=La Salle and the Schools of the Christian Brothers.=--The Port Royalists were, however, like the Jesuits, engrossed with secondary and higher education, and gave little heed to the education of all the people in the rudiments. In fact, until toward the close of the seventeenth century, the Catholics generally did not succeed in inaugurating any effective or widespread movement toward elementary education. Numerous attempts before this were made through catechism schools and various reformers and religious orders, but teachers were scarce and often ignorant and poorly trained, and there was little progress before the organization of the Brothers of the Christian Schools through the self-sacrificing efforts of Jean Baptiste de la Salle (1651-1719). The organization sprang out of a group of five masters engaged in teaching schools for the poor in the city of Rheims in 1679, but it was not until three years later that La Salle completed his regulations, founded the brotherhood, and moved the members into a permanent home. The order flourished, and neighboring towns soon endeavored to secure its members as teachers in their schools for the poor. Within a year or two, four schools in and about Rheims were placed under masters trained in the house of the Christian Brothers, and a number of other institutions were soon organized in the vicinity upon the same basis. [Sidenote: Paris,] [Sidenote: and Saint Yon.] But, being unable to supply the constant demands for his teachers that came from districts outside the towns, La Salle undertook to train boys who were sent him by the rural clergy, and were expected to return to their homes to teach after their training. To accomplish this, he established in 1684 a ‘seminary for schoolmasters’ in a wing of the house of the brotherhood, and two other seminaries were opened in neighboring towns the following year. Four years later La Salle opened a house for the brotherhood near Paris, and the Christian Brothers were speedily requested to take charge of the schools of several parishes. Despite the jealousy and opposition of the established order of schoolmasters and of many parties in Church and State, the schools and seminaries of the Brothers greatly increased in Paris, and were rapidly extended throughout France. At Paris also La Salle started the ‘Christian academy,’ in which drawing, geometry, and architecture were taught ambitious poor boys on Sunday, and introduced boarding colleges for higher secondary training. And these institutions likewise spread through France and the rest of Europe (Fig. 19). In 1705 La Salle retired to the estate known as Saint Yon, near Rouen, and there opened a home for the brotherhood. Here he also founded a famous boarding-school in which he trained boys for soldiery, farming, trade, and various other vocations. Before long he likewise organized in conjunction an industrial training for youthful delinquents, and both