At first the friars found great difficulty in gathering together boys to fill these schools, because the Indians were not yet capable of understanding the importance of the new discipline and refused to give their boys to the monasteries. They had to appeal to the government that it should compel the lords and principal men to send their sons to the schools; first experiment in compulsory education. Many of the lords, not caring to give up their children, but not daring to disobey, adopted the expedient of sending, in place of their own sons, and as if they were these, other boys, sons of their servants or vassals. But in time, perceiving the advantage these plebeian boys, by education, were gaining over their masters, they sent their sons to the monasteries, and even insisted on their being admitted. The boys dwelt in the lodgings built for the purpose in connection with the schools, some so spacious as to suffice for eight hundred or a thousand. The friars devoted themselves by preference to the children, as being--from their youth--more docile and apt to learn, and found in them most useful helpers. Soon they employed them as teachers. The adults brought from their wards by their leaders, came to the patios and remained there during the hours set for instruction, after which they were free for their ordinary occupations. Divided into groups, one of the best instructed boys taught to each group the lesson learned from the missionary. PEDRO DE GANTE’S WORK. Although you know the fact well, gentlemen, you would not forgive me should I omit mentioning the work which the noted lay brother, Pedro de Gante, blood relative of the Emperor Charles V., did in the direction of instructing the Indians. He was not the founder of the College of San Juan de Letran, as is generally stated, but of the great school of San Francisco, in Mexico, which he directed during a half century. This was constructed, as was customary, behind the convent church, extending toward the north, and contiguous to the famous chapel of San José de Belem de Naturales--the first church of Mexico, the old cathedral included. There our lay brother brought together fully a thousand boys, to whom he imparted religious and civil instruction. Later he added the study of Latin, of music, and of singing, by which means he did a great service to the clergy, because from there went forth musicians and singers for all the churches. Not satisfied with this achievement, he brought together also adults, with whom he established an industrial school. He provided the churches with painted or sculptured figures; with embroidered ornaments, sometimes with designs interspersed of the feather work, in which the Indians were so distinguished; with crosses, with candlestick standards, and many other objects necessary for church service, no less than with workmen for the construction of the churches themselves, for he had in that school painters, sculptors, engravers,