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SCIEI^CE. 



[Vol. IX., No 227 



attracting the attention of the parliament ; and 

 they would have given him for his experiments 

 some large college, either in town or country, had 

 not political troubles made it impossible to do so. 

 He was taken up by the Protestant powers of 

 Europe, partly because they represented the 

 greater spirit of progress, and partly because they 

 were opposed to the exaggerated humanism of 

 the Catholics. Had he lived a hundred years 

 earlier, the eifect of his teaching would have 

 been far more powerful. Had Comenius, instead 

 of Melanchthon, been the preceptor of Germany, 

 Catholics and Protestants might have been di- 

 vided in education, as they were in religion, but 

 the world would have been enriched by a training 

 of wider scope and greater possibilities. Thwarted 

 by the political troubles of his time, his teaching 

 never arrived at its full development, and had 

 little effect upon the world until it received a new 

 shape at the hands of Pestalozzi and Froebel. 



The learning of things instead of words found 

 a powerful advocate in England in the person of 

 John Milton. His 'Tractate on education' is 

 one of the most gorgeous dreams of a complete 

 training ever conceived and elaborated by an edu- 

 cational theorist. He admits that it is right to 

 learn the languages of those people who have at 

 any time been most industrious after wisdom, 

 but he asserts that language is only the instru- 

 ment which conveys to us things useful to be 

 known. "Though a linguist," he says, "should 

 pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel 

 cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied 

 the solid things in them as well as the words in 

 lexicons, he were not so much to be esteemed a 

 learned man as any yeoman or tradesiuan, com- 

 petently wise in his mother dialect only." He de- 

 fines a complete and generous education as that 

 which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and 

 magnanimously all the offices, both private and 

 public, of peace and war. The Latin language, 

 taught with the Italian pronunciation, is to lay the 

 foundation of good morality, " infusing into their 

 young breasts such an ingenuous and noble ardor 

 as would not fail to make many of them renowned 

 and matchless men." Varro and Columella are 

 to teach, not only Latin, but agriculture, — how to 

 recover the bad soil and to know the waste that is 

 made of good. Aristotle and Pliny are to give 

 instruction in science. Mathematics, comprising 

 arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and trigonome- 

 try, have a separate course of their own, from 

 which progress is to be made to fortification, archi- 

 tecture, engineering, and navigation. Theoretical 

 studies in these and other similar branches are to 

 be supplemented by practical training given by 

 experts in the several pursuits. Not until this 



broad foundation of theory and practice has been 

 laid are the pupils to read the works of those 

 poets who treat of country lore. The next stage 

 is to lay the foundations of philosophy and ethics^ 

 the knowledge of virtue and the hatred of vice. 

 Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, Plutarch, are to be read, 

 not for their language only, but for the ethical 

 teaching which they contain. After ethics suc- 

 ceeds rhetoric, to form the tongue and the im- 

 agination of the future orator. Italian is used to 

 give a soft and melodious pronunciation ; Greek 

 and Latin tragedies, with the humanists the food 

 of school-boys, are reserved for the completion of 

 the rhetorician's art. To this succeeds the study 

 of politics, learned from the great masters of law 

 from Moses to Justinian, continued down to the' 

 laws of our own constitution. Sundays are now 

 to be spent in the higher branches of theology,, 

 and the scriptures are to be read in their original 

 tongues. Not till now comes the study of history 

 and poetry, mixed with a certain amount of logic ; 

 and then, and not tiU then, are the scholars per- 

 mitted to write for themselves. Original com- 

 position, instead of being, as among the Jesuits, 

 the principal mental discipline even of young 

 children, is to be reserved until the mind has 

 been thoroughly penetrated both with matter and 

 with manner. 



A large portion of the proposed training is 

 devoted to exercise. "In those vernal seasons 

 of the year," says the poet, "when the air 

 is calm and bracing, it were an injury and 

 sullenness against nature not to go out and see 

 her riches and partake in her rejoicing with 

 heaven and earth. At this time the pupils 

 might ride out with prudent and staid guides to 

 all places of strength and commodities of build- 

 ing, and of soil for towns and tillage, harbors and 

 ports for trade. " Milton, in this vision of the future, 

 does not intend to sketch a scheme of popular edu- 

 cation, but one suited for select pupils and select 

 teachers. It is strange that the advice of one who 

 was himself a schoolmaster should have been so 

 much neglected by the brothers of his profession. 

 This may be explained by the fact that Milton, 

 wrote for an age in which Latin was the universal 

 language, the common means of communication 

 between scholars. The troubles of the seventeenth 

 century left little room for the application of his 

 theories ; and, when society had become sufficiently 

 settled to adopt them, Latin had lost its place in 

 the world of learning, and the standard of hu- 

 manism had been raised aloft by the Jesuits. 



The establishment of realism as an integral part 

 of education is due to the French revolution, and 

 it is inseparable from the name of Pestalozzi. 

 There could not be a greater contrast than be- 



