as as to education were widely
accepted, and its influence and that of its author spread
rapidly over much of Europe. The publication of his works was
delayed until 1657.

In the history of education it is important to recognize the existence
of the two parallel streams of intellectual and spiritual regeneration.
The leaders of both, like the leaders of all great social changes, at
once bethought themselves of the schools. Their hope was in the young,
and hence the reform of education early engaged their attention.

The improvements made in the grammar-schools under the influence of
Melanchthon and Sturm, and in England of Colet and Ascham, did not
endure, save in a very limited sense. Pure classical literature was now
read--a great gain certainly, but this was all. There was no tradition
of method, as was the case in the Jesuit order. During the latter half
of the sixteenth century, the complaints made of the state of the
schools, the waste of time, the barbarous and intricate grammar rules,
the cruel discipline, were loud and long, and proceeded from men of the
highest intellectual standing. To unity in the Reformed churches they
looked, but looked in vain, for a settlement of opinion, and to the
school they looked as the sole hope of the future. The school, as it
actually existed, might have well filled them with despair.

Even in the universities Aristotelian physics and metaphysics, and with
them the scholastic philosophy, still held their own. The reforms
initiated mainly by Melanchthon had not, indeed, contemplated the
overthrow of Aristotelianism. He and the other humanists merely desired
to substitute Aristotle himself in the original for the Latin
translation from the Arabic, necessarily misleading, and the Greek and
Latin classics for barbarous epitomes. These very reforms, however,
perpetuated the reign of Aristotle, when the spirit that actuated the
Reformers was dead, and there had been a relapse into the old
scholasticism. The Jesuit reaction, also, which recovered France and
South Germany for the papal see, was powerful enough to preserve a
footing for the metaphysical theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and the
schoolmen. In England, Milton was of opinion that the youth of the
universities were, even so late as his time, still presented with an
"asinine feast of sow-thistles." These retrogressions in school and
university serve to show how exceedingly difficult it is to contrive any
syste