e Reformation, the natural
opponents of all pious zelots, even those that came from the great
orphan asylum, from the training of the two Frankes and of Joachim
Lange were generally more moderate than was satisfactory to the Pietist
pastors. The leaves of their Cornelius Nepos were from constant use
frightfully black; their lot was to rise slowly from the sixth or fifth
form to the dignity of conrectors, with a small increase in their
scanty salary. The greatest pleasure of their life was to find
sometimes a scholar of capacity, in whom they could plant, besides the
refinements of Latin syntax and prosody, some of their favourite
ideas--a heathenish view of the greatness of man, influences on which
the scholar, perhaps, in his manhood, looked back with a smile. But in
this thankless and little esteemed occupation they laboured incessantly
to form in the Germans a feeling for the beauty of antiquity, and a
capacity for comprehending other races of men. And the unceasing
influence exercised by thousands of them on the living generation was
increased when Gesner naturalised the Greek language in the schools,
and established an entirely new foundation for the instruction of
scholars, which was spread by the teachers with enthusiasm; the spirit
of antiquity, a thorough comprehension of the writers, not the merely
grammatical construction, became the main object.

The school of every important town was a Latin one. If it attained to
so high a point as to prepare the upper classes for the University, the
boys who were to become artisans left when they got to the fourth form.
This arrangement contributed to insure a certain amount of education to
the citizen, which is now sometimes wanting. It was certainly in itself
no great gain for the guild master to have some knowledge of Mavor, and
of Cupid and Venus's doves, which were brought forward in all the poems
of the learned, and embellished even the almanacks and gingerbread;
but, together with these conceptions from antiquity, his mind imbibed
also the seed of the new ideas of the time. It is owing to this kind of
school culture that enlightenment of mind has so rapidly spread among
intelligent citizens.

Strict was the school discipline; the usual words of encouragement
which the poor scholars then wrote in one another's albums
were--"Patience! joyfully onward!" But strictness was necessary, for in
the under classes grown-up youths sat beside the children, and the bad
tricks