Even in the preparatory schools he was anxious to see the study of languages introduced, and that for the girls too. Boys and girls, he says, ought to be instructed “in tongues and other arts and subjects.” He was of opinion, that, in this way, it would be possible from the very first to pick out those best fitted to pursue the study of languages and to become later “schoolmasters, schoolmistresses or preachers.”[50] He even appeals to the example of olden Saints such as Agnes, Agatha and Lucy when urging that the more talented girls should receive a grounding in languages.[51] “It would undoubtedly have been quite enough had the less ambitious children been taught merely to reckon, and to read and write German.” “Luther’s action in having as many children of the people as possible taught languages … and his warfare against the use of German in the schools, whether in the towns, the villages, or the hamlets, was all very unpractical.… He had come to the conclusion that German schools, for one reason or another, were unsuited to be nurseries for the Church (‘_seminaria ecclesiæ_’), hence his effort to transplant into the Latin grammar schools every sapling on which he could lay hands.”[52] The injunctions appended to Melanchthon’s Visitation rules (1538), which were sanctioned and approved of by Luther, lay such stress on the teaching of languages that the humbler schools were bound to suffer. When dealing with “the schools” their only object seems to be the “upbringing of persons fit to teach in the churches and to govern.” And this aim, moreover, is pursued onesidedly enough, for we read: “The schoolmasters are in the first place to be diligent to teach the children only Latin, not German, or Greek, or Hebrew, as some have hitherto done, thus overburdening the poor children’s minds.” The regulations then proceed to prescribe in detail the studies to be undertaken in the lowest form: “In order that the children may get hold of many Latin words, they are to be made to learn some words every evening, as was the way in the schools in former days.” After the children have learnt to spell out the handbook containing the “Alphabet, the Our Father, Creed and other prayers they are to be set to Donatus and Cato … so that they may thus learn a number of Latin words and gain a certain readiness of speech (‘_copia dicendi_’).” Apart from this the lowest form is to be taught only writing and “music.”