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§ 20. The school-hours were remarkably short: two hours and a half in the morning, and the same in the afternoon; with a whole holiday a week in summer, and a half holiday in winter. The time was spent in the first form after the following manner:—During the first half-hour the master corrected the exercises of the previous day, while the Decurions heard the lesson which had been learnt by heart. Then the master heard the piece of Latin which he had explained on the previous day. With this construing, was connected a great deal of parsing, conjugating, declining, &c. The teacher then explained the piece for the following day, which, in this form, was never to exceed four lines. The last half-hour of the morning was spent in explaining grammar. This was done very slowly and carefully: in the words of the Ratio Studd.: “Pluribus diebus fere singula præcepta inculcanda sunt”—“Generally take a single rule and drive it in, several days.” For the first hour of the afternoon the master corrected exercises, and the boys learnt grammar. If there was time, the master put questions about the grammar he had explained in the morning. The second hour was taken up with more explanations of grammar, and the school closed with half an hour’s concertation, or the master corrected the notes which the pupils had taken during the day. In the other forms, the work was very similar to this, except that Greek was added, and also in the higher classes a little mathematics.