Xvi. PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
late number of any educational gazette—it is 250 years 
old: ‘‘ People must be taught to get their knowledge, as 
far as possible, not from books, but from earth and sky, 
from oaks and beeches.” Comenius’ system was magnificent 
—he looked to it to raise the whole nation to a higher plane ; 
morally, mentally and physically. 
Over 200 years ago, Francke, a German, who, like most 
of the world’s great school teachers was a minister of 
religion working for love of the people, established, among 
other schools and institutions, a secondary school. In it 
were taught German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, 
arithmetic, geography, history, music, sketching, painting, 
mathematics, botany, anatomy, and the elements of 
medicine. It had a botanical garden attached, a physical 
laboratory, a chemical laboratory, a dissecting room for 
studying anatomy, a workshop with turning lathes and 
machines for grinding glass. What would not the Trustees 
of some of our so-called Technical Colleges give to put an 
educational feast of that sort before our knowledge-hungry 
youths. And yet the bill of fare is 200 years old. 
The 17th Century saw science fairly established in the 
secondary schools and Universities, and in the beginning 
of the 18th century, the professors mostly ceased to lecture 
in Latin, and substituted the mother tongue. However, 
from our standpoint to-night, the greatest change in the 
18th Century was in the number of elementary schools 
established, and the better acceptance of the principle that 
not only is education in itself a desirable thing, but that 
any nation which desires to hold its own in the struggle 
of life must insist on every citizen receiving a sound primary 
education, with special provision that all those who have 
the ability to benefit themselves and the nation by higher 
education, shall have opportunity given them to receive 
that eductaion. As a result of the great advance made 
in the 18th Century, still greater advances were made in 
the 19th Century, and the necessity of free and compulsory 
education almost universally admitted and put in force. 
One of the most striking advances was made as a result 
of the crushing of Germany by Napoleon. In_ 1807, 
Frederick William III. and his councilors, defeated, ruined 
and crushed, sought a way of recovery. They hit upon a 
