.

the sudden departure of the King from London, and the clear indications that a most cruel war was on the point of breaking out, threw all these plans into confusion, and compelled me and my friends to hasten our return." Invited to France. While Comenius was in England, where he stayed till August, 1642, he received an invitation to France. This invitation, which he did not accept, came perhaps through his correspondent Mersenne, a man of great learning, who is said to have been highly esteemed and often consulted by Descartes. It is characteristic of the state of opinion in such matters in those days, that Mersenne tells Comenius of a certain Le Maire, by whose method a boy of six years old, might, with nine months' instruction, acquire a perfect knowledge of three languages. Mersenne also had dreams of a universal alphabet, and even of a universal language.

Finds a Patron in De Geer. Comenius' hopes of assistance in England being at an end, he thought of returning to Leszno, but a letter now reached him from a rich Dutch merchant, Lewis de Geer, who offered him a home and means for carrying out his plans. This Lewis de Geer, "the Grand Almoner of Europe," as Comenius calls him, displayed a princely munificence in the assistance he gave the exiled Protestants. At this time he was living at Nordcoping in Sweden. Comenius having now found such a patron as he was seeking, set out from England and joined him there.

Interviews with Oxenstiern. Soon after the arrival of Comenius in Sweden, the great Oxenstiern sent for him to Stockholm, and with John Skyte, the Chancellor of Upsal University, examined him in several inter

views about his system. "From my early youth," said Oxenstiern, "I observed something forced and incoherent in the method of instruction commonly used, but could not discover where the impediment lay. At length, being sent by my King, of glorious memory, as a legate to Germany, I held conferences there on the subject with various learned men, and when I was informed that Ratich had attempted an amendment of the method, I could not rest till I had had a personal interview with him; when, instead of favoring me with a conference, he presented me with a large quarto volume. I went through the task imposed upon me, and then perceived that he had succeeded in discovering the diseases of the schools, but the remedies he suggested seemed very insufficient. Your remedies rest upon a surer foundation." Comenius said it was his wish to get beyond the teaching of boys to a great philosophical, or rather " pansophical' work. But both Oxenstiern and Skyte urged him to confine himself, for the present, to a task less ambitious, but more practically useful. "My counsel," said Oxenstiern, "is that you first satisfy the wants of the schools by rendering a knowledge of the Latin language of easier acquisition, and thereby preparing the path of a readier approach toward those more sublime studies." As De Geer gave the same advice, Comenius felt himself constrained to follow it, so he agreed to settle at Elbing in Prussia, and there write a work on teaching, in which the principles of the "Didactica Magna" should be worked out with especial reference to teaching languages. Notwithstanding the remonstrances of his English friends, to which Comenius would gladly have listened,

he was kept by Oxenstiern and De Geer strictly to his agreement, and thus, much against his will, he was held fast for eight years in what he calls the "miry entanglements of logomachy."

Comenius settles at Elbing. Elbing, where, after a journey to Leszno to fetch his family (for he had married again), Comenius now settled, is in West Prussia, 36 miles southeast of Dantzic. From 1577 to 1660, an English trading company was settled here with which the family of Hartlib is said in one account to have been connected. This perhaps is one reason why Comenius chose this town for his residence. But Hartlib, instead of assisting with money, seems at this time to have needed assistance, for in October, 1642, Comenius writes to De Geer that he fears Fundanius and Hartlib are suffering from want, and that he intends for them 2007. promised by the London booksellers: he suggests that De Geer shall give them 301. each meanwhile.

Pecuniary Difficulties. The relation between Comenius and his patron naturally proved a difficult one. The Dutchman thought that as he supported Comenius, and contributed something more for the assistants, he might expect of Comenius that he would devote all his time to the scholastic treatise he had undertaken. Comenius, however, was a man of immense energy and of widely extended sympathies and connections. He was a "bishop" of the religious body to which he belonged, and in this capacity he engaged in controversy, and attended some religious conferences. Then, again, pupils were pressed upon him, and as money to pay five writers whom he kept at work was always running short, he did not de

cline them. De Geer complained of this, and supplies were not furnished with wonted regularity. In 1647 Comenius writes to Hartlib that he is almost overwhelmed with cares, and sick to death of writing begging-letters. Yet in this year he found means to publish a book "On the Causes of this (i.e., the Thirty Years') War," in which the Roman Catholics are attacked with great bitterness-a bitterness for which the position of the writer affords too good an excuse.

The year 1648 brought with it the downfall of all Comenius' hopes of returning to his native land. The Peace of Westphalia was concluded without any provision being made for the restoration of the exiles. But though thus doomed to pass the remaining years of his life in banishment, Comenius, in this year, seemed to have found an escape from all his pecuniary difficulties. The senior bishop, the head of the Moravian Brethren, died, and Comenius was chosen to succeed him. In consequence of this, Comenius returned to Leszno, where due provision was made for him by the Brethren. Before he left Elbing, however, the fruit of his residence there, the “ Methodus Linguarum Novissima" (The Newest Language Method), had been submitted to a commission of learned Swedes, and approved of by them. The MS. went with him to Leszno, where it was published..

Goes into Transylvania: Writes the Orbis Pictus. As head of the Moravian Church, there now devolved upon Comenius the care of all the exiles, and his wide-spread reputation enabled him to get situations for many of them in all Protestant countries. Indeed, he was now so much connected with the science of education, that

even his post at Leszno did no prevent his receiving and accepting a call to reform the schools in Transylvania. A model school was formed at Saros-Patak, in which Comenius labored from 1650 till 1654. At this time he wrote his most celebrated book, which is indeed only an abridgment of his "Janua" with the important addition of pictures, and sent it to Nürnberg, where it appeared three years later (1657). This was the famous "Orbis Pictus."

Returns to Leszno. Full of trouble as Comenius' life had hitherto been, its greatest calamity was still before him. After he was again settled at Leszno, Poland was invaded by the Swedes, on which occasion the sympathies of the Brethren were with their fellow-Protestants, and Comenius was imprudent enough to write a congratulatory address to the Swedish King. A peace followed, by the terms of which, several towns, and Leszno among them, were made over to Sweden, but when the King withdrew, the Poles took up arms again, and Leszno, the headquarters of the Protestants, the town in which the chief of the Moravian Brethren had written his address welcoming the enemy, was taken and plundered.

Leszno Pillaged. Comenius and his family escaped, but his house was marked for special violence, and nothing was preserved. His sole remaining possessions were the clothes in which he and his family traveled. All his books and manuscripts were burnt, among them his valued work on Pansophia, and a Latin-Bohemian and Bohemian-Latin Dictionary, giving words, phrases, idioms, adages, and aphorisms-a book on which he had