PREFACE. 



More than two hundred years ago a work approximating to the plan of this 

 one was published under the following title — " Contemns* $ Visible World ; 

 or, a Nomenclature and Pictures of all the Chief Things that are in the 

 World, and of Meris Employments therein" The original was written 

 in Latin and High Dutch, and afterwards translated into English-Latin by- 

 Charles Hoole, M.A. From 1658 to 1797, the English copy ran through 

 twelve editions, and the work was translated, with equal success, into every 

 European language, Comenius's volume was, however, merely a picture- 

 vocabulary, designed, by the aid of illustrations, to teach a given language, 

 and particularly the nomenclatures of animals and inanimate objects. The 

 pictures were exceedingly rude, the art of wood-engraving being then 

 in its infancy. Many of the objects embodied in the illustrations were quite 

 indistinct, while some of them were so ludicrously drawn as to amuse or 

 even offend the eye, rather than instruct the mind. Moreover, the sciences 

 were then very imperfect — Astronomy, Chemistry, Physiology, Botany, 

 Zoology, Ethnology, and indeed, every science, was then in an unde- 

 veloped state, but has since approached a definite, and apparently settled 

 system. "The Visible World" of Comenius was, therefore, subject to 

 every conceivable disadvantage : yet it was the most popular book* 

 op its time, and, in an age when learning was confined to the few, was to 

 be found in the hands of thousands to whom education was held by many 

 to be a superfluous thing, but who could not resist the temptation of 

 perusing so interesting a volume. The prefatory matter to the twelfth 

 edition bears ample proof of its great popularity from testimonies of 

 eminent Teachers and Divines, whose opinions unanimously went to this 

 extent : that they found the book imparted not only words, but ideas, and 

 created a healthy thirst for knowledge. 



In course of time, when the dead languages were less taught, the " Yisible 

 World" lost its original utility, and the unsettled state of scientific theories 

 in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, rendered it difficult, if not 

 impossible, to apply its principle to new elements of education. The im- 

 pediment is now removed, great advances have been made in every department 

 of science ; large portions of the globe have been explored ; the animal 



