Third Lecture by Dr. Sandys

Dr. J. E. Sandys, of Cambridge, England, delivered the third of the Lane lectures in the Fogg Lecture Room last night, on "The Theory and Practice of Education."

Pointing out how strong was the influence of the scholar in Italy during the revival of learning, Dr. Sandys went on to show how natural it was that virtue, which had meant manliness in the Roman Age and goodness in the Middle Ages, in this period came to mean mainly a knowledge of Latin. The theory of education in the Middle Ages was unfolded for us by the treatises of Aeneas Sylvius, and its practice illustrated by the writings of Vittorino Guarino and others. But these men were theorists; far greater were the two teachers who exemplify the practice of learning, though they refrain from embodying it in any formal treatise, --Vittorino da Feltre and Guarino of Verona. Both founded schools in Italy and both, by advocating a liberal education--bodily as well as mental exercise, Greek as well as the Latin culture--together taught the many scholars who for centuries kept alive their fame. From these two men and their successors, Ferrara and Vittoria Colona, proceed the greater number of those scholars who afterwards carried the new learning out into the world, not only throughout Italy but into the countries of the west, far beyond her borders.

The fourth lecture of the series, on "The Academies of Florence, Venice, Naples and Rome," will be given in the Fogg Lecture Room tomorrow evening at 8 o'clock.