Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/30

 The schools for older boys may be as good as possible, but they can never be thoroughly effective unless the children come to them possessed of an elementary grounding in each subject taught, a grounding that can only be given by the patient mother.

In this stage education cannot be organised in any cut-and-dried fashion. What necessary is a suggestive handbook that shall tell parents what is required of them, and how these requirements can be met. It was to meet this need that the Informatory of the Mother School was composed. For the Mother School class-books were unnecessary, as the instruction given was naturally of an informal character. The children who go to the Vernacular School, however, are old enough to be arranged in definite classes, and to meet their wants Comenius wrote six classbooks, one for each class. These books, like the Informatory of the Mother School, were composed with a view to the reorganisation of Evangelist schools in Bohemia. This occasion did not come, and the books were never published. The Czech language, in which they were written, appealed to a very small audience, while the books dealing with the Latin School were of universal interest. Under pressure of other work, therefore, their author never found time to correct them, and no trace remains but their titles translated into Latin and a short description of each given by Comenius himself. The first, intended for boys in their seventh year, is the Violet-bed of the Christian Youth, containing “the pleasantest flowerets of scholastic instruction.”

The second is the Rose-bed of the Christian Youth, containing “nosegays of the most fragrant flowers of knowledge.”

For the third year of attendance a more ambitious work was provided, to be called The Garden of Letters and of Wisdom. This was to embody a pleasantly-written account of “everything necessary to be known in heaven and earth.”