orm. Of this experience he writes, "After many workings
and tossings of my thoughts, by reducing everything to the immovable
laws of nature, I lighted upon my 'Didactica Magna,' which shows the art
of readily and solidly teaching all men all things."

He visited England, Sweden, and Hungary in the interests of education,
and was invited to France, but did not accept the invitation. While
living at Leszno, Poland, for a second time his house was sacked and all
his property destroyed. Among other things, his work on Pansophia, and
his Latin-Bohemian dictionary, on which he had labored for forty years,
were burned. He closed his days at Amsterdam, Holland. In addition to
the great honors bestowed upon him by the various countries that sought
his advice on educational matters, he was made the chief bishop and head
of the Moravian Brethren. Raumer forcibly sums up the life of Comenius
as follows: "Comenius is a grand and venerable figure of sorrow. Though
wandering, persecuted, and homeless, during the terrible and desolating
Thirty Years' War, yet he never despaired, but with enduring courage,
and strong faith, labored unweariedly to prepare youth by a better
education for a happier future. Suspended from the ministry, as he
himself tells us, and an exile, he became an apostle to the Christian
youth; and he labored for them with a zeal and love worthy of the chief
of the apostles."[99]

=Pedagogical Work.=--The great educational works of Comenius are his
"Gate of Tongues Unlocked," the "Great Didactic," and his "Orbis
Pictus." Mr. Quick thinks that the "Great Didactic" contains, in the
best form, the principles he afterward endeavored to work out"[100] in
his other educational writings. "The services of Comenius to pedagogy,"
says Professor Williams, "were of a threefold character, in each of
which his merit was very great. First, he was the true originator of the
principles and methods of the Innovators. Second, he was a great
educational systematist. Third, he was the author of improved
text-books, which were long and widely famous."[101] This is a fair
summing up of the remarkable activity of this man with the exception of
the first point. Montaigne, Ratke, and Bacon had previously taught many
of the fundamental truths which Comenius merely amplified and brought to
practical fruition, and he himself acknowledged the influence of the
last two men upon him. That the whole purpose of the life of Comenius
was far nobler tha