Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/83

 what dreary environment of depressed theologians and needy compilers of school-books.

In the following year (1650) he addressed to his flock a curious document entitled The Will of the Dying Mother. The “dying mother,” needless to say, is the Bohemian Church, who exhorts her children and divides among them her spiritual treasures. The title alone speaks of a morbidly sensitive state on the part of the author, and it was well that his activity was soon to find an outlet into a channel healthier than any provided by the somewhat moribund Lissa.

Attracted by the Methodus Novissima, which was printed at Lissa at the same time as a work of his own, Christopher von Bnin, the Palatine of Posen, had already asked Comenius to assist him in founding a three-class Gymnasium at Sirakow. This offer he was unable to accept, since he was already in communication with the son of George Rakoczy, his former well-wisher. Sigismund Rakoczy and his mother, the Countess Susanna, had read the Pansophia, some of which appears to have been published by this time, and invited its author to come to Hungary and open a school on the lines laid down in it. Several circumstances made Comenius anxious to go to Hungary. There he would find a large portion of the Moravian Church, and there lived Nicolas Drabik, in whose revelations of the future he took more interest daily. He accordingly set out for Saros-Patak, where he arrived in May (1650). A short journey to Tokai with his patrons, during which he discussed the matter, gave him time to make up his mind, and he accepted the offer on the following conditions. Count Rakoczy was to provide a well-built school-house with seven class-rooms, adjoining which there was to be boarding accommodation for as many pupils as possible. There were to be some scholarships by means of which poor students, of whom a certain number were to be Bohemians, might receive board and education for a nominal fee; a sufficient number of masters to allow one for each class;