Nature Study
It has already been mentioned that Vives supplies a dialogue describing an academic journey.[21] Two of the characters thus discourse:—
Misippus. Look how softly the river flows by! What a delightful murmur there is of the full crystal water amongst the golden rocks! Do you hear the nightingale and the goldfinch? Of a truth, the country round Paris is most delightful!
Philippus. How placidly the Seine flows in its current.... Oh, how the meadow is clothed with a magic art.
Missippus. And by what a marvellous Artist!
Philippus. What a sweet scent is exhaled.... Please sing some verses as you are wont to do.
Then Vives introduces some lines by Angelus Politian praising the joy of peaceful, silent days which pass by without the agitation of ambition and the allurement of luxury, with blamelessness, though we work as with the labour of the poor man. Again[22]:—
Bambalio. Listen, there is the nightingale!
Graculus. Where is she?
Bambalio. Don’t you see her there, sitting on that branch? Listen how ardently she sings, nor does she leave off.
Nugo. (As Martial says) Flet philomela nefas. (The nightingale bemoans any injustice.)
Graculus. What a wonder she carols so sweetly when she is away from Attica where the very waves of the sea dash upon the shore, not without their rhythm.
Then Nugo tells the story of the nightingale and cuckoo.[23] One more instance. Several boys are out for a morning walk:—
Malvenda. Don’t let us take our walk as if in a rush, but slowly and gently....
Joannius [after contemplating the view]. There is no sense which has not a lordly enjoyment! First, the eyes! what varied colours, what clothing of the earth and trees, what tapestry! What paintings are comparable with this view?... Not without truth has the Spanish poet, Juan de Mena, called May the painter of the earth. Then the ear. How delightful to hear the singing of birds, and especially the nightingale. Listen to her (as she sings in the thicket) from whom, as Pliny says, issues the modulated sound of the completed science of music.... In very fact, you have, as it were, the whole study and school of music in the nightingale. Her little ones ponder and listen to the notes which they imitate. The tiny disciple listens with keen intentness (would that our teachers received like attention!) and gives back the sound.... Add to this there is a sweet scent breathing in from every side, from the meadows, from the crops, from the trees, even from the fallow-land and neglected fields.
Wine-drinking and Water-drinking
There can be little doubt even from the descriptions of feasts in the School Dialogues of Vives, as well as of Mosellanus and Erasmus, that drunkenness was not uncommon even amongst teachers in the Tudor period.[24] Vives distinguished himself by boldly advocating the claims of water against those of wines and beer. In Dialogue XI., “Getting dressed and a Morning Constitutional,” we read [speaking of the food for breakfast, after the walk]:—