124 



SCH ON SCHOOLS. 



Orange, and afterwards went to France, where he 

 became acquainted with the prince of Conde and 

 marshal Turenne. He was then employed in Por- 

 tugal, and established the independence of that 

 kingdom, obliging the Spaniards to recognise the 

 claims of the house of Braganza. He commanded 

 the French army in Catalonia in 1672, and was 

 afterwards employed in the Netherlands, where he 

 obliged the prince of Orange to raise the siege of 

 -Maestricht. For these services, he was rewarded 

 with the staff of a marshal of France in 1675; but 

 on the revocation of the edict of Nantes, marshal 

 Schomberg, who was a Protestant, quitted the 

 French service, and went to Portugal. Being also 

 driven from that country, on account of his religion, 

 he retired to Holland, and subsequently engaged in 

 the service of the elector of Brandenburg. He 

 went to England in 1688, with William III., and, 

 after the revolution, was created a duke, and ob- 

 tained a grant of one hundred thousand pounds. 

 He was sent to Ireland, in the following year, to 

 oppose the partisans of James II. Being joined 

 by king William, he was present at the battle of 

 the Boyne, in which he lost his life, July 1, 1690, 

 owing, it is said, to an accidental shot from his own 

 troops, as he was passing the river to attack the 

 enemy. 



SCHON (German, for beautiful} ; an adjec- 

 tive which begins innumerable German geographical 

 names. 



SCHONBRUNN. See Vienna. 



SCHONEN, OR SCANIA (Swedish, Shane); a 

 province of Sweden, in the south of Gothland, 

 bounded north by Halland and Smaland, east by 

 Blekingen and the Baltic, south by the Baltic, and 

 west by the Sound, which separates it from Den- 

 mark; 4000 square miles; population, 334,744, 

 differing in dialect and manners from the other 

 Swedes. This is the most level, pleasant and fer- 

 tile part of Sweden, and produces plenty of rye, 

 barley, oats, peas, buckwheat, honey, cumin-seed; 

 likewise pit-coal, chalk, tiles, and pot-ashes. It 

 has several rivers and lakes, all well stored with 

 fish. The principal towns are Malmoe, Lund, 

 Landscron, Helsinborg, and Christianstadt. It is 

 now divided into the governments (lane) of Chris- 

 tianstadt and Malmoehus. Schonen formerly be- 

 longed to Denmark, but was ceded to Sweden with 

 some of the neighbouring districts, by the peace of 

 Roeskild, in 1638. 



SCHOODIC, OR PASSAMAQUODDY. See 

 Croix, St. 



SCHOOLMEN. See Scholastics. 



SCHOOLS. This momentous element of mo- 

 dern society is one of many instances, which show 

 the slow progress of mankind in perfecting the most 

 important parts of the social machine. Schools are 

 of comparatively recent date, and their benefits are 

 mostly confined to Europeans and their descendants. 

 A historical sketch of their progress will be inter- 

 esting, as showing how slowly and laboriously these 

 institutions, which diffuse sound knowledge in a 

 thousand channels, and irrigate, as it were, the 

 whole field of society, have reached their present 

 degree of improvement, which is far from being 

 satisfactory. In antiquity, education and instruc- 

 tion were entirely a matter of domestic concern. 

 In countries where priestly or royal despotism pre- 

 vailed, schools were first established for the sons of 

 the great and for the priests. Moses was educated 

 in a priestly school in Egypt, Cyrus at a seminary 

 connected with the Persian court ; the Indian Bra- 



mins imparted instruction in secret schools; in Pal- 

 estine, those conversant with the Scriptures taught 

 in the schools of the prophets, at later periods in 

 the synagogues, and the schools of the rabbles, 

 where inquiring youths assembled. The advan- 

 tages of these schools were accessible to few; the 

 means of learning were limited to conversation, 

 reading, committing to memory, and hearing the 

 explanation of sacred books. More was done under 

 the Greeks. As early as 500 B. C., boys and girls, 

 in the Greek cities, learned reading, writing and 

 arithmetic in private schools, as the legislators, ex- 

 cept in Sparta, left the education of children en- 

 tirely to the parents; and what Lycurgus did in 

 Sparta was much more intended for the develop- 

 ment of the physical powers than of the intellect- 

 Young persons, who were eager for knowledge, re- 

 sorted to the instructions of philosophers and soph- 

 ists, the finest example of which are the Socratic 

 dialogues. The country people remained in great 

 ignorance. The same was the case with the Ro- 

 mans, who, from 300 B. C., had schools for boys 

 in the cities, and from the age of Caesar, who 

 conferred the rights of citizenship on teachers, pos- 

 sessed the higher institutions of the grammarians. 

 In these, Latin and Greek were taught scientifically, 

 and young men of talent went from the grammar- 

 ians to the rhetoricians, who, like Quinctilian, pre- 

 pared them, by exercises in declamation, for speaking 

 in public. But a regular school system no where 

 existed with the ancient nations. Schools were 

 institutions confined to particular classes, or were 

 the fruit of private enterprise. The emperor Ves- 

 pasian was the first who established public profes- 

 sorships of grammar and rhetoric, with fixed salaries 

 attached to them, for the education of young men 

 for the public service; and, 150 A. D., Antoninus 

 Pius founded imperial schools in the larger cities 

 of the Roman empire, which may be compared to 

 the German gymnasia. Though there was no sys- 

 tematic co-operation among the various professors, 

 the imperial school at Rome, after the organization 

 which it received, in 370, from Valentinian, resem- 

 bled rather the German universities. The most 

 celebrated place for scientific culture was Athens, 

 to which students from all parts of Europe resorted, 

 as late as the ninth century, and often led very dis- 

 sipated lives. In the lower schools of the ancient 

 Romans, the discipline was very severe. The rod 

 was not spared; and Ovid is not the only one who 

 complained of the severity of an Orbilius. Chris- 

 tianity, by degrees, gave a new turn to education. 

 In the East, it gradually came entirely into the 

 hands of the clergy, and under their superinten- 

 dence. Schools were instituted in the cities and 

 villages for the catechumens, and in some capitals, 

 catechetical schools for the education of clergymen, 

 of which that in Alexandria was the most flour- 

 ishing, from the second to the fourth centuries. 

 From the fifth century, however, these higher es- 

 tablishments seem to have been discontinued, and 

 the episcopal or cathedral schools to have taken 

 their place, in which the young men, intended for 

 the clerical profession, learned, besides theology, 

 the seven liberal arts grammar, logic, rhetoric 

 (these three made the trivium), arithmetic, geome- 

 try, astronomy, and music (quadrivium), from the 

 Encyclopaedia of the African Marcianus Capella, a 

 poor compendium, which appeared at Rome in 470, 

 and which remained for upwards of 1000 years the 

 common text-book in the schools of Europe. 



The imperial schools declined, and became ex- 



