterwards writing his first book, Grammaticæ facilioris Præcepta, which was published at Prag in 1616. On his return to Moravia, he was appointed to the Brethren's school at Prerau, but (to use his own words) "being shortly after at the age of twenty-four called to the service of the Church, because that divine function challenged all my endeavours (divinumque HOC AGE præ

* Preface to the Prodromus.

Troubles. Exile.

His

oculis erat) these scholastic cares were laid aside.* pastoral charge was at Fulneck, the headquarters of the Brethren. As such it soon felt the effects of the Battle of Prag, being in the following year (1621) taken and plundered by the Spaniards. On this occasion Comenius lost his MSS. and almost everything he possessed. The year after his wife died, and then his only child. In 1624 all Protestant ministers were banished, and in 1627 a new decree extended the banishment to Protestants of every description. Comenius bore up against wave after wave of calamity with Christian courage and resignation, and his writings at this period were of great value to his fellowsufferers.

3. For a time he found a hiding-place in the family of a Bohemian nobleman, Baron Sadowsky, at Slaupna, in the Bohemian mountains, and in this retirement, his attention was again directed to the science of teaching. The Baron had engaged Stadius, one of the proscribed, to educate his three sons, and, at Stadius' request, Comenius wrote "some canons of a better method," for his use. We find him, too, endeavouring to enrich the literature of his mother-tongue, making a metrical translation of the Psalms of David, and even writing imitations of Virgil, Ovid, and Cato's Distichs.

In 1627, however, the persecution waxed so hot, that Comenius, with most of the Brethren, had to flee their country, never to return. On crossing the border, Comenius and the exiles who accompanied him knelt down, and

* Preface to Prodromus, first edition, p. 40; second edition (1639), p. 78. The above is Hartlib's translation, see A Reformation of Schools, &c., pp. 46, 47.