kindled in their hearts and do them an irreparable injury. A knowledge of the Scriptures is an antidote against the unreasonable inclinations of youth and against the reading of pagan authors, in which heroes, the slaves of every passion, are lauded. The lessons of the Bible are springs that water the soul. As our children are every where surrounded with bad examples, the monastic schools are the best for their education. Bad habits once contracted, they can not be got rid of. This is the reason God conducted Israel into the wilderness, as into a monastery, that the vices of the Egyptians might be unlearned. And yet the Israelites were continually falling into their old habits! Now our chil dren are surrounded by vice in our cities and are unable there to resist bad examples. In the monasteries, they do not see bad examples; they lead there a holy life in peace and tranquillity. Let us take care of the souls of our children, that they may be formed for virtue, and not be degraded by vice."

The same one-sided religious tendency comes out strongly in the long and interesting letter of St. Jerome to Laeta, a friend of his, upon the education of her daughter. He lived in the latter half of the fourth century. A single extract will suffice to indicate the spirit of the whole letter. "Let the companion she chooses," he says, "be not well-dressed or beautiful, or with a voice of liquid harmony; but grave, and pale, and meanly clad, and of solemn countenance. Set over her an aged virgin, of approved faith, and modesty, and conduct, to teach and habituate her, by her own example, to rise up by night for prayer and psalms, to sing her morning hymns, and to take her place in the ranks,

like a Christian warrior, at the third, and sixth, and ninth hours; and, again, to light her lamp and offer up her evening sacrifice. Let the day pass, and the night find her at this employment. Prayer and reading, reading and prayer, must be the order of her life; nor will time travel slowly when it is filled by such engagements."

The ascetic tendency found an ardent representative in St. Augustine, who has been called the Paul of the fifth century. With great vehemence he rejects all heathen science in Christian education. "Those endless and godless fables," he says, "with which the productions of conceited poets swarm by no means accord with our freedom; neither do the bombastic and polished falsehoods of the orator, nor finally the wordy subtilties of the philosopher. God forbid that trifles and foolishness, windy buffoonery, and inflated falsehood should ever be properly called science!" Again he says: "A young man exclaims, in reading a scene of Terence, 'What! is it not permitted us to do what the gods dare to do?' This reasoning is carried on by many young people. We learned beautiful words in our authors, but we learned more easily to commit bad actions. Intoxicated pagan masters made us drink in the cup of error, and beat us when we refused. Was there then no other means to teach us our language and to cultivate our mind?"

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that all the fathers of the Church shared this narrow spirit. There were not wanting those who held broader and juster views, and who advocated an education that comprehended the valuable elements of heathen culture.

For example, Basil the Great, of the fourth century, says: "In the combat which we have to deliver for the Church, we ought to be armed with every resource, and to this end the reading of poets, historians, and orators is very useful. . . . We may compare the lessons of holy Scripture to the fruits of a tree, and the productions of pagan wisdom to the foliage which shelters the fruit and gives grace to the tree. . . . Moses cultivated his intelligence by studying the science of the Egyptians, and Daniel adorned his mind with that of the Chaldeans. . . . But there is a choice to be made among pagan authors. It is necessary to close the ear to bad reading, as Ulysses did to the seductive songs of the sirens. The habit of reading bad actions leads to doing bad acts. It is necessary to reject the shameful stories of the gods, as we are to shun the voluptuous music of the pagans."

(A.) MONASTIC SCHOOLS.

Under the impulse of asceticism, monasteries were rapidly multiplied. By the seventh century they were scattered throughout all the countries that had once composed the Roman Empire. The Benedictine order, founded in the sixth century, was the largest and most influential brotherhood. As long as the monasteries retained their purity they were in many respects sources of blessing to the world. They became asylums for the oppressed; fortresses against violence; missionary stations for the conversion of heathen communities; repositories of learning; homes for the arts and sciences. They preserved and transmitted to later ages much of the learning of antiquity.

As the heathen schools had now disappeared, the monasteries engaged in educational work. The Church regarded education as one of its exclusive functions, and under its direction nearly all instruction had a theological or ecclesiastical aim. Purely secular studies were pursued only in the interests of the Church. The course of instruction in the convent or monastic schools embraced the so-called seven liberal arts, which were divided into two classes: the trivium included Latin grammar, dialectic or logic, and rhetoric; and the quadrivium, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Reading and writing were included in grammar, and arithmetic and music were sometimes substituted for the other studies of the trivium, which was the first and most popular course. Seven years were devoted to the completion of the course in liberal arts. Latin, the language of the Church, was made the basis of education, to the universal neglect of the mother-tongue. The works of the Church fathers were chiefly read, though expurgated copies of the Latin classics were used. Dialectic or logic was based somewhat remotely on the writings of Aristotle. At a later period, logic was rigidly applied to the development of theology, and gave rise to a class of scholars called the school-men. These busied themselves with theological and philosophical subtilties, many of which now appear ridiculous. The works of Quintilian and Cicero, or later works based upon them, were used in rhetoric. Arithmetic was imperfectly taught, importance being attached to the supposed secret properties of numbers. Geometry was taught in an abridged form, while astronomy did not differ materially from astrology. The study of

music consisted chiefly in learning to chant the hymns of the Church.

The relation in which these liberal studies stood to theology is thus indicated by Rhabanus Maurus, an educational writer of the early part of the ninth century: "Grammar teaches us to understand the old poets and historians, and also to speak and write correctly. Without it, one can not understand the figures and unusual modes of expression in the holy Scriptures, and consequently can not grasp the right sense of the divine Word. Even prosody should not be neglected, because so many kinds of versification occur in the Psalms; hence, industrious reading of the old heathen poets and repeated exercise in the art of poetic composition are not to be neglected. But the old poets should be previously and carefully expurgated, that nothing may remain in them that refers to love and love-affairs and the heathen gods. Rhetoric, which teaches the different kinds and principal parts of discourse, together with the rules belonging to them, is important only for such youths as have not more serious studies to pursue, and should be learned only from the holy fathers. Dialectic, on the contrary, is the queen of arts and sciences. In it reason dwells, and is manifested and developed. It is dialectic alone that can give knowledge and wisdom; it alone shows what and whence we are, and teaches us our destiny; through it we learn to know good and evil. And how necessary is it to a clergyman, in order that he may be able to meet and vanquish heretics! Arithmetic is important on account of the secrets contained in its numbers; the Scriptures also encourage its study, since they speak of numbers and