and lastly, but probably, in Comenius’ eyes, the most important of all, a printing-press, well supplied with type, and some printers to work it.[1]
To these conditions the Count agreed, and Comenius then proceeded to draw up and submit to him a detailed scheme for the school, which he published in the following year under the title Sketch of the Pansophic School.[2] This sketch, of which we give a full description elsewhere, proves Comenius to have been a master of organisation. In scope and breadth of view, the scheme was centuries in advance of its time, while many of the suggestions that it contains are but imperfectly carried into effect at the present day.
Leaving his wife, his son Daniel, and his daughter Susanna at Lissa,[3] Comenius, accompanied by his son-in-law Figulus, settled definitely at Saros-Patak in October (1650), and set about his task without any delay. With the object of exciting the sympathy of the residents in the town, he commenced a course of lectures on Education. The first of these, On the cultivation of the intellect,[4] was delivered in the lecture-room of the school on the 24th of November, and was followed, four days afterwards, by another on Books as the chief instrument of culture.[5] But his ingrained tendency to theorise was as displeasing to his Hungarian friends as it had been to de Geer. “Your schemes,” they said, “are too ambitious. While you lecture to us and talk about your seven-class Gymnasium, the education of our sons is neglected. Make a modest commencement and open a few classes at once.”
Under this pressure, therefore, Comenius wrote a short sketch of a three-class Gymnasium,[6] which he dedicated to Sigismund Rakoczy, and in accordance with this sketch the lowest or Vestibular class was opened on the 13th of
