2. The second evil in the study of language is driving children into the manifold intricacies of grammar from the very first. It is a blunder to plunge them into the formal statements of grammar on their first beginning Latin. To make matters worse, the Latin grammar is written in Latin. How should we adults like it, if, in the study of Arabic, we had a grammar written in the Arabic first put into our hands? 3. The third evil in the study of language is the practice of compelling children to make impossible leaps instead of carrying them forward step by step. We introduce them from the grammar into Virgil and Cicero. The sublimity of poetic style is beyond the conception of boys, and the subject-matter of Cicero’s epistles not easy for grown men. It will be said that the object is to place before children a perfect model to which they may attain. It is right to aim at a perfect model, when the aim is practicable, and if we proceed gradually to the highest. But larger things are with advantage postponed to lesser things; and lesser things, if accommodated to the age of the learners, yield greater fruits than large things. If Cicero himself were to enter our schools and find boys engaged with his works, Comenius believes that he would be either amused or indignant. Professor Laurie remarks that “when we bear in mind the construction of the Latin grammars then in use,—that of Alvarus, for example, having five hundred rules and as many exceptions,—we cannot be surprised at the unanimous condemnation of the then current methods of teaching, and the almost universal lamentation over the wasted years of youth.” _The Janua_ We are now to see how Comenius proposed to reform these evils. “I planned a book,” he says, “in which all things, the properties of things, and the actions and passions of things should be presented, and to each should be assigned its proper work, believing that in one and the same book the whole connected series of things might be surveyed historically, and the whole fabric of things and words reduced to one continuous context. On mentioning my purpose to some friends, one of them directed my attention to the Jesuit father’s _Janua linguarum_, and gave me a copy. I leaped for joy; but on examination, I found that it did not fulfil my plan.” The _Janua_ referred to by Comenius was that written by William Bateus, an Irish Jesuit, who was spiritual father at Salamanca, Spain. His _Janua_ appeared in Spain prior to 1605. It contained twelve hundred short Latin sentences with accompanying Spanish translations. The sentences were made up of common Latin root-words, and no word was repeated. In 1615 an English-Latin edition appeared; and subsequently editions in French, German, and Italian. The object of Bateus in the publication of his _Janua_ was to promote the spread of Christianity by enabling the heathen the more easily to learn to read the Latin.