with candlestick standards, and many other objects necessary for church service, no less than with workmen for the construction of the churches themselves, for he had in that school painters, sculptors, engravers, stonecutters, carpenters, embroiderers, tailors, shoemakers, and other trades workers. He attended to all and was master of all. The gigantic efforts of that immortal lay brother cause genuine admiration—who without other resources than his indomitable energy, born of his warm charity, reared from the foundations and sustained for so many years a magnificent church, a hospital and a great establishment, which was at once a primary school, a college of higher instruction and religious teaching, an academy of the fine arts, and a trades school, in fine a center of civilization.
INSTRUCTION BY HIEROGLYPHS.
Industrial schools, compulsory education, these seem to us usually modern ideas; but these old teachers knew something of object teaching, of adapting methods to varying conditions. Thus:
They completed the instruction by the use of signs, and it may be imagined that the result was little or nothing. Desirous of hastening the instruction and realizing that what enters by the eye engraves itself more easily upon the mind, they devised the idea of painting the mysteries of religion upon a canvas. Friar Jacob de Tastera, a Frenchman, was the first, it seems, who tested this method. He did not know the language, but he showed the Indians the chart and caused one of the brighter among them, who knew something of Spanish, to explain the meaning of the figures to the others. The other friars followed his example and the system continued in use much time. They were also accustomed to hang the necessary charts upon the wall, and the missionary, as he made the doctrinal explanations, indicated with a pointer the corresponding chart. The Indians accustomed to painting hieroglyphs adopted them for writing catechisms and prayerbooks for their own use, but varying the