THE

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6

a favourite with young and old, and maintained its ground in many a school for more than a century. The Orbis' was in substance the same as the 'Janua' though abbreviated, but it had this distinctive feature, that each subject was illustrated by a small engraving, in which everything named in the letter-press below was marked with a number, and its name was found connected with the same number in the text. I am sorry I cannot give a specimen of this celebrated book with its quaint pictures. The artist, of course, was wanting in the technical skill which is now commonly displayed even in very cheap publications, but this renders his delineations none the less entertaining. As a picture of the life and manners of the seventeenth century, the work has great historical interest, which will, I hope, secure for it another English edition; especially as the last (that of 1777, reprinted in America in 1812), which is now occasionally to be met with, is far inferior to those of an earlier date.

In the beginning of the tract to Hartlib, Milton would seem to deny that he had learned anything from Comenius. Whether this is his meaning or not, he gives expression in the tract to the principle of which Comenius was the great exponent. Because one's understanding cannot in this body found itself but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching.' This conviction, which bore fruit in the Baconian philosophy, was systematically brought to bear by Comenius on the instruction of youth.

IV.

LOCKE.

AMONG the writers on education and inventors of new methods, there are only two Englishmen who have a European celebrity-Locke and Hamilton. The latter of these did, in fact, little more than carry out a suggestion of the former, so that almost all the influence which England has had on the theory of education must be attributed to Locke alone. Locke's authority in this subject has indeed been due chiefly to his fame as a philosopher. His 'Thoughts on Education,' had they proceeded from an unknown author, would probably have never gained him a reputation even in his native country; and yet, when we read them as the work of the great philosopher, we feel that they are not unworthy of him. He was no enthusiast, conscious of a mission to renovate the human race by some grand educational discovery, but as a man of calm good sense, who found himself encharged with the bringing up of a young nobleman, he examined the ordinary education of the day, and when it proved unsatisfactory, he set about such alterations as seemed expedient. His thoughts were written for the advice of a friend, and, as we may infer from the title, are not intended as a complete treatise. The book, however, has placed its author in the first rank of those

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innovators whose innovations, after a struggle of two hundred years, have not been adopted, and yet seem now more than ever likely to make their way.

Locke's thoughts were concerned exclusively with the training of a young gentleman, at a time when gentlemen were a caste having little in common with 'the abhorred rascality.' The education of those of inferior station might be of interest and importance to individuals, but the nation was chiefly concerned with the bringing up of its gentlemen. That most to be taken care of,' he writes, "is the gentleman's calling; for if those of that rank are by their education once set right, they will quickly bring all the rest into order.'

Locke would have the education of a gentleman entrusted to a tutor. His own experience had made him no friend to grammar-schools, and while he admits the inconveniences of home education, he makes light of them in comparison with the dangers of a system in which the influence of schoolmates is greater than that of schoolmasters. Locke's argument is this: It is the business of the master to train the pupils in virtue and good manners, much more than to communicate learning. This function, however, must of necessity be neglected in schools. 'Not that I blame the schoolmaster in this, or think it to be laid to his charge. The difference is great between two or three pupils in the same house and three or fourscore boys lodged up and down; for let the master's industry and skill be never so great, it is impossible that he should have fifty or a hundred scholars under his eye any longer than they are in the school

together; nor can it be expected that he should instruct them successfully in anything but their books; the forming of their minds and manners requiring a constant attention and particular application to every single boy, which is impossible in a numerous flock, and would be wholly in vain (could he have time to study and correct everyone's particular defects and wrong inclinations), when the lad was to be left to himself, or the prevailing infection of his fellows the greatest part of the four-and-twenty hours.' Again he says, Till you can find a school wherein it is possible for the master to look after the manners of his scholars, and can show as great effects of his care of forming their minds to virtue and their carriage to good-breeding, as of forming their tongues to the learned languages, you must confess that you have a strange value for words when preferring the languages of the ancient Greeks and Romans to that which made them such brave men, you think it worth while to hazard your son's innocence for a little Greek and Latin. For as for that boldness and spirit which lads get amongst their playfellows at school, it has ordinarily such a mixture of rudeness and ill-turned confidence that those misbecoming and disingenuous ways of shifting in the world must be unlearned, and all tincture washed out again to make way for better principles and such manners as make a trustworthy man. He that considers how diametrically opposite the skill of living well and managing as a man should do his affairs in the world is to that malapertness, trickery, or violence learnt amongst schoolboys, will think the faults of a privater education infinitely to be pre

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ferred to such improvements, and will take care to preserve his child's innocence and modesty at home, as being more of kin and more in the way of those qualities which make a useful and able man.'

If we consider how far Locke is undoubtedly right in these remarks, we shall agree with him at least in two things: 1st, that virtue and good manners are more valuable than school learning, or, indeed, any learning; 2nd, that the influence of the masters over the boys' characters in a large school (and I may add, in a small school also), is less than the influence of the boys on one another. Moreover, those who know much of schoolboys will probably admit that their average morality is not high. Though not without strong generous impulses, the ordinary schoolboy-character is marked by selfishness, not a premeditated, calculating selfishness, but one which arises from the absence of high motives, and from a tacit understanding among boys that the rule is, 'Everyone for himself." High motives are no doubt uncommon in adult age, and the same rule is sometimes acted on then also, but custom requires us, except in the case of very near relations, to treat one another with outward respect and consideration-in other words, to behave unselfishly in social intercourse, and no such custom is established among schoolboys. They are, therefore, as a rule, unmannerly in their behaviour to one another. Vices, moreover, though not so prevalent as bad manners, are well known in all schools. Lying is often found, especially among young boys; bad language, and worse, among younger and elder alike. The natural deduction would seem to be that