pe had regarded as
irreconcilable opponents. That was the inspiration of the school reform,
and this is the guiding principle of all higher education for the next
three centuries. It was a movement that originally was not local or
national but European, and in its first form was not in opposition to
the maintenance of the ecclesiastical unity of Western Europe. The
figure in whom it reaches its clearest expression is that of Erasmus.
Standing at the transition between two epochs, he was the last of the
great European scholars, and belongs to the undivided Catholic Church as
much as did Abelard or Anselm. The wandering scholar of the Renaissance,
without father, without mother, completely freed from ties of family or
country, at home equally in Deventer or Cambridge, in Basel or in Paris
or in Rome, without even a native language, for to him Latin was the
only vernacular (he has, I believe, left no word written in any other
language), he saw the vision of a Europe still united in obedience to
the one Church, but a Europe in which the culture of the humanist would
go side by side with the common faith inherited from early days.

The hopes of Erasmus were not to be fulfilled. It is indeed true that he
laid the foundation on which the recognized and official scheme of
education has continued almost to our own day; the Latin schools of
Germany and the Grammar Schools of England were each alike conducted on
the basis of the Church and the classics, but even before the
foundations had been completed the real unity was gone. The Renaissance
was met by two forces, each stronger than itself, and the common stream
was broken into a number of smaller currents. These have since increased
in strength till the sense of the common origin has almost disappeared.

The common mediaeval system (and in this the spirit of the Renaissance
was still mediaeval) depended on the common Church, and especially in
education, in the use of Latin as the universal language of learning.
During the sixteenth century both were overthrown. Luther was stronger
than Erasmus, and the new languages, Italian, French, Spanish, English,
quickly began to encroach on the claims of Latin to be the one language
of the school.

The religious revolution need not detain us. It is sufficient to recall
that in many parts of Europe the divergence of creed tended to become if
not identical with, at least closely to follow the boundaries of states
and nations. In every lan