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INTRODUCTION.

eration, purity, and obedience, and taught to say the Lord’s prayer. In the first school the mother is to be the teacher. 2. The Primary school, which is to occupy the years from six to twelve; this is peculiarly a school of the mother tongue. Here the child is to be taught “to read; to write well; to reckon as far as ordinary life will require; to measure; to sing common melodies by rote; the catechism; the Bible; a very general knowledge of history, especially of the creation, the fall of man and the redemption; a beginning of cosmography, and a knowledge of trades and occupations.” 3. The Latin school, occupying the years from twelve to eighteen, during which time Latin, Greek, and Hebrew shall be taught. Physics must be studied before abstract mathematics, because addressed to the sense, and therefore easier for beginners. Ethics, dialectics, and rhetoric are also included in the course of study for the Latin school. 4. The University, where every department of knowledge shall be taught by men learned each in his own department. “The learned men shall bind themselves to use their united powers to promote the sciences and to make new discoveries.” How far these elaborate schemes have been realized, may be seen by comparing the plans of Comenius with the public school systems in our own country and Germany.

It was as a guide to mothers during the years of opening intelligence that Comenius wrote the School of Infancy; but one finds in this quaint old book not only a guide for mothers, but as well for teachers and all others engaged in the high and holy mission of training little ones. Comenius loved children. His faith in the possibility of training the young into useful men and women was bounded only by the blue dome of heaven. What higher tribute to childhood than this paragraph: “Whoever has within his house youth exercising themselves in piety, morality, and knowledge,