first is Geometry, which is taken to mean every thing that relates to the earth's surface. The second is Astronomy, which treats of the face of the heavens. The third is Physiology, which is the science of nature, or of all that comes between heaven and earth. So that Origen's scientific teaching was truly encyclopædic. He was, moreover, an experimental philosophier, and did not merely retail the theories of others. He analyzed things and resolved them into their elements (their "very first" elements, says the scholar); he descanted on the multiform changes and conversions of things, partly from his own discoveries, and gave his hearers a rational admiration for the sacredness and perfection of nature, instead of a blind and stupid bewilderment; he "carved on their minds geometry the unquestionable, so dear to all, and astronomy that searches the upper air."

The scholar next comes to the most strictly ethical part of Origen's teaching. The preliminary dialectics had cleared the ground, and to a certain extent replanted it; physics made the process more easy, pleasant, and complete; but the great end of a philosophic life was ethics, that is, the making a man good. The making of a man good and virtuous seems nowadays a simple matter, as far as theory is concerned, and so perhaps it is, if only theory and principles be considered; though morality is an extensive science, and one that is not mastered in an hour or a day. But in Origeu's day a science of Christian ethics did not exist. The teaching of the Scripture and the voice of the pastors was sufficient, doubtless, for the guidance of the faithful; but science is a different thing. Such a science is shadowed out to us by the scholar in the record we are noticing. **The only virtues mentioned in the summary of Origen's moral teaching given by St. Gregory, are precisely the four cardinal virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance (of St. Thomas). The classification dates, of course, from the Stoics, but the circumstance that the framework laid down by a father in the beginning of the third century, was used and completed by another father in the thirteenth, gives the early father an undoubted claim to be considered the founder of Christian ethics. And here we lay our hands on one of the earliest instances of heathen philosophy being made to hew wood and carry water for Christian theology. The division of virtues was a good one; all the schools pretended to teach it; but the distinctive boast and triumph of the Christian teacher was that he taught true prudence, true justice, fortitude, and temperance, "not such," says the scholar, "as the other philosophers teach, and especially the moderns, who are strong and great in words; he not only talked about the virtues, but exhorted us to practice them; and he exhorted us by what he did far more than by what he said." And here the scholar takes the opportunity of recording his opinion about "the other " philosophers, now that he has had a course of Origen's training. He first apologizes to them for hurting their feelings. He says that, personally, he has no ill-will against them, but he plainly tells them that things have come to such a pass, through their conduct, that the very name of philosophy is laughed at. And he goes on to develop what appeared to him the very essence of their faults, viz., too much talk, and nothing but talk. Their teaching is like a widely-extended morass; once set foot in it, and you can neither get out nor go on, but stick fast till you perish. Or it is like a thick forest; the traveler who once finds himself in it, has no chance of ever getting back to the open fields and the light of day, but gropes about backward and forward, first trying one path, then another, and finding they all lead further in, until at last, wearied and desperate, he sits down and dwells in the forest, resolving that the forest shall be his world, since all the world seems to be a forest. This is, perhaps, one of the most graphic pictures ever given of the state of mind, so artificial, so unsatisfied, and yet so self-sufficient, brought about by a specious heathen philosophy, and the effect of enlightened reason destitute of revelation. The scholar can not heighten the strength of his description by going on to compare it, in the third place, to a labyrinth. "For there is no labyrinth so hard to thread," sums up the scholar, "no wood so deep and thick, no bog so false and hopeless, as the language of some of these philosophers." In this language we recognize another of the characteristic feelings of the day-the feeling of profound disgust for the highest teachings of heathenism from the moment the soul catches a ray of the light of the Gospel. In such days as those, sharp comparisons between heathen wisdom and

the light of Christ must have been part of the atmosphere in which the catechumens of the great school lived and breathed; there was a reality and interest in them such as can never be again. And yet the master was no bigot in his dealings with the Greek philosophies. "He was the first and the only one," says his scholar, "that made me study the philosophy of Greece." The scholar was to reject nothing, to despise nothing, but make himself thoroughly acquainted with the whole range of Greek philosophy and poetry; there was only one class of writers he was to have nothing to do with, and those were the atheists, who denied God and God's providence; their books could only sully a mind that was striving after piety. But his pupils were to attach themselves to no school or party, as did the mob of those who pretended to study philosophy. Under his guidance they were to take what was true and good, and leave what was false and bad. He walked beside them and in front of them through the labyrinth; he had studied its windings and knew its turns; in his company, and with their eyes on his "lofty and safe" teaching, his scholars need fear no danger.

