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 monasteries, and Latin was the language of Christendom. After the Renaissance, Latin was the language of culture and opened the door to a more perfect literature than any that existed in the vernaculars. After the Reformation, though banished from the services of Protestantism, it still remained a most important medium of communication between nation and nation. At the present day great stress is laid on the practical value of modern languages, but in the sixteenth century a man furnished with a good colloquial knowledge of Latin might have travelled over Europe with nearly as great comfort as if he had been thoroughly acquainted with the language of each country through which he passed. To write English fluently and well is now of infinitely more value to a man than to have acquired the same proficiency in Latin; but in the sixteenth century the advantage was greatly on the side of the Latin scholar. By sending his son to learn Latin an uncultured parent immediately raised him into a higher sphere of society and placed in his hands a passport which secured admission where the language of the country invited rebuff.

But the study of Latin in the latter half of the sixteenth century was very different both in manner and method from that of the monkish schools. Up to the time of Comenius, and indeed till very recently, grammar was allowed to usurp far more than its due share of the school programme; but in medieval schools it was the chief subject taught, sometimes indeed the only one. A slight knowledge of arithmetic sufficed to enable the future monk to make the computus or calculation necessary for ascertaining on which days the festivals of the church should fall, and the remainder of his energies he was forced to devote to Priscian or Donatus. The work of the latter, De partibus orationis pars minor had been arranged in 2645 leonine hexameters by Alexander de Villa dei in 1199, and under the name of the Doctrinal was the staple grammar for nearly 300 years. The school-books bought for the Dauphin in 1484 consisted of "Ung A, B, C, Ungs