While resembling Rousseau more than Comenius in temperament and character, as well as in educational ideals, there is yet much in Basedow’s educational scheme that recalls the Moravian reformer. Born at Hamburg, in 1727, he experienced, like Rousseau, an unhappy childhood, and, like Comenius, received a belated education. He prepared for the University of Leipzig at the Hamburg gymnasium; but at both institutions he rebelled against the traditional methods of instruction. After completing the course in theology at Leipzig, it was found that he had grown too heterodox for ordination, and he engaged himself as a private tutor to a gentleman in Holstein. Remarkable success attended his labors as a teacher. He studied his children, adapted subject-matter to their capacities, and made extensive use of conversational methods. This experience secured him an appointment in Denmark, where he taught for eight years. But his essays on _Methodical instruction in natural and Biblical religion_ disturbed alike the serenity of the Danish clergy and schoolmasters, and he was released and called to the gymnasium at Altoona, where he encountered opposition no less pronounced. Rousseau’s _Émile_ appeared at this time, and it influenced him powerfully. He renewed his attacks on contemporary educational practices; charged universal neglect of physical education and the mother-tongue; criticised the schools for devoting so much time to the study of Latin and Greek, and for the mechanical and uninteresting methods employed in teaching these languages; and admonished society for neglecting to instruct the children of the poor and middle classes. Raumer, who is no admirer of Basedow, admits the justice of the charges. He says: “Youth was in those days for most children a sadly harassed period. Instruction was hard and heartlessly severe. Grammar was caned into the memory; so were portions of Scripture and poetry. A common form of school punishment was to learn by heart the One Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm. Schoolrooms were dismally dark. No one conceived it possible that the young could find pleasure in any kind of work, or that they had eyes for aught but reading and writing. The pernicious age of Louis XIV had inflicted on the children of the upper class hair curled by the barber and messed with powder and pomade, braided coats, knee breeches, silk stockings, and a dagger by the side—for active, lively children a perfect torture.”