CHAPTER XI.

PESTALOZZI'S INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF.

Pestalozzi and Krusi unite their Schools in Burgdorf Castle. Tobler, Buss, and Naef join them. Appreciation of the new institution by the Society of the Friends of Education. Great success of the school. Its reputation in other countries. Visitors of note. The Government appoints a Commission to examine it. Official reports. The Petty Council decides to convert it into a training college for Switzerland. Counter-revolution in Switzerland. Pestalozzi deputed to attend the Consulta in Paris.

Bona

parte and the Pestalozzian method. The Bernese Government resumes possession of Burgdorf Castle. Pestalozzi's institute transferred first to Munchenbuchsee, then to Yverdun.

PESTALOZZI was now safe, for he had found in Krusi a man who not only thoroughly entered into his ideas, and eagerly acted on his suggestions, but who had besides the strength and knowledge of the world that he himself lacked.

To unite the poor refugees from Appenzell with the children that the well-to-do families of Burgdorf had entrusted to him, Pestalozzi had need of much more room than had hitherto sufficed him. Thanks to the efforts of Stapfer, the Executive Council, by a decree of the 23rd of July, 1800, granted to Pestalozzi the gratuitous use of as much of the castle of Burgdorf as was necessary for his purpose, as well as that of a certain portion of the garden. They also agreed to supply him with a considerable quantity of wood.

The two little schools were then brought together in the rooms of the castle, and the two new friends began their work in common.

Krusi's account of their first efforts is as follows:

"Pestalozzi left me quite free. I was filled with admiration for his views, his work, and his past life. I felt myself encouraged by his trust, and was proud of his friendship. The appearance of our combined schools became more and more satisfactory every day, and the happiness of the children and their eagerness to learn soon attracted a good deal of attention."

Pestalozzi himself was less satisfied; he found himself hampered by the many differences of age, education, character, habits, and origin in the children thus united under his care. He felt the need, too, of more help, not only for his own greater freedom of action, but for the sake of his elementary instruction books, at which he was already working, and of which we shall have to say something further on, though neither the plan nor the execution was, in our opinion, at all satisfactory.

As soon as the summer holidays arrived, Krusi took the opportunity of paying a visit to his friend and compatriot, Tobler, who was a tutor in a family at Basle, and who, from his correspondence with Fischer, had already learned to know something of Pestalozzi. Krusi gave him an account of the new undertaking at Burgdorf and suggested that he should take part in it.

Tobler at once accepted. He had talent and imagination, and a great taste for study and teaching. His early educa tion had been much neglected, but at twenty-two years of age, having suddenly decided to become a minister of the Gospel, he had begun to work seriously. Obliged, however, to earn his own living, he was fortunate enough to obtain a tutorship in Basle which left him leisure for private work. He had been working in this way for ten years with unflagging perseverance, when he became acquainted with Pestalozzi. He had never succeeded to his own satisfaction in imparting his knowledge to his pupils, and now he seemed to see in this man the very power that he himself lacked. He gladly embraced the opportunity of working with him, and hastened to Burgdorf.

Pestalozzi was still in need of a master to teach drawing and singing. Tobler recommended him a young man named Buss, who was at that time apprenticed to a bookbinder in Basle.

Buss had had a strange existence. His father was employed in the theological school at Tubingen, and had made him follow the Latin lessons from the time he was three till he was thirteen. When he was eight years old, a student taught him the piano. The student left however in six months' time, and the boy had to continue his music alone. He succeeded so well that, by the time he was twelve, he was sufficiently advanced to be able to take pupils. At eleven he had taken drawing-lessons, and was already studying Greek, Hebrew, logic, and rhetoric. His father hoped that he would be able to finish his studies without payment in the academy of science and art of Stuttgart, but this was declared to be impossible, "because he was of too low extraction." Greatly disheartened, and obliged to put his hand to something for a living, he became a bookbinder. In spite of this, however, he continued to cultivate his talent for music and drawing.

