Plato, Quintilian, Plutarch, and other writers on education have discussed the earliest training of the child, but none of these early writers have comprehended the significance of infancy with any such pedagogic insight as Comenius; and his _School of infancy_ has taken a permanent place among the classics which deal with the period of childhood. It was written during the years 1628 to 1630, when he was in charge of the Moravian school at Lissa. A German edition (it was originally written in the Sclavic tongue) appeared at Lissa in 1633, a second edition at Leipzig in 1634, and a third German edition at Nuremberg in 1636. Subsequently Polish, Bohemian, and Latin translations appeared; and Joseph Müller,[32] a most painstaking Comenius bibliographer, mentions an English translation in 1641. I have found no other reference to an English translation so early. As already noted, however, Comenius was well and favorably known to Milton, Hartlib, and others high in educational authority in England; and the fact that most of his other writings were translated there gives credence to Mr. Müller’s statement. In the year 1858, Mr. Daniel Benham[33] published in London an English translation, to which he prefixed a well-written account of the life of Comenius. But his translation was soon out of print; and this excellent treatise in consequence remained inaccessible to English readers until the appearance of my own translation. (Boston, 1896. Republished in London, 1897.) The _School of infancy_ was written as a guide for mothers during the first six years of the child’s life, and was dedicated to “pious Christian parents, guardians, teachers, and all upon whom the charge of children is incumbent.” Since the education of the child must begin at its birth, mothers must assume the teacher’s rôle; and the mothers of the seventeenth century, according to Comenius, were altogether unfitted because of lack of training to undertake this high and holy mission. Accordingly, the _School of infancy_ outlines definite instructions for mothers.