He found the country behindhand both economically and socially, and with benign fervour applied himself to its regeneration.

Agriculture was his principal hobby, and he effected much towards its improvement in England, rather however by editing the unpublished treatises of Weston and Child than by any direct contributions of his own.

Next among the undertakings to which he devoted himself were two of no less moment than the union of British and foreign Protestants, and the reform of English education by the introduction of the methods of Comenius.

This Moravian pastor, the Pestalozzi of his age, had first of men grasped the idea that the ordinary school methods were better adapted to instil a knowledge of words than a knowledge of things.

He was, in a word, the inventor of object lessons.