Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/697

675 EDUCATION 675 tion of repetition by heart as a means of strengthening the memory, and of Latin verses and themes. He sets before himself the production of the man, a sound mind in a sound body. His knowledge of medicine gives great value to his advice on the earliest education, although he probably exaggerates the benefits of enforced hardships. He recom mends home education without harshness or severity of discipline. Emulation is to be the chief spring of action ; knowledge is far less valuable than a well-trained mind. He prizes that knowledge most which fits a man for the duties of the world, speaking languages, accounts, history, law, logic, rhetoric, natural philosophy. He inculcates the importance of drawing, dancing, riding, fencing, and trades. The part of his advice which made most impression upon his contemporaries was the teaching of reading and arithmetic by well-considered games, the discouragement of an undue compulsion and punishment, and the teaching of language without the drudgery of grammar. In these respects he has undoubtedly anticipated modern discoveries. He is a strong advocate for home education under a private tutor, and his bitterness against public schools is as vehe ment as that of Cowper. Far more important in the literature of this subject than the treatise of Locke is the Tractate of Education by Milton, &quot; the few observations,&quot; as he tells us, &quot; which flowered off, and are, as it were, the buruishings of many studious and contemplative years spent in the search for civil and religious knowledge.&quot; This essay is addressed to Samuel Hartlib, a great friend of Comenius, and probably refers to a project of establishing a university in London. &quot; I will point you out,&quot; Milton says, &quot; the right path of a virtuous and noble education, laborious, indeed, at first ascent, but else so smooth and green and full of goodly prospects and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus is not more charming. This is to be done between twelve and one-and-twenty, in an academy containing about a hundred and thirty scholars, which shall be at once school and university, not needing a remove to any other house of scholarship except it be some peculiar college of law and physics, where they mean to be practitioners.&quot; The important truth enunciated is quite in the spirit of Comenius that the learning of things and words is to go hand in hand. The curriculum is very large. Latin, Greek, arithmetic, geometry, agriculture, geography, physiology, physics, trigonometry, fortification, architecture, engineering, navigation, anatomy, medicine, poetry, Italian, law both Roman and English, Hebrew with Chaldee and Syriac, history, oratory, poetics. But the scholars are not to be book-worms. They are to be trained for war, both on foot and on horseback, to be practised &quot; in all the locks and gripes of wrestling,&quot; they are to &quot; recreate and compose their travailed spirits with the divine harmonies of music heard or learnt.&quot; &quot; In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and a sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth. I should not then be a persuader to them of studying much then, after two or three years that they have well laid their grounds, but to ride out in companies with prudent and staid guides to all the quarters of the land.&quot; The whole treatise is full of wisdom, and deserves to be studied again and again. Visionary, as it may appear to some at first sight, if translated into the language of our own day, it will be found to abound with sound practical advice. &quot; Only,&quot; Milton says in conclusion, &quot; I believe that this is not a bow for every man to shoot who counts himself a teacher, but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses ; yet I am persuaded that it may prove much more easy in the essay than it now seems at a distance, and much more illustrious if God have so decided and this age have spirit and capacity enough to apprehend.&quot; Almost while Milton was writing this treatise, lie might have seen an attempt to realize something of his ideal in Port Royal. What a charm does this name awaken ! Yet Port- how few of us have made a pilgrimaga to that secluded Royal, valley! Here we find, for the first time in the modern world, the highest gifts of the greatest men of a country applied to the business of education. Arnauld, Lancelot, Nicole did not commence by being educational philosophers. They began with a small school, and developed their method as they proceeded. Their success has seldom been surpassed. But a more lasting memorial than their pupils are the books which they sent out, which bear the name of their cloister. The Port Royal Logic, General Grammar, Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish Grammars, the Garden of Greek Roots which taught Greek to Gibbon, the Port Royal Geometry, and their translations of the classics held the first place among school books for more than a century. The success of the Jansenists was too much for the jealousy of the Jesuits. Neither piety, nor wit, nor virtue could save them. A light was quenched which would have given an entirely different direction to the education of France and of Europe. No one can visit without emotion that retired nook which lies hidden among the forests of Versailles, where the old brick dove-cot, the pillars of the church, the trees of the desert alone remain to speak to us of Pascal, Eacine, and the Mere Angelique. The principles of Port Royal found some supporters in a later time, in the better days of French education before monarchism and militarism had crushed the life out of the nation. Rollin is never mentioned without the epithet bon, a testimony to his wisdom, virtue, and simplicity. Fenelon may be reckoned as belonging to the same school, but he was more fitted to mix and grapple with mankind. No history of education would be complete without the Franck name of August Hermann Francke, the founder of the school of Pietists, and of a number of institutions which now form almost a suburb in the town of Halle to which his labours were devoted, The first scenes of his activity were Leipzig and Dresden; but in 1692, at the age of 29, he was made pastor of Glaucha near Halle, and professor in the newly established university. Three years later he commenced his poor school with a capital of seven guelders which he found in the poor box of his house. At his death in 1727 he left behind him the following institutions : a paedagogium, or training college, with 82 scholars and 70 teachers receiving education, and attendants; the Latin school of the orphan asylum, with 3 inspectors, 32 teachers, 490 scholars, and 10 servants; the German town schools, with 4 inspectors, 98 teachers, 8 female teachers, and 1725 boys and girls. The establishment for orphan children contained 100 boys, 34 girls, and 10 attendants. A cheap public dining table was attended by 255 students and 360 poor scholars, and besides this there was an apothecary s and a bookseller s shop. Francke s principles of education were strictly religious. Hebrew was included in his curriculum, but the heathen classicswere treatedwith slight respect. The Homilies of Macarius were read in the place of Thucydides. As might be expected, the rules laid down for discipline and moral training breathed a spirit of deep affection and sympathy. Francke s great merit, however, is to have left us a model of institutions by which children of all ranks may receive an education to fit them for any position in life. The Franckesche Stiftungen are still, next to the university, the centre of the intellectual life of Halle, and the different schools which they contain give instruction to 3500 children. We now come to the book which has had more influence ROUPSCJ than any other on the education of later times. The Entile of Rousseau was published in 1762. It produced an