pupil. "We do amiss," he says, " to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year. And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind is our time lost partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and universities; partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled by long reading and observing with elegant maxims and copious invention. These are not matters to be wrung from poor striplings, like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit ; besides all the ill habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms, odious to be read, yet not to be avoided without a well-continued and judicious conversing among pure authors, digested, which they scarce taste."

In the following extract Milton arraigns the methods and studies pursued at the universities, and shows the unsatisfactory results for the cause of learning and the duties of active life: "And for the usual method of teaching arts, I deem it to be an old error of universities, not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that, instead of beginning with arts most easy (and those be such as are most obvious to the sense), they present their young, unmatriculated novices, at first coming with the most intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics; so that they having but newly left those grammatic flats and shallows, where they stuck unreasonably long to learn a few words with

lamentable construction, and now on the sudden transported under another climate, to be tossed and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of learning, mocked and deluded all this while with ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge; till poverty or youthful years call them importunely their several ways, and hasten them, with the sway of friends, either to an ambitious and mercenary, or ignorantly zealous divinity: some allured to the trade of law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees; others betake them to state affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true generous breeding, that flattery, and court-shifts, and tyrannous aphorisms, appear to them the highest points of wisdom-instilling their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery, if, as I rather think, it be not feigned; others, lastly, of a more delicious and airy spirit, retire themselves, knowing no better, to the enjoyments of ease and luxury, living out their days in feast and jollity, which indeed is the wisest and safest course of all these, unless they were with more integrity undertaken. And these are the errors, and these are the fruits of mis-spending our prime youth at the schools and universities, as we do, either in learning mere words, or such things chiefly as were better unlearnt."

Having thus pointed out the errors common in the schools, Milton continues in the following beautiful and

oft-quoted passage: "I shall detain you no longer in the demonstration of what we should not do, but straight conduct you to a hill-side, where I will point you out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious, indeed, at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming."

We will not follow Milton through the vast scheme of studies which he proposed-a scheme that included nearly the whole range of literature and science. "His proposals indeed," says Quick, "like everything connected with him, are of heroic mold. The reader, especially if he be a schoolmaster, gasps for breath at the mere enumeration of the subjects to be learned and the books to be read." Milton himself was conscious of the vastness of his plan, and he concludes his "Tractate" to Mr. Hartlib with the remark, "I believe that this is not a bow for every man to shoot in that counts himself a teacher, but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses."

(D.) RATICH.

Ratich was not, like Montaigne, Bacon, and Milton, simply an enlightened critic; he was also a practical educator, and sought to remedy existing evils by the actual introduction of reforms. Though he erred in the application of his principles, and his efforts resulted in failure, yet he has the honor of having made substantial contributions to the permanent stock of pedagogic truth. He laid the foundations well, but failed in rearing the superstructure.

Wolfgang Ratich was born at Wilster, in Holstein, 1571. He received his classical training at the Hamburg Gymnasium, and afterward studied theology and philosophy at the University of Rostock. Compelled to give up his purpose of becoming a preacher on account of some impediment of speech, he devoted himself to the study of Hebrew, Arabic, and mathematics. He spent eight years at Amsterdam, where he elaborated his educational views, and offered his method to Prince Maurice, of Orange. The prince wished to restrict him to the teaching of Latin, but, unwilling to accept this condition, the enthusiastic reformer carried his secret to Basel and Strasburg, as well as to several courts, in search of a patron. In 1612 he addressed a memorial to the Electoral Diet, at Frankfort, in which he promised, with divine help, to show-1. How young and old might acquire, in short time, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and other languages. 2. How a school, not only in High German, but also in other languages, might be established, in which all the arts and sciences might be taught. 3. How in the whole country a uniform language, government, and religion might be easily introduced and peaceably maintained. At the same time he attacked the current education, and insisted that the young should learn to read, write, and speak their mother-tongue correctly, before beginning the study of other languages.

The pretensions of this memorial were by no means modest, but it attracted so much attention that a commission of learned men was appointed to investigate Ratich's claims. His views were reported on favorably. Helvicus, a celebrated German scholar of the time, ex

pressed himself in strong terms. "We are," he says, in his report, "in bondage to Latin. The Greeks and Saracens would never have done so much for posterity if they had spent their youth in acquiring a foreign tongue. We must study our own language, and then the sciences. Ratich has discovered the art of teaching according to nature. By this method languages will be quickly learned, so that we shall have time for science; and science will be learned even better still, as the natural system suits best with science, which is the study of Nature."

Finally, after repeated failures, Ratich succeeded in getting Prince Ludwig, of Anhalt-Köthen, interested in his scheme, and in 1619 received at the hands of the prince every facility for opening a model school; in return for which he made extravagant promises. A printing-house, provided with type in six different languages, was opened for the publication of text-books; and a number of teachers were set apart to receive a special drill in the new methods. It was given out that Hebrew, Greek, and Latin would be learned in less than half the time required in other parts of Germany, and besides with much less trouble.

The inhabitants of Köthen responded readily to the appeal for pupils, and a school was opened with two hundred and thirty-one boys and two hundred and two girls. It was divided into six grades. In the three lowest only the mother-tongue was to be used; in the fourth Latin was taken up, and in the sixth Greek. Besides language, arithmetic, singing, and religion were taught. The teacher of the lowest grade was to be an affable man, who, as stated in the plan, should "form