chapter 6 (section 130-134).

EDUCATION: Netherlands.

"When learning began to revive after the long sleep of the Middle Ages, Italy experienced the first impulse. Next came Germany and the contiguous provinces of the Low Countries. The force of the movement in these regions is shown by an event of great importance, not always noticed by historians. In 1400, there was established at Deventer, in the northeastern province of the Netherlands, an association or brotherhood, usually called Brethren of the Life in Common [see BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LOT]. In their strict lives, partial community of goods, industry in manual labor, fervent devotion, and tendency to mysticism, they bore some resemblance to the modern Moravians. But they were strikingly distinguished from the members of this sect by their earnest cultivation of knowledge, which was encouraged among themselves and promoted among others by schools, both for primary and advanced education. In 1430, the Brethren had established forty-five branches, and by 1460 more than thrice that number. They were scattered through different parts of Germany and the Low Countries, each with its school subordinate to the head college at Deventer. It was in these schools, in the middle of the fifteenth century, that a few Germans and Netherlanders were, as Hallam says, roused to acquire that extensive knowledge of the ancient languages which Italy as yet exclusively possessed. Their names should never be omitted in any remembrance of the revival of letters; for great was their influence upon subsequent times. Chief among these men were Wessels, of Groningen, 'one of those who contributed most steadily to the purification of religion'; Hegius of Deventer, under whom Erasmus obtained his early education, and who probably was the first man to print Greek north of the Alps; Dringeberg, who founded a good school in Alsace; and Longius, who presided over one at Munster. Thanks to the influence of these pioneers in learning, education had made great progress among the Netherlanders by the middle of the sixteenth century. ... We have the testimony of the Italian Guicciardini to the fact that before the outbreak of the war with Spain even the peasants in Holland could read and write well. As the war went on, the people showed their determination that in this matter there should be no retrogression. In the first Synod of Dort, held in 1574, the clergy expressed their opinion upon the subject by passing a resolution or ordinance which, among other things, directed 'the servants of the Church' to obtain from the magistrates in every locality a permission for the appointment of schoolmasters, and an order for their compensation as in the past. {706} Before many years had elapsed the civil authorities began to establish a general school system for the country. In 1582, the Estates of Friesland decreed that the inhabitants of towns and villages should, within the space of six weeks, provide good and able Reformed schoolmasters, and those who neglected so to do would be compelled to accept the instructors appointed for them. This seems to have been the beginning of the supervision of education by the State, a system which soon spread over the whole republic. In these schools, however, although they were fostered by the State, the teachers seem, in the main, to have been paid by their pupils. But as years went on, a change came about in this part of the system. It probably was aided by the noteworthy letter which John of Nassau, the oldest brother of William the Silent, the noble veteran who lived until 1606, wrote to his son Lewis William, Stadtholder of Friesland. In this letter, which is worthy of a place on the walls of every schoolhouse in America, the gallant young stadt-holder is instructed to urge on the States-General 'that they, according to the example of the pope and Jesuits, should establish free schools, where children of quality as well as of poor families, for a very small sum, could be well and christianly educated and brought up. This would be the greatest and most useful work, and the highest service that you could ever accomplish for God and Christianity, and especially for the Netherlands themselves. ... In summa, one may jeer at this as popish trickery, and undervalue it as one will: there still remains in the work an inexpressible benefit. Soldiers and patriots thus educated, with a true knowledge of God and a Christian conscience, item, churches and schools, good libraries, books, and printing-presses, are better than all armies, arsenals, armories, munitions, alliances, and treaties that can be had or imagined in the world.' Such were the words in which the Patriarch of the Nassaus urged upon his countrymen a common-school system. In 1609, when the Pilgrim Fathers took up their residence in Leyden, the school had become the common property of the people, and was paid for among other municipal expenses. It was a land of schools supported by the State--a land, according to Motley, 'where every child went to school, where almost every individual inhabitant could write and read, where even the middle classes were proficient in mathematics and the classics, and could speak two or more modern languages.' Does any reader now ask whence the settlers of Plymouth, who came directly from Holland, and the other settlers of New England whose Puritan brethren were to be found in thousands throughout the Dutch Republic, derived their ideas of schools first directed, and then supported by the State."

