-to-do at their parents' expense, poor children at
that of the church.

[Sidenote: Jesuit colleges]

In Catholic countries, too, there was a passion for founding new
schools. Especially to be mentioned are the Jesuit "colleges," "of
which," Bacon confesses, "I must say, _Talis cum sis utinam noster
esses_." How well frequented they were is shown by the following
figures. The Jesuit school at Vienna had, in 1558, 500 pupils, in
Cologne, about the same time, 517, in Treves 500, in Mayence 400, in
Spires 453, in Munich 300. The method of the Jesuits became famous for
its combined gentleness and art. They developed consummate skill in
allowing their pupils as much of history, science and philosophy as
they could imbibe without jeoparding their faith. From this point of
view their instruction was an inoculation against free thought. But it
must be allowed that their teaching of the {667} classics was
excellent. They followed the humanists' methods, but they adapted them
to the purpose of the church.

[Sidenote: The classics]

All this flood of new scholars had little that was new to study.
Neither Reformers nor humanists had any searching or thorough revision
to propose; all that they asked was that the old be taught better: the
humanities more humanely. Erasmus wrote much on education, and,
following him Vives and Bude and Melanchthon and Sir Thomas Elyot and
Roger Ascham; their programs, covering the whole period from the cradle
to the highest degree, seem thorough, but what does it all amount to,
in the end, but Latin and Greek? Possibly a little arithmetic and
geometry and even astronomy were admitted, but all was supposed to be
imbibed as a by-product of literature, history from Livy, for example,
and natural science from Pliny. Indeed, it often seems as if the
knowledge of things was valued chiefly for the sake of literary
comprehension and allusion.

The educational reformers differed little from one another save in such
details as the best authors to read. Colet preferred Christian
authors, such as Lactantius, Prudentius and Baptista Mantuan. Erasmus
thought it well to begin with the verses of Dionysius Cato, and to
proceed through the standard authors of Greece and Rome. For the sake
of making instruction easy and pleasant he wrote his _Colloquies_--in
many respects his _chef d' oeuvre_ if not the best Latin produced by
anyone during the century. In this justly famous work, which was
adopted an