St. Gregory, in the concluding pages of his farewell discourse, sufficiently proves that the great end and object of all philosophic teaching and intellectual discipline in the school of his master was faith and practical piety. To teach his hearers the great first cause was his most careful and earnest task His instructions about God were so full of knowledge and so carefully prepared that the scholar is at a loss how to describe them. His explanations of the prophets. and of Holy Scripture generally, were so wonderful that he seemed to be the friend and interpreter of the Word. The soul that thirsted for knowledge went away from him refreshed, and the hard of heart and the unbelieving could not listen to him without both understanding and believing, and making submission to God. "It was no otherwise than by the communication of the Holy Ghost that he spoke thus," says his disciple. "for the prophets and the interpreters of the prophets have necessarily the same help from above, and none can understand a prophet unless by the same spirit wherein the prophet spoke. This greatest of gifts and this splendid destiny he seemed to have received from God, that he should be the interpreter of God's words to men, that he should understand the things of God, as though he heard them from God's own mouth, and that through him men should be brought to listen and obey."

EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS IN ITALY.

In Italy the transition from schools governed by the old religious and philosophical ideas, to those in which the cardinal doctrines of Christ. ianity, the sacredness of childhood as the type and germ of the kingdom of heaven, and the universality of its teaching to all men of all classes and all nationalities appear, is not clearly marked in the annals of the church. It did not occur till Rome and other chief cities were sacked, demolished or impoverished by the successive floods of pagan and barbarian armies, which filled the country with turbulence.

The earliest distinct Christian school in Italy-apart from the catachetical teachings of pastors, and the special training of young aspirants to the priesthood in the household of bishops, was in Vercelli, and was established by Eusebius, in 354 of the Christian Era. This school became the nursery of many men who figured in the civil affairs of the time, and as prelates of the church.

Private schools, for children and youth of Christian parentage, were set up by converts to the new faith from the graduates of the Law School of Berytus-such as those of Imola, by Cassian; of Cæsarea by Pamphilius; of Antioch by Lucian-in which the Scriptures were added to the ordinary curriculum. But generally, Christian parents were

obliged to send their children to such schools as existed in their neighborhood, in which the fables of the poets, and the gross impieties of the gods formed an important part of the instruction. It was to escape the corruption of the semi-pagan schools of Rome that Benedict of Nescia fled, in 460, and sought refuge and better teaching in the desert district of Subiaco, from which he emerged with his Rule of Monastic life, to mold, henceforth, the educational institutions of all Europe.

Before noticing briefly in this place, the monastic institution, as a school, we must not omit to mention the cloister or boarding school, set up by Cassiodorus. He was born in Scylaceum, in 480, and after having held various public offices in Rome, and among them the municipal dignity, by the old name of Roman Consul, and secretary of the Ostrogothic King Theodoric. From this last position he voluntarily withdrew to his estates in Calabria, where he had erected a boarding establishment for children and youth, and which was in the nature of the monasteries of the East, although without any formal ecclesiastical relations. He drew up for his scholars a plan of studies, and wrote for their use two treatises, one "On the Teaching of Sacred Studies," and the other "On the Seven Liberal Arts ”—the Trivium and Quadrivium, which constituted the curriculum of the elementary and higher learning of that and subsequent centuries in the Grammar Schools of Europe.

The Trivium included grammar, logic and rhetoric, with enough of vocal music to enable the pupils to assist in the office of the mass, and of arithmetic to calculate the return of holy days. Children began with learning from dictation certain portions of the Scriptures and the Psalter, and the "holy memory" was largely exercised through the entire school attendance a half hour at least each day being assigned to this work. By grammar was meant the study of the Latin, and sometimes the Greek and Hebrew tongue, after the acquisition of which attention was given to declamation and public speaking under the name of rhetoric. Music, which belonged to the Quadrivium, meant not only the cantus, or singing of the elementary school, but a knowledge of the laws of sound, and the connection of harmony with numbers. In its original Greek use it was equivalent to liberal studies, and included mathematics, poetry and eloquence. Under the Christian dispensation it early received special attention, and the school of the Roman Chant, instituted by Gregory 590-604, became the model of many others, which were established by Charlemagne in France, and by Boniface in Germany.

The earliest educational institution of a distinctively Christian type which received the patronage of the imperial government, was the Basilica of the Octagon, built by Constantine at Constantinople in 620. In connection with it seven libraries were established with an aggregate of 120,000 volumes, and twelve professors were maintained at the public expense. This noble foundation perished in 730 by authority of the Greek Emperor Leo, the Iscarian, in a fire which consumed building and inmates, and which he caused to be kindled because the professors would

not cooperate with him in his efforts to banish all pictures and statuary illustrative of Scripture history, from schools and churches.

