Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/89

 enlarged. It occupies fifty folio pages, and treats at some length of everything in heaven and earth, as the following extracts indicate:—

Sec. 518 (Geometria). Ex concursu linearum fit angulus qui est vel rectus, quem linea incidens perpendicularis efficit, ut est (in subjecto schemate) angulus ACB; vel acutus, minor recto, ut BCD; vel obtusus, major recto, ut ACD.



Sec. 578 (Chronologia cum Historia). Circa A. ch. 1300, coepit innotescere vis magnetis, qua se obvertit ad polos mundi; quod dedit ansam fabricandi Pyxidem nauticam, cujus ope detectum est alterum hemispherum orbis, totusque mundus navigationibus factus pervius; ut gentes (prius seclusæ et ignoratæ sibi invicem), jam possint colere communicationem utilitatum.

Sec. 717 (Theologia). Theologia tota fundatur super Revelationes Dei; quarum nihil ignorare, universalem sensum tenere catholice et posse vindicare qua inde torquentur hæretice, Theologica est exactio.

The pupil of the Janual class had thus the opportunity of acquiring a very fair knowledge of the world in which he lived. Armed with this, he proceeded to the study of the Atrium, and turned his attention to “style.” Commencing with a Grammatica Elegans, which presupposes a knowledge of the rudiments of grammar and deals with subjects such as the transposition of sentences and prosody, he is then introduced to the Atrium Latinitatis. This is the Janua writ large (it covers eighty folio pages), and is composed with a view to illustrating the ornate capacities of the Latin language. The lexicon, written for use with it, was not printed in Hungary, and was first published by