and the more entertaining parts of them must be especially dwelt upon. (5) The method must be natural, and everything that is not essential to the subject or is beyond the pupil must be omitted. Fables and allegories should be introduced, and enigmas given for the pupils to guess. (6) The authorities must appoint public examinations and reward merit. § 29. Nature helps herself in various ways, so the pupils should have every assistance given them. It should especially be made clear what the pupils are to learn, and how they should learn it. § 30. The pupils should be punished for offences against morals only. If they do not learn, the fault is with the teacher. § 31. One of Comenius’s most distinctive principles was that there should no longer be “_infelix divortium rerum et verborum_, the wretched divorce of words from things” (the phrase, I think, is Campanella’s), but that knowledge of _things_ and words should go together. This, together with his desire of submitting everything to the pupil’s senses, would have introduced a great change into the course of instruction, which was then, as it has for the most part continued, purely literary. We should learn, says Comenius, as much as possible, not from books, but from the great book of Nature, from heaven and earth, from oaks and beeches. § 32. When languages are to be learnt, he would have them taught separately. Till the pupil is from eight to ten years old, he should be instructed only in the mother-tongue, and about things. Then other languages can be acquired in about a year each; Latin (which is to be studied more thoroughly) in about two years. Every language must be learnt by use rather than by rules, _i.e._, it must be learnt by hearing, reading and re-reading, transcribing, attempting imitations in writing and orally, and by using the language in conversation. Rules assist and confirm practice, but they must come after, not before it. The first exercises in a language should take for their subject something of which the sense is already known, so that the mind may be fixed on the words and their connections.[72] The Catechism and Bible History may be used for this purpose. § 33. Considering the classical authors not suited to boys’ understanding, and not fit for the education of Christians, Comenius proposed writing a set of Latin manuals for the different stages between childhood and manhood: these were to be called “Vestibulum,” “Janua,” “Palatium” or “Atrium,” “Thesaurus.” The “Vestibulum,” “Janua,” and “Atrium” were really carried out. § 34. In Comenius’s scheme there were to be four kinds of schools for a perfect educational course:—1st, the mother’s breast for infancy; 2nd, the public vernacular school for children, to which all should be sent from six years old till twelve; 3rd, the Latin school or Gymnasium; 4th, residence at a University and travelling, to complete the course. The public schools were to be for all classes alike, and for girls[73] as well as boys.