But the most positive and effective agency of education recognized and fostered by the authorities of the Christian church, was the monastic institution which originated in the East, but found its full development in the West. The monks of the East, according to the rule of Basil of Neocæsara, and the instructions of Pachomius, an Egyptian, the father of the Cœnobites (or the common life), were not only bound to a life of religious devotion, and to agricultural and mechanical employment, but • to give asylum to orphans, and to receive and train children, as well as to instruct all who came to them, in the catechism and the Scriptures, and church ritual. The directions of Basil are quite minute in the matter of discipline. "Let every fault have its own remedy, so that while the offense is punished, the soul may be exercised to conquer its passions. If, for example, a child has been angry with his companion, oblige him to beg pardon of the other, and to do him some humble service, for it is only by accustoming them to humility that you can eradicate anger, which is always the offspring of pride. Has he eaten out of meals? Let him remain fasting for a good part of a day [This would not improve the temper of a child in our day]. Has he eaten to excess, and in an unbecoming manner? At the hour of repast, let him without eating himself, watch others taking their food in a modest manner, and so he will be learning how to behave himself, at the same time he is being punished by his abstinence. And if he has offended by idle words, by rudeness, or by telling lies, let him be corrected by diet and silence." In respect to the studies of the children, Basil would substitute the wonderful events of Scripture history for the fables of the poets; enjoins committing to memory choice selections from the Proverbs, which he would reward by prizes, to the end that pupils may learn not reluctantly, but with avidity. Their wandering thoughts must be recalled by frequent interrogation, and with their knowledge of letters should be taught some useful art or trade." This would be denominated advanced pedagogy and systematic technical education in our day.

In the midst of the decay and distractions of the old Roman civilization and society, in the turbulance and barbarism which northern paganism and armies poured into Italy, the monastic institutions of western Europe preserved the memory of letters, founded schools for the clergy, and trained teachers for such children as could find refuge in their walls. The founder of the first religious order in the West, which was formally recognized by the highest educational authorities, was Benedict, who was born at Nescia, in Spolito, in 480. In his fourteenth year he retired to Subiaco, a cavern in a desolate region forty miles from Rome, where he continued his studies, with several companions who resorted to these same retirements, and in 515 drew up a rule of life for a religious order which in 528 he constituted and located in Monte Cassino, where the rites of paganism were still paid to Apollo in a temple specially dedica

ted to him. This temple he induced his worshipers to abandon and destroy, and on the spot erected a building which became one of the most flourishing schools of Italy, and with its associated edifices, the model of a thousand similar establishments in every part of Europe. This was the mother house of the Benedictines for ten centuries. From time to time to meet local wants and wishes, and carry out the differing views of equally pious and zealous men, different religious orders were instituted, nearly all of which made the care, conversion and education of the young a prominent, and several, their exclusive object.

We can not give even this rapid glance at the first stage of modern education as compared with that of ancient Greece and Rome, without noticing the fact that each Christian home was regarded by the early fathers of the church as a school, and the mother as emphatically the teacher of piety and devotion to her children. The characteristic features of Christianity are the sacredness thrown around childhood, as the type of the kingdom of Heaven, and the special recipient of the Saviour's love, and the almost immediate social and intellectual regeneration of woman; wherever the Gospel precepts were proclaimed, wherever the Christian church was planted, there children were sought after and taught, and women were softened, purified and elevated into such characters as Agnes and Cecilia, Lucy and Agatha, Felicitas and Catherine, Blandina and Ursula-and a host of others, who have illustrated the annals of every nation which has made Christianity the faith and rule of life for the people. Basil and his brother Gregory, of Nyssa, gloried in preserving the faith in which they had been trained by their grandmother Macrina the elder. Gregory writes that one of his brothers was chiefly brought up by his sister Sebasta, whose own education had been superintended by her mother, who took extreme pains that he should understand the Scriptures. Fulgentius of Ruspe, who flourished about the year 500, acknowledges his indebtedness to his mother (religiosa mater), who was so solicitous about the purity of his Greek accent that she made him learn by heart the poems of Homer and Meander, before he studied his Latin rudiments. The training of Chrysostom by his mother was so liberal and pious, as to draw from a pagan teacher (Libanius), the exclamation, "Ye gods of Greece! how wonderful are these Christian women!" Jerome dedicated his commentaries to his pupil Eustochium, who, he assures us, wrote, spoke and recited Hebrew without the least trace of a Latin accent. And he speaks of Marcella as the glory of the Roman ladies, who was learned in the Scriptures, and could instruct others, and at the same time did not lose those qualities which are associated with the character and face of the Holy Mother, as "gravely sweet and sweetly grave." The further development of higher education in Italy in the establishment of universities, and the revival and cultivation of classical studies, as well as the late and imperfect legislation of the different states, in behalf of the popular schools in Lombardy, Tuscany, and Naples, will be given in the Appendix and elsewhere.