He was working in this way at Basle, with little taste for the trade he had chosen, when Tobler brought him Pestalozzi's offer. His friends advised him not to accept it, for they only knew the great teacher by his weak side. "He's all but a mad man," they said, "with whom it is better to have nothing to do; he never quite knows what he wants, and has even been seen in the streets of Basle with his shoes tied on with straw." ." This was a fact, for one day Pestalozzi, being anxious to help a poor man outside the town gates, and having no money, had given him his shoe-buckles. But Buss had read Leonard and Gertrude, and that was enough. When Buss arrived at Burgdorf, Pestalozzi, who hurried to meet him, his hair and clothes in the greatest disorder, his stockings down, and his shoes covered with dust, pro uced for a moment anything but a favourable impression. Soon, however, the quickness of his intellect, together with his extreme kindliness ard simpleness, had entirely won the sympathy and trust of the new comer.

On entering the schoolroom, Buss found nothing at first but noise and confusion, and it was some little time before he could understand what was going on. His first impression was that the children were kept too long at the elements; but when he saw how much power this gave them afterwards, he could not help feeling that if he himself had been taught in this way, he would have been in a position

to carry on his studies by himself, and need never have been prevented from rising in the world.

Krusi's account of the masters with whom the Burgdorf institute opened is as follows:

"Our society thus consisted of four very different men, brought together by a strange combination of circumstances: the founder, whose chief literary reputation was that of a dreamer, incapable in practical life, and three young men, one a private tutor, whose youth had been much neglected, who had begun to study late, and whose pedagogical efforts had never produced the results that his character and talents seemed to promise, another a bookbinder, who devoted his leisure to singing and drawing, and the third a village schoolmaster, who carried out the duties of his office as best he could without having been in any way prepared for them. Those who looked on this group of men, scarce one of them with a home of his own, naturally formed but a small opinion of their capabilities. And yet our work succeeded, and won the public confidence beyond the ехресtation of those who knew us, and even beyond our own.'

This confidence was also excited from the very outset by a public testimony to the value of Pestalozzi's work, a testimony indeed of such importance, that we must lay it before our readers before we proceed to give the history of the Burgdorf institute.

The Commission that had been appointed by the Society of the Friends of Education to report on Pestalozzi's doctrine paid a visit to his school very shortly after Krusi had joined him. The results of their inquiry were drawn up by the secretary Luthi, and presented on the 1st of October, 1800, to a general meeting of the Society, held in the house of the Minister of Arts and Science, no longer Stapfer, but Mohr, of Lucerne. The report runs as follows:

"The first thing we noticed was that Pestalozzi's children learn to spell, read, write, and calculate quickly and well, arriving in six months at results which an ordinary village schoolmaster would hardly bring them to in three years.

"It is true that schoolmasters are not generally men like Pestalozzi, nor do they find assistants like those of our

friend. But it seems to us that this extraordinary progress depends not so much upon the teachers as upon the method of teaching.

"And what is this method? It is a method which simply follows the path of Nature, or, in other words, which leads the child slowly, and by his own efforts, from senseimpressions to abstract ideas. Another advantage of this method is that it does not unduly exalt the master, inasmuch as he never appears as a superior being, but, like kindly Nature, lives and works with the children, his equals, seeming rather to learn with them than to teach them with authority.

"Who does not know how ready the youngest children are to give everything a name, to put things together, and then take them to pieces again for the sake of new combinations? Who does not remember that he liked drawing better than writing? Who does not know that the most unlearned men are often the quickest at mental calculations? Who is ignorant that children, boys and girls, almost as soon as they can walk, delight in playing at soldiers, and in other forms of exercise?

"It is on these simple and well-known facts that Pestalozzi bases his method of instruction. Were it not for the fact that other men are daily making the same mistakes as teachers, we should be inclined to ask how it is that this idea never occurred to anybody before."

The report then goes on to speak of the use of movable letters for spelling and reading, slates for writing, and visible objects for teaching the children to count, and mentions that singing and walking often take the place of the regular lessons. It concludes as follows:

"So far as we have been able to judge, it is impossible to grasp the general idea of the method without having followed the exercises from the very beginning. It results from what we have said that Pestalozzi's system ought to be introduced into the whole of Switzerland; the advantages of such a step would be incalculable. Pestalozzi's earnest desire is that he may be able, with the help of his worthy collaborators, to make his method generally known, and instruct all schoolmasters in its use. The Commission cannot