nds free and compulsory
education for all. In a _Letter to the Aldermen and Cities of Germany
on the Erection and Maintenance of Christian Schools_ [Sidenote: 1524]
he urged strongly the advantages of learning. "Good schools [he
maintained] are the tree from which grow all good conduct in life, and
if they decay great blindness must follow in religion and in all useful
arts. . . . Therefore, all wise rulers have thought schools a great
light in civil life." Even the heathen had seen that their children
should be instructed in all liberal arts and sciences both to fit them
for war and government and to give them personal culture. Luther
several times suggested that "the civil authorities ought to compel
people to send their children to school. If the government can compel
men to bear spear and arquebus, to man ramparts and perform other
martial duties, how much more has it the right to compel them to send
their children to school?" Repeatedly he urged upon the many princes
and burgomasters with whom he corresponded the duty of providing
schools in every town and village. A portion of the ecclesiastical
revenues confiscated by the German states was in fact applied to this
end. Many other new schools were founded by princes and were known as
"Fuerstenschulen" or gymnasia.

[Sidenote: England]

The same course was run in England. Colet's foundation of St. Paul's
School in London, [Sidenote: 1510] for 153 boys, has perhaps won an
undue fame, for it was {666} backward in method and not important in
any special way, but it is a sign that people at that time were turning
their thoughts to the education of the young. When Edward VI mounted
the throne the dissolution of the chantries had a very bad effect, for
their funds had commonly supported scholars. A few years previously
Henry VIII had ordered "every of you that be parsons, vicars, curates
and also chantry priests and stipendiaries to . . . teach and bring up
in learning the best you can all such children of your parishioners as
shall come to you, or at least teach them to read English." Edward VI
revived this law in ordering chantry priests to "exercise themselves in
teaching youth to read and write," and he also urged people to
contribute to the maintenance of primary schools in each parish. He
also endowed certain grammar schools with the revenues of the chantries.

In Scotland the _Book of Discipline_ advocated compulsory education,
children of the well