EDUCATION: Leyden University.

To commemorate the deliverance of Leyden from the Spanish siege in 1574 (see NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1573-1574), "and as a reward for the heroism of the citizens, the Prince of Orange, with the consent of the Estates of the province, founded the University of Leyden. Still, the figment of allegiance remained; the people were only fighting for their constitutional rights, and so were doing their duty to the sovereign. Hence the charter of the university ran in the name of Philip, who was credited with its foundation, as a reward to his subjects for their rebellion against his evil counsellors and servants, 'especially in consideration of the differences of religion, and the great burdens and hardships borne by the citizens of our city of Leyden during the war with such faithfulness.' Motley calls this 'ponderous irony,' but the Hollanders were able lawyers and intended to build on a legal basis. This event marks an epoch in the intellectual history of Holland and of the world. ... The new university was opened in 1575, and from the outset took the highest rank. Speaking, a few years ago, of its famous senate chamber, Niebuhr called it 'the most memorable room of Europe in the history of learning.' The first curator was John Van der Does, who had been military commandant of the city during the siege. He was of a distinguished family, but was still more distinguished for his learning, his poetical genius, and his valor. Endowed with ample funds, the university largely owed its marked pre-eminence to the intelligent foresight and wise munificence of its curators. They sought out and obtained the most distinguished scholars of all nations, and to this end spared neither pains nor expense. Diplomatic negotiation and even princely mediation were often called in for the acquisition of a professor. Hence it was said that it surpassed all the universities of Europe in the number of its scholars of renown. These scholars were treated with princely honors. ... The 'mechanicals' of Holland, as Elizabeth called them, may not have paid the accustomed worship to rank, but to genius and learning they were always willing to do homage. Space would fail for even a brief account of the great men, foreign and native, who illuminated Leyden with their presence. ... But it was not alone in scholarship and in scientific research that the University of Leyden gave an impetus to modern thought. Theological disputes were developed there at times, little tempests which threatened destruction to the institution, but they were of short duration. The right of conscience was always respected, and in the main the right of full and public discussion. ... When it was settled that dissenters could not be educated in the English universities, they flocked to Leyden in great numbers, making that city, next to Edinburgh, their chief resort. Eleven years after the opening of the University of Leyden, the Estates of democratic Friesland, amid the din of war, founded the University of Franeker, an institution which was to become famous as the home of Arminius. ... Both of these universities were perpetually endowed with the proceeds of the ecclesiastical property which had been confiscated during the progress of the war."

_D. Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, chapter 2, 20, and 3._

EDUCATION: England.

"In contemplating the events of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in their influence on English civilisation, we are reminded once more of the futility of certain modern aspirations. No amount of University Commissions, nor of well-meant reforms, will change the nature of Englishmen. It is impossible, by distributions of University prizes and professorships, to attract into the career of letters that proportion of industry and ingenuity which, in Germany for example, is devoted to the scholastic life. {707} Politics, trade, law, sport, religion, will claim their own in England, just as they did at the Revival of Letters. The illustrious century which Italy employed in unburying, appropriating, and enjoying the treasures of Greek literature and art, our fathers gave, in England, to dynastic and constitutional squabbles, and to religious broils. The Renaissance in England, and chiefly in Oxford, was like a bitter and changeful spring. There was an hour of genial warmth, there breathed a wind from the south, in the lifetime of Chaucer; then came frosts and storms; again the brief sunshine of court favour shone on literature for a while, when Henry VIII. encouraged study, and Wolsey and Fox founded Christ Church and Corpus Christi College, once more the bad days of religious strife returned, and the promise of learning was destroyed. Thus the chief result of the awakening thought of the fourteenth century in England was not a lively delight in literature, but the appearance of the Lollards. The intensely practical genius of our race turned, not to letters, but to questions about the soul and its future, about property and its distribution. The Lollards were put down in Oxford; 'the tares were weeded out' by the House of Lancaster, and in the process the germs of free thought, of originality, and of a rational education, were destroyed. 'Wyclevism did domineer among us,' says Wood; and, in fact, the intellect of the University was absorbed, like the intellect of France during the heat of the Jansenist controversy, in defending or assailing '267 damned conclusions,' drawn from the books of Wyclife. The University 'lost many of her children through the profession of Wyclevism.'"

