The subjects taught exhibit a diversity of character and a width of sympathy which are powerfully at variance with the meagre programmes of the old-fashioned public foundations. They comprised Heraldry, Conveyancing, Common Law, Antiquities (including Numismatics), Agriculture, Arithmetic, Architecture, Fortification, Geography, Languages, and Elocution, with many more matters. It is worth remarking that now for the first time the German tongue was included in the list of those which were recommended and set down for study, while the Dutch also occurs in the list. Elocution or "the art of well-speaking," as it is termed, was also a novel feature; and, in point of fact, Gerbier, who had travelled much abroad and observed the superior educational systems of foreign countries, sought to introduce here the same catholic and liberal spirit, instead of the imperfect and cramped course of studies with which Englishmen were forced to be contented, and which had scarcely emerged from mediæval simplicity and crudity. The _Musæum Minervæ_, of which a Shropshire gentleman, Sir Francis Kinaston, of Oteley, was the first Regent, collapsed about 1650; but its example and influence survived, and it was the forerunner of a broader and more enlightened educational policy and of the modern type of training colleges, into which even those ancient endowed schools which remain have been compelled by the force of public opinion, one by one, to resolve themselves. These Academies present a very powerful contrast to the archaic school in the multiplicity of acquirements, and in the breadth or variety of culture which they afforded and encouraged. They betoken a development of social wants and refinements, and the force of influences received from surrounding countries. It was a supply which responded to a demand; and it helped to create or extend a field of literary industry in the form of technical publications dealing with the principal subjects, which the _Musæum Minervæ_ and other analogous institutions included in their scheme. To the treatises on Riding, Swimming, Drawing, Writing, and a few other arts were added Manuals for the use of those who studied, at the College or under private instructors, the sciences of Fencing, Vaulting, Small Sword Exercise, Fortification, and the accomplishments specified in the programme of the Minerva Museum. A constant succession of text-books for pupils in nearly all these branches of a polite education kept the makers and the vendors of them busy from the age of Elizabeth downward; and long lists might be furnished of contributions to every department, both by professional experts and by amateurs of practical experience.