The rules for St. Paul's, which are set out at large by Knight, were unquestionably of a very austere character, though in harmony with the feeling of the time; and Knight, in his Life of the founder, ascribes the apparent harshness of the discipline enforced under his direction to the laudable motive of preparing boys for the troubles of the world, and inuring them to hardship. But Erasmus was not on the side of the martinets. For he explicitly condemns an undeserving strictness of discipline, which made no allowance for the difference in the tempers of boys; and another point with which he quarrelled was the horse-in-a-mill system and the way of learning by rote, which had begun to find favour both in his own country and with us. It is vain, however, to expect that there should have been many converts to such a man's opinions on educational questions at that period. Even in the small circle of his English friends and correspondents there was a wide diversity of sentiment. Sir Thomas More might agree with him mainly; but, on the other hand, Colet was clerical in his leaning and Spartan in his notions of scholastic life; and he deemed it good, as I have above said, to work on the tenderness of youth before it acquired corruption or prejudice, that "the new wine of Christ might be put into new bottles." IV. There can be no desire to deprive Colet of any portion of the honour which we owe to him for promoting the cause of education in London; but it would at the same time be an error to conclude that the good Dean was the first who established a school in the metropolis. The foundation which he established about 1510 consolidated and centralised the system, which down to that time had been weakly and loosely organised. Hear what Knight says:-- "The state of schools in London before Dean Colet's foundation was to this effect: the Chancellor of Paul's (as in all the ancient cathedral churches) was master of the schools (_magister scholarum_), having the direction and government of literature, not only within the church, but within the whole city, so that all the masters and teachers of grammar depended on him, and were subject to him; particularly he was to find a fit master for the school of St. Paul, and present him to the Dean and Chapter, and then to give him possession, and at his own cost and charges to repair the houses and buildings belonging to the school. This master of the grammar school was to be a sober, honest man, of good and laudable learning.... He was in all intents the true vice-chancellor of the church, and was sometimes so called; and this was the original meaning of chancellors and vice-chancellors in the two universities or great schools of the kingdom."