learns them". All his school work centred round the teaching of the mother-tongue, through which he taught grammar (through lessons on things), logic, ideas and literature. He set out his system in the Educative Course in the Mother Tongue. Girard, like Pestalozzi, was one of the educational reformers.

There was also Emmanuel de Fellenberg (1775-1846), a man of noble birth and exalted character, who, after holding high public offices and mixing much with the people and their rulers, became convinced-through reading Pestalozzi's Leonard and Gertrude-that only by improvement in early education could the character of a people be made such that national greatness could be secured. He thereupon consecrated himself and his fortune to education; being then thirty-one years of age. His first step was to undertake the education of his own children, with a few boys from abroad, at his own house, on his estate at Hofwyl. Gradually he increased the number of pupils; but only by twos and threes so that the general working should not be much disturbed. These pupils were all of the patrician class. Two years later, 1807, he set up a "Poor School" or Agricultural Institution" for destitute children. The farm-house was used as a school, and Vehrli, the son of a schoolmaster of Thurgovia, was specially trained by Fellenberg (in his own house) to take charge of the institution. The aim was to use agriculture as a means of moral training for the poor; and to make the institution thereby self-supporting. Vehrli left the table of Fellenberg to share the straw beds and vegetable diet of these poor scholars; to be their fellow labourer on the farm; to join with them as a play-fellow in their games; and to be their teacher,

In 1823 a school for poor girls was built in the garden of the mansion; and Fellenberg's eldest daughter took charge of it. Four years after (1827) another development took place; an intermediate school, or "Practical Institution," was established. This was for the children of the middle classes in Switzerland. The pupils belonged to the families of men of business, mechanics and professional men; and they were taught such subjects as were thought necessary for those who were not intended for the professions of law, medicine and theology. Buildings, furniture, diet and dress were such as the pupils had been used to at home. Two hours each day were given to manual labour on the farm; to gardening on a plot of their own; to work in the mechanic's shop; and in household work, such as taking care of rooms, books and tools.

Fellenberg has given his view of the aim of education in these words: "The great object of education is to develop all the faculties of our nature, physical, intellectual and moral, and to endeavour to train and unite them into one harmonious system, which shall form the most perfect character of which the individual is susceptible; and thus prepare him for every period and every sphere of action to which he may be called".

His work attracted the attention of educators and statesmen in Switzerland and throughout Europe. Pupils were sent to him from Russia, Germany, France and England. Deputations from foreign Governments, and private individuals, visited Hofwyl to study the methods and organisation employed.

Such was the spirit of the times-so far as so brief an outline can suggest it-in which Pestalozzi lived and worked. How far it formed him and how far he

influenced it can be, in some measure, estimated when his life and work have been considered. But we shall understand each better in proportion as we know both.

It is worth while to note what was taking place in other countries, in educational matters, during Pestalozzi's lifetime. Bell (1753-1832), Lancaster (17781838), Robert Owen (1771-1858), Samuel Wilderspin (1792-1866) and Miss Edgeworth (1767-1849) were doing their work in Britain; Jacotot (1770-1840), Madame Necker de Saussure (1765-1841), Condorcet (1743-94) were working in France; and Basedow (1723-90), Oberlin (1740-1826) and Froebel (1782-1852) in Germany.

The thought and work of such reformers in education brought about the greatest possible changes in the schools. They may be said to have done for education what Bacon, Descartes, Locke and others did for philosophy: they changed its main purpose from a theological and religious one to an intellectual and rational. For the appeal to authority and tradition was substituted an appeal to science and experiment. Rabelais and Montaigne had done much to prepare the way for Rousseau; whilst Pestalozzi did more than any man before his time to put the best ideas into practical form. In all spheres of thought the principle of following Nature and Reason was beginning to become predominant at this period, and it was applied, for the first time, to education. Men were freeing themselves from the bondage of verbalism and entering into the full freedom of realism, both in thought and action.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION.

JOHN HENRY PESTALOZZI was born at Zurich on the 12th of January, 1746. His father was a doctor, an able man, but one who had not the art, or the will, for achieving practical success in life. He died when Pestalozzi was only six years of age, and left the family in very straitened circumstances. The widow, with her two boys and a girl, was helped by members of the Pestalozzi family, and managed, thanks to this help and the cheapness of the best schooling in Zurich, to give her children a good education. In all her domestic trials and struggles she was most loyally and devotedly supported by a faithful servant named Babeli. When on his deathbed Pestalozzi's father had sent for this girl, in whom he must have had the greatest confidence and trust, and said to her: "Babeli, for the sake of God and mercy, do not leave my wife; when I am dead she will be forlorn, and my children will fall into strange and cruel hands". Babeli replied: "I will not leave your wife when you die; I will remain with her till death, if she has need of me". This promise she fulfilled to the letter.

Not only did she sternly second the mother's strict economies, but she did everything she could to nourish in the mind of her young master that feeling of honest

independence which prevailed in those days almost with the intensity of a passion. On this point she would thus address him: "Never, never has a Pestalozzi eaten the bread of private compassion since Zurich was a city. Submit to any privation rather than dishonour your family. Look at those children (she would say as the poor orphans of Zurich passed the windows), how unfortunate would you be were it not for a tender mother, who denies herself every comfort that you may not become a pauper." She would often keep the children indoors when they wished to go out, saying to them: "Why will you needlessly wear out your shoes and clothes? See how much your mother denies herself in order to be able to give you an education; how for weeks and months she never goes out anywhere, but saves every farthing for your schooling." Their mother was, however, liberal in spending on such things as were needed to keep up their social position; the children had handsome Sunday clothes, but they had to take them off immediately they returned to the house.

The tender, affectionate and self-sacrificing mother, and the faithful and sturdy maid devoted themselves wholly to the good of the children. But this loving devotion was not without its drawbacks for Pestalozzi. As he himself says: "I was brought up by the hand of the best of mothers like a spoilt darling, such that you will not easily find a greater. From one year to another I never left the domestic hearth; in short, all the essential means and inducements to the development of manly vigour, manly experience, manly ways of thinking, and manly exercises were just as much wanting to me as, from the peculiarity and weakness of my temperament, I especially needed them." As one