these over the schooltime allowed
them. Like all reformers, Comenius was oversanguine. I do not overlook
the fact that command over the Latin tongue as a vehicle of expression
was necessary to those who meant to devote themselves to professions and
to learning, and that Comenius had his justification for introducing a
mass of vocables now wholly useless to the student of Latin. But even
for his own time, Comenius, under the influence of his encyclopaedic
passion, overdid his task. His real merits in language-teaching lie in
the introduction of the principle of graduated reading-books, in the
simplification of Latin grammar, in his founding instruction in foreign
tongues on the vernacular, and in his insisting on method in
instruction. But these were great merits, too soon forgotten by the dull
race of schoolmasters, if, indeed, they were ever fully recognized by
them till quite recent times.

Finally, Comenius' views as to the inner organization of a school were
original, and have proved themselves in all essential respects correct.

The same may be said of his scheme for the organization of a state
system--a scheme which is substantially, _mutatis mutandis_, at this
moment embodied in the highly developed system of Germany.

When we consider, then, that Comenius first formally and fully developed
educational method, that he introduced important reforms into the
teaching of languages, that he introduced into schools the study of
nature, that he advocated with intelligence, and not on purely
sentimental grounds, a milder discipline, we are justified in assigning
to him a high, if not the highest, place among modern educational
writers. The voluminousness of his treatises, their prolixity, their
repetitions, and their defects of styles have all operated to prevent
men studying him. The substance of what he has written has been, I
believe, faithfully given by me, but it has not been possible to
transfer to these pages the fervor, the glow, and the pious aspirations
of the good old bishop.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] Mr. Laurie's work was written in 1881. Considerable changes have
since been made along the lines which he suggests.

FIRST WRITTEN FREE CONSTITUTION IN THE WORLD

EARLIEST UNION AMONG AMERICAN COLONIES

A.D. 1639-1643

G. H. HOLLISTER JOHN MARSHALL

That a colonizing people should, almost at the moment of their
arrival in a new home, proceed to enact the fundamental law of
a civil