OUTLINES FROM THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. 755 



veloped, and at the same time something oratorical is read, which has 

 been retranslated into Latin. Saturday evenings and Sundays the 

 shorter letters of Paul are studied. 



"In the fourth class the scholar hears as much as possible, inter- 

 prets, memorizes, and recites, but nothing that goes beyond his power. 

 Select letters and compositions from Horace are read, then everything 

 learned in the preceding classes is repeated. Saturday evenings and 

 Sundays the pupil himself gives simple paraphrased explanations of 

 Paul's letters. In the third class they retain what has been learned 

 and enlarge upon it. The ornaments of rhetoricians, such as tropes 

 and figures, are explained and illustrated. In Greek the better ora- 

 tions of Demosthenes are read, then the first book of the Iliad, fol- 

 lowed by exercises in style. Some parts of the Greek orations are 

 translated into Latin, or the Latin into Greek. The odes of Pindar 

 and Horace are set to ether metre ; many poems are made and many 

 letters written. The comedies of Plautus and Terence are brought 

 out, and the boys compete with the higher classes. In the second 

 class the boys are obliged to interpret Latin and Greek orators liter- 

 ally, so that the teacher simply calls attention to the relation of the 

 oratorical and political usage, and requires the pupils to enter in their 

 day-books all remarkable portions of the author. The same thing is 

 done with the Latin writers, and these are compared with the Greek. 

 Dialectic, the instrument of the truth, is now put into the pupil's 

 hands ; at first only the critical part, later the figurative, then rheto- 

 ric, which must always be at the side of the scholar. The Olynthiac 

 and Philippic orations of Demosthenes are read in their bearing upon 

 rhetoric, and the pupils are allowed to make their own selections. 

 There are daily style exercises, and with them some short declama- 

 tions which are written down by the scholars and then learned ver- 

 batim. On Sunday the Epistle to the Romans is read and learned, 

 and repeated verbatim by all. The first class continues rhetoric and 

 dialectic. The citation of dialectic and rhetorical rules must be 

 proved out of Demosthenes and Cicero. Homer and Virgil are read 

 further, and Thucydides is translated into writing ; no week passes 

 without providing some plays. The Epistles of Paul are explained 

 by the pupils, and selected portions are enlarged upon according to 

 rhetorical rules." 



These schools of Sturm contained no history, no geography, no 

 natural history, no physics, no elementary instruction in the German 

 language. Arithmetic was taught only in the second class ; some few 

 sentences from the first book of Euclid and the elements of astronomy 

 were learned in the first class. The motto was Ciceronian Latin. The 

 problem was to turn a boy into an automatic Latin machine, capable of 

 clicking out Ciceronian sentences. Education approximated ideal per- 

 fection in proportion as it reproduced the Latin speech. Sturm, doing 

 education great service, did it also serious harm. Ciceronian Latin 



