of the
alphabet, can in a short time get enough here to cast up his own
accounts and read; and if any one be too stupid to learn, as I have
taught him nothing so will I charge him nothing, be he who he may,
burgher or apprentice, woman or girl; whoever comes in, he will be
faithfully taught for a small sum, but the young boys and girls after
the Ember weeks, as the custom is. 1516."

To all, who were unable to obtain the necessary elementary instruction
at home, or even perhaps in the monasteries, these schools were open.
Children and adults frequently sat on the same bench. Of course, there
was nothing like thorough knowledge among the masters, nothing like a
division into classes, or a comprehensive plan of instruction. Just as
the natural talent of the teacher was greater or less, were the results
better or worse. And yet such was the only education of a large
majority of the burghers. Indeed thousands were destitute even of this.

Boys, designed for a higher training, sons of the wealthy, or of the
poor, who were so fortunate as to meet with encouragement to a noble
effort, passed over into the Latin schools, into one of which we now
see Zwingli enter.

In these schools, found in most of the larger and sometimes also in the
smaller towns, the teachers were usually clergymen, who received
annually a moderate salary and a coat from the public treasury, or
oftener still from the revenues of pious foundations. For their better
maintenance, where the foundation could not give them a full support,
they were permitted to accept school-money and even provisions. The
poor scholars earned this money by singing in companies before houses
on new-year and other holidays.

The course of instruction embraced three branches: Latin Grammar,
Music, (especially the art of singing,) and Logic. The study of the
latter, which ought to teach how to give clear expression to thought,
was for the most part time wasted amid useless subtleties and verbiage.
The reputation of the school depended altogether on the character of
the teacher. As soon as he had made himself master of the prescribed
course, he either added to it new branches, or at least understood how
to render it profitable. But his main endeavor was to stimulate the
youthful mind by his own mental activity. To such a teacher hundreds of
scholars flocked from all quarters.

The following regulations, taken from one at Bruck, will give us some
insight into the state of discip