§ 8. His first plan was to choose out of all Paris six children and to confide them to the care of a priest appointed to direct their consciences, and a tutor of not more than twenty-five years old, to teach them Latin. “I should think,” says he, “it was doing a good deal if I did not advance them far in Latin before the age of twelve, and made them pass their first years confined to one house or a monastery in the country where they might be allowed all the pastimes suited to their age and where they might see only the example of a good life set by those about them.” (Letter quoted by Carré, p. 20.) § 9. His imprisonment put a stop to this plan, “but,” says Saint-Cyran, “I do not lightly break off what I undertake for God;” so when intrusted with the disposal of 2,000 francs by M. Bignon, he started the first “Little School,” in which two small sons of M. Bignon’s were taken as pupils. The name of “Little Schools,” was given partly perhaps because according to their design the numbers in any school could never be large, partly no doubt to deprecate any suspicion of rivalry with the schools of the University. The children were to be taken at an early age, nine or ten, before they could have any guilty knowledge of evil, and Saint-Cyran made in all cases a stipulation that at any time a child might be returned to his friends; but in cases where the master’s care seemed successful, the pupils were to be kept under it till they were grown up. § 10. The Little Schools had a short and troubled career of hardly more than fifteen years. They were not fully organized till 1646; they were proscribed a few years later and in 1661 were finally broken up by Louis XIV, who was under the influence of their enemies the Jesuits. But in that time the Gentlemen of Port-Royal had introduced new ideas which have been a force in French education and indeed in all literary education ever since. To Saint-Cyran then we trace the attempt at a particular kind of school, and to his followers some new departures in the training of the intellect.