Well may Herbert Spencer, in writing upon this subject, declare that if by any chance nothing of our civilization should be preserved except a pile of our school books or some college examination papers, we may imagine how puzzled an antiquary of the period would be in finding in them no indication that the learners were ever likely to be parents. "This must have been the curriculum of their celibates," we may fancy him concluding. "I perceive here are. elaborate preparation for many things, especially for reading the books of extinct nations and of co-existing nations (from which, indeed, it seems clear that these people had little worth reading in their own tongue) ; but I find no reference whatever to the bringing up of children. They could not have been so absurd as to omit all training for this grandest of responsibilities.
"Evidently then, this must have been the school course for one of their monastic orders."