the persecutions to which it was being subjected. Needless to say, Comenius displayed as great an interest in her as he had done in Kotter. Already the visionary tendencies, out of which his enemies made such capital in later years, were getting possession of him.
In 1627 a few of the Evangelical Pastors, preparatory to their final departure, took refuge on the estate of George Sadowski at Slaupna, and here Comenius again took up the threads of his didactic efforts. As a slight return for the protection afforded him, John Stadius, one of the pastors, had undertaken the education of Sadowski’s three sons, and asked Comenius, whose interest in the subject was well known, to draw up a few rules for his guidance.[1] The request was gladly complied with, and the return to his former pursuit was accentuated by the following incident.
One summer day Comenius and a few of the other pastors walked over to the castle of Wilcitz to look at the library there. Among other works of interest they found the Didactic of Elias Bodinus, which had recently been brought from Germany. The perusal of this fired Comenius to attempt a work on a similar scale in his own language. True, his Church and the institutions that it supported were falling into ruin before his eyes, but, if he might believe the prophecies of Kotter and of Poniatowska, the day was not distant when the Brethren would be restored to their native land, and then his first task would be the reorganisation of the schools. “With this end in view,” he writes, “I entered on the work with fervour, and completed as much of it as I could while I still remained in my native land.”[2]
His efforts were soon interrupted. In 1628 all who shared the evangelic faith had definitely to leave Bohemia. Comenius, accompanied by his wife, his father-in-law, and the prophetess Poniatowska, set out for Poland, and on the 28th of March reached Lissa, a town in the province of Posen. Here, under the powerful protection of Count
