Many statements of contemporaries well acquainted with the facts speak most sadly of the then conditions. Melanchthon complained more and more that shortsighted Lutheran theologians stood in the way of the progress of the schools. Camerarius, in a letter to George Fabricius, rector of Meissen, said in 1555 that it was plain everything was conspiring for the destruction of Germany, that religion, learning, discipline and honesty were doomed. As one of the principal causes he instances “the neglect and disgust shown for that learning, which, in reality, is the glory and ornament of man.” “It is looked upon as tomfoolery and a thing fit only for children to play with.” “Education, and life in general, too, has become quite other from what we were accustomed to in our boyhood.” Of the Catholic times he speaks with enthusiasm: “What zeal at one time inspired the students and in what honour was learning held; what hardships men were ready to endure in order to acquire but a modicum of scholarship is still to-day a matter of tradition. Now, on the other hand, learned studies are so little thought of owing to civil disturbances and inward dissensions that it is only here and there that they have escaped complete destruction.”[119] What he says is abundantly confirmed by the accounts of the failure of educational effort at Augsburg, Esslingen, Basle, Stuttgart, Tübingen, Ansbach, Heilbronn and many other towns. The efforts made were, however, not seldom ill-advised. If it be really a fact that the Latin “_Colloquia_” of Erasmus, which Luther himself had condemned for its frivolity, “played a principal part in the education of the schoolboys,”[120] then, indeed, it is not surprising that the results did not reach expectations. The crude polemics against the olden Church and the theological controversies associated with the names of Luther and Melanchthon, which penetrated into the schools owing to the squabbles of the professors and preachers, also had a bad effect. Again education was hampered by being ever subordinated to the interests of a “pure faith” which was regarded as its mainstay, but which was itself ever changing its shape and doctrines.[121]