The well-to-do Bürger-class began to erect city-corporation, or writing-schools, as they were called, and found themselves obliged to appoint masters to them at their own cost, as the clergy more and more neglected their office of teaching. The clergy, however, exerted all their power against these schools, on grounds which touched them nearly, for they feared a diminution of their income and their power through a greater enlightenment of the people. Under these circumstances the Folk's-schools could not prosper; they either fell speedily, or totally degenerated. The city-schools which were founded in the sixteenth century, and called Latin-schools, were scantily enough endowed, and the proper Folk's-schools were in a still more miserable condition most of those in the villages falling to decay, and those which did still exist scarcely being worthy of the name. But the dawn of a new era soon broke, and the arduous and holy warfare of the Reformation threw light into the darkness of the human mind. Men were now seen to contend for knowledge, and strove to rend asunder the dishonourable bonds which, in a more animal condition, had been riveted upon them. Luther arose, and with him a new order of things in the conduct of schools was called forth. Many worthy schoolmasters, who had already gone forth from the pedagogic brotherhood of Gerhardus Magnus at Deventer, and from the Rhenish Society of Learned Men, founded by Conrad Celtes for the restoration of classical antiquity, had prepared the way for the great Reformers. How illustriously shine out in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the names of Desiderius Erasmus, Johann Reuchlin, Johann Dalberg, Rudolph Agricola, Wilibald Pirkheimer. They are like sacred signs of an approaching better time for the school affairs of the civilized world; and they all strengthened powerfully the hands of Luther, Melancthon, Zuinglius, since they treated schools, and the whole business of education, in a magnanimous spirit. To point out the active services of these men would lead us too far; it must suffice simply to remark that continually more, and fresh, and faithful teachers came forth, amongst whom, Johann Sturm, Valentin Friedland, also called Trotzendorf, Michael Neander, Johann Casselius, and Christian Hellwich, were especially distinguished. If a great want was still here and there visible, yet the path being once broken open, a retreat was by no means to be thought of, and the discovery of Guttenberg contributed not a little to make this impossible. The labours of Wolfgang Ratich and Johann Amors Comenius are of peculiar importance, whose works are known, and in which they treat of the natural and complete developement of all the powers of the human mind, especially of the understanding and the imagination. Pestalozzi's ideas here lie in embryo before us.