_A. Lang, Oxford, chapter 3._

EDUCATION: Colet and St. Paul's School.

Dr. John Colet, appointed Dean of St. Paul's in 1505, "resolved, whilst living and in health, to devote his patrimony to the foundation of a school in St. Paul's Churchyard, wherein 153 children, without any restriction as to nation or country, who could already read and write, and were of 'good parts and capacities,' should receive a sound Christian education. The 'Latin adulterate, which ignorant blind fools brought into this world,' poisoning thereby 'the old Latin speech, and the very Roman tongue used in the time of Tully and Sallust, and Virgil and Terence, and learned by St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine,'--all that 'abusion which the later blind world brought in, and which may rather be called Blotterature than Literature,'--should be 'utterly abanished and excluded' out of this school. The children should be taught good literature, both Latin and Greek, 'such authors that have with wisdom joined pure chaste eloquence'--'specially Christian authors who wrote their wisdom in clean and chaste Latin, whether in prose or verse; for,' said Colet, 'my intent is by this school specially to increase knowledge, and worshipping of God and Our Lord Jesus Christ, and good Christian life and manners in the children.' ... The building consisted of one large room, divided into an upper and lower school by a curtain, which could be drawn at pleasure; and the charge of the two schools devolved upon a high-master and a sub-master respectively. The forms were arranged so as each to seat sixteen boys, and were provided each with a raised desk, at which the head-boy sat as president. The building also embraced an entrance-porch and a little chapel for divine service. Dwelling-houses were erected, adjoining the school, for the residence of the two masters; and for their support, Colet obtained, in the spring of 1510, a royal license to transfer to the Wardens and Guild of Mercers in London, real property to the value of £53 per annum (equivalent to at least £530 of present money). Of this the head-master was to receive as his salary £35 (say £350) and the under-master £18 (say £180) per annum. Three or four years after, Colet made provision for a chaplain to conduct divine service in the chapel, and to instruct the children in the Catechism, the Articles of the faith, and the Ten Commandments,--in English; and ultimately, before his death, he appears to have increased the amount of the whole endowment to £122 (say £1,200) per annum. So that it, may be considered, roughly, that the whole endowment, including the buildings, cannot have represented a less sum than £30,000 or £40,000 of present money. And if Colet thus sacrificed so much of his private fortune to secure a liberal (and it must be conceded his was a liberal) provision for the remuneration of the masters who should educate his 153 boys, he must surely have had deeply at heart the welfare of the boys themselves. And, in truth, it was so. Colet was like a father to his schoolboys. ... It was not to be expected that he should find the school-books of the old grammarians in any way adapted to his purpose. So at once he set his learned friends to work to provide him with new ones. The first thing wanted was a Latin Grammar for beginners. Linacre undertook to provide this want, and wrote with great pains and labour, a work in six books, which afterwards came into general use. But when Colet saw it, at the risk of displeasing his friend, he put it altogether aside. It was too long and too learned for his 'little beginners.' So he condensed within the compass of a few pages two little treatises, an 'Accidence' and a 'Syntax,' in the preface to the first of which occur the gentle words quoted above. These little books, after receiving additions from the hands of Erasmus, Lilly, and others, finally became generally adopted and known as Lilly's Grammar. This rejection of his Grammar seems to have been a sore point with Linacre, but Erasmus told Colet not to be too much concerned about it. ... Erasmus, in the same letter in which he spoke of Linacre's rejected Grammar ... put on paper his notions of what a schoolmaster ought to be, and the best method of teaching boys, which he fancied Colet might not altogether approve, as he was wont somewhat more to despise rhetoric than Erasmus