the true moral discipline for youth consisted. The study of language, which specially belongs to boyhood, is the study of literature in its elements, and trains at every step the powers of perception, discrimination, and judgment, while laying the foundation for higher things.

Do not suppose that I have exhausted Ascham: this is a mere introduction to the study of him. Of his method, generally, we may say that it was a sound and sensible one. If followed, it would certainly give the intellectual and moral discipline at which he aimed, and remove those obstacles to learning which make it hateful to boys. He did not deal with the art of education on psychological principles. In his time there was no psychology. But a keen, vigorous, and sane mind like Ascham's could hit very near the mark without the formal machinery of philosophy :—

"He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly."

(Butler's Hudibras, pt 1, canto 1, l. 149.)

And what came of it all, so far as the practice of schools is concerned? Nothing. And yet that staunch old Tory, Samuel Johnson (and not alone weak-headed "theorists" who have always been suspected of revolutionary proclivities), says that “it contains, perhaps, the best advice that was ever given for the study of languages." And Mr Quick tells us that Professor J. E. B. Mayor declares that "this book sets forth the only sound method of acquiring a dead language." Had Ascham's own college (St John's, Cambridge) founded a lectureship on education, three hundred years ago, restricted to Quintilian and Ascham, the whole course of English education would have been powerfully influenced.

To return to Ascham himself: his characteristics, as revealed in his writings, appeared in his life. He was a pleasantmannered and a brave man, and called forth the affection as

well as esteem of his contemporaries. We find no exaggeration in the epigraphic lines of George Buchanan

"Aschamum extinctum patriæ, Graiæque Camenæ
Et Latiæ, vera cum pietate, dolent ;
Principibus vixit carus, jucundus amicis,

Re modica, in mores dicere fama nequit."

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES.

I. Among the educational treatises of note during this century was that of Hieronymus Wolf, "Docendi discendique ratio," published about 1576.

2. The student of Education would do well to read in connexion with the whole period of the Renaissance Guizot's Lectures on Civilization in Europe, and Hallam's Literary History of the Middle Ages, and to consult Symonds' exhaustive work.

3. The two passages on which Ascham confessedly bases his system of "Double Translation" are Cic. de Orat. I. 34, and Plin. Epistol. VII. 9. In the passage from the De Oratore the words are put into the mouth of M. Licinius Crassus, the most illustrious of Roman orators before the time of Cicero. The latter was not only trained by Crassus when a boy (de Oratore, II. I, 2) but appears to have selected him as the mouthpiece of his own views in the dialogue. The passage referred to is as follows:

Cicero de Orat. I. 34. "But in my daily exercises I used, when a youth, to adopt chiefly that method which I knew that Caius Carbo, my adversary, generally practised; which was, that having selected some nervous piece of poetry, or read over such a portion of a speech as I could retain in my memory, I used to declaim upon what I had been reading in other words, chosen with all the judgment that I possessed. But at length I perceived

that in that method there was this inconvenience, that Ennius, if I exercised myself on his verses, or Gracchus, if I laid one of his orations before me, had forestalled such words as were peculiarly appropriate to the subject, and such as were the most elegant and altogether the best; so that if I used the same words, it profited nothing: if others, it was even prejudicial to me, as I

habituated myself to use such words as were less eligible. Afterwards I thought proper, and continued the practice at a rather more advanced age, to translate the orations of the best Greek orators; by fixing upon which I gained this advantage, that while I rendered into Latin what I had read in Greek, I not only used the best words, and yet such as were of common occurrence, but also formed some words by imitation, which would be new to our countrymen, taking care, however, that they were unobjectionable." Watson's Translation (Bohn's series).

4. The letter of Pliny (VII. 9) referred to in the text is addressed to Fuscus, one of his many literary friends, who had been asking him for advice as to his studies. The whole letter is exceedingly interesting.

5. The most important English writers of the period after Ascham were Mulcaster, d. 1611, who wrote Positions (vide Quick's edition) and The Elementarie; and Brinsley, who wrote on the Grammar School.

6. The most important of the men omitted is probably the German Wimpheling, whose book, Guide for the German Youth, was published in 1497, followed by Die Jugend in 1500. The writings of this distinguished educationalist would, I have no doubt, repay a study which I have not time to give to him. The man who wrote (Janssen's History of the German People at the Close of the Middle Ages, p. 80) “Let cultivation be for the quickening of independent thought" was far removed from the Mediaeval school.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE JESUITS.

Order founded in 1534.

IN some respects the greatest educational movement generated during the second period of the Renaissance was that of Ignatius of Loyola (born 1491, died 1556), the founder of the Jesuit Order. To this I have already adverted; but it merits a fuller notice, because it was a scheme of university as well as of secondary instruction. This order, founded in 1534 by Ignatius of Loyola and five associates, knew what it wanted; the Protestant Humanists did not. As recognized by Papal Bull in 1540, it was primarily a missionary organization. Adapting themselves to the urgent wants of the time, the members devoted themselves to education and to the cultivation of learning. Primary education certainly received its great impulse from the Reformers, dogma and the "godly upbringing" of the young being the governing aim. We cannot say the same of secondary instruction, although there were many excellent secondary schools of a Protestant character. But the higher education generally was left to the Jesuits to undertake.

It was not the Renaissance as a literary and aesthetic, but as a theological movement, which led to the institution of the

Latin formed in the former, of instruction, but now it was Eloquence in the restricted

Jesuit schools. They were bulwarks of the Faith. They adopted as much of Humanism as served their purpose. To say what a Jesuit school was as compared with a cathedral or monastery school is not difficult. as in the latter, the central subject the Latin of classical antiquity. sense of Latin style was the aim. The main purpose of this system apart from its governing religious idea was to give command of Latin as a medium of communication no less than of personal culture. The service of the Church was the end of all learning. Orators and poets were studied with a view to this. A marked advance on the mediaeval studies was thus a conspicuous feature of the school system, and as Lord Bacon says in The Advancement of Learning "partly in themselves, partly by the emulation and provocation of their example, they quickened and strengthened the state of learning." One hundred Colleges and Houses were established within fifteen years of the foundation of the Order. In 1640 they numbered 372. Prior to the French Revolution there were ninety Colleges (secondary schools, and high schools or "Academies ") in France alone. And these secondary schools and universities were far in advance of Protestant and State institutions. If we add the elements of Greek to Latin oratory we say all that there is to be said as to the central subjects of secular instruction. There is no record of any Jesuit school, so far as I know, which approached in its breadth of study or in the organization of school work the Protestant Gymnasium of Sturm at Strassburg, much less the school of Neander or of Trotzendorf-examples however which were not largely followed by Protestants.

How was it then that the Jesuit schools so far excelled the Humanistic secondary schools of the Reformation as wholly to eclipse them and to evoke the approval of Bacon and other Protestant men of eminence? The answer is contained in one word, organization.