been in our service, my father had been struck by her rare fidelity and unusual quickness. On his deathbed, agonized at the thought of what the consequence of his death might be for his family that he was leaving almost penniless, he sent for her, and said: 'Babeli, for the love of God and all His mercies, do not forsake my wife! What will become of her after my death? My children will fall into the hands of strangers and their lot will be hard. Without your help she cannot possibly keep her children with her.' Her noble, simple heart was touched, and her soul accepted the sacrifice. If you die,' she said, 'I will not forsake your wife, but I will remain with her, if needs be, till death.' Her words soothed my poor father, a gleam of joy shone in his eyes, and he died happily.

"She kept her word, for she stayed with my mother till she died, helping her to bring up her three children under the most difficult and painful circumstances imaginable, and showing in this work of patient devotion a tact and delicacy which were the more astonishing, seeing that she was entirely without education and had left her native village only a few months before to try and find a situation in Zurich.

"Her fidelity and dignity of manner were a result of her piety and simple faith. However painful the conscientious fulfilment of her promise may sometimes have been, it never once occurred to her that she might break it.

"My mother's position as a widow necessitated the most careful economy, and the trouble that Babeli took to do what was almost impossible, is hardly credible. To save a farthing or two in the purchase of vegetables or fruit, she would go two or three times to the market, waiting for the moment when the peasants would be anxious to get rid of their goods for the sake of returning home. The same careful economy was applied to everything, rtherwise my mother's slender means would not have sufficed for our housekeeping expenses. When we children wanted to be off somewhere and there was no particular reason for us to go, Babeli would stop us, saying: 'Why do you want to go and spoil your clothes and shoes to no purpose? See how your mother goes without everything for your sakes, how she never leaves the house for months together, how she is saving every farthing for your education.' But of herself, of what she did for us, of her continual sacrifices, the noble

girl never spoke. The economy in the house was not allowed to interfere in any way with the family traditions, and the money devoted to alms, gratuities, and new year's gifts was out of all proportion to our personal expenses. Although these extra disbursements always troubled my mother and Babeli, they never hesitated to make them. My brother, my sister and myself had all fine Sunday clothes, but we wore them very little, always taking them off as soon as we got indoors, in order that they might last the longer. When my mother expected visitors, no pains were spared to make our one room fit to receive them."

This economy did not prevent the children from occasionally having a little pocket-money. One day, when little Henry had a few pence in his pocket, he was tempted by the good things in a confectioner's window near his home and went in to buy something. The house, which was in the square and has since been restored, was called The Plough. The shopkeeper's name was Schulthess, and inside Henry found little Anna Schulthess minding the shop. The girl was only seven years older than he was, but she refused to sell him anything and advised him to keep his money till he could make a better use of it. She who now gave him this excellent piece of advice afterwards became his wife, and remained his good angel till her death.

Thus Pestalozzi passed his childhood in an atmosphere of love, devotion, and peace, of rigid economy and of noble generosity. It was this, undoubtedly, that made him trustful, self-forgetful, calm, and affectionate, and gave him that gentle, sincere, and active piety which finds pleasure even in renunciation and privation. At the same time his imagination did not remain dormant, indeed its development seemed to make up in a measure for his lack of physical activity. The little fellow, nearly always shut up at home, listened eagerly to tales and readings, of which he never forgot a word. On the contrary, he turned them over and over in his mind, putting himself in the place of his heroes and making them act differently with different results. Already he was busy with thoughts which took him far away from the realities of his life.

1 Letter from Pestalozzi to Professor Ith, 1802.

The education Pestalozzi received from his mother left ineffaceable memories in his heart. Mothers, to him, were the ideal educators; it was to them he addressed his advice and exhortations, and on them that he relied for the regeneration of the people. And is not he himself an example of how much a man's childhood may be influenced by the care, love, and devotion of a good mother? And may we not think that if Rousseau had been brought up by a good mother, his genius might have been entirely beneficent?

But however excellent Pestalozzi's early education may have been in all the most important points, and especially in the development of his affections, it was bound to be incomplete. The boy, puny from his birth, always indoors, brought up entirely by women, deprived of a father's influence, of all contact with boys of his own age, and of outdoor games and interests, remained all his life small and weak, shy and awkward, changeable and impressionable. As Niederer, who afterwards became his friend and helper, once said: "In Pestalozzi there was as much of the woman as of the man."

The springs of young Pestalozzi's life were in the heart and imagination alone; his thought, swift to perceive the relations between things, and often turned in on itself, left him absent-minded, inattentive, and careless about mere formalities, and, as a general rule, about the material conditions of life. He was unaware of the exceptional character of the family-life he had enjoyed, and ignorant of what the society of men in general was like. It is easy to judge from this how many bitter disappointments were in store for him.

They commenced as soon as he went to school. Although he often gave proof of penetration, he was unsuccessful with most of his work; indeed, he wrote and spelt so badly that his master judged him to be utterly incapable. His companions liked him for his good disposition and obliging nature, but they took advantage of his good qualities to make a butt of him. Pestalozzi speaks of himself at this period of his life as follows:

"The failures which would have sadly troubled other children hardly affected me. However much I might have desired or dreaded anything, when it was once over, and I

had had two or three nights of good sleep after it, if it concerned me alone, it was just as though it had never been. From my childhood I have been everybody's plaything. My education, which gave food to all the dreams of my fancy, left me alike incapable of doing what everybody does, and of enjoying what everybody enjoys. From the very first, little children, my schoolfellows, sent me where they would rather not go, and I went; in short I did all they wanted. The day of the earthquake at Zurich, when masters and boys rushed pell-mell downstairs, and nobody would venture back into the class-room, it was I who went to fetch the caps and books. But, in spite of all this, there was no intimacy between my companions and myself. Although I worked hard, and learned some things well, I had none of their ability for the ordinary lessons, and so I could not take it amiss that they dubbed me Harry Oddity of Foolborough.2

"More than any other child, I was always running my head against the wall for mere trifles; but it did not trouble me. I thought I could do many things which were quite beyond me; I measured the whole world by my mother's house and my schoolroom, and the ordinary life of men was almost as unknown to me as if I had lived in another world." 3

From the time that he was nine years old, young Pestalozzi was invited every summer to spend a few weeks with his grandfather, Andrew Pestalozzi, the pastor at Höngg, a village about three miles from Zurich.

This village is magnificently situated; the hills on which it lies, on the right bank of the Limmat, slope rapidly on the south to the river, on the other side of which the ground is lower and covered with houses. The land at Höngg is rich and divided into fields, vineyards, and large orchards. The parsonage, which is close to the church, is still the same as a hundred years ago, though parts of it have been restored and modernized. The gardens which surround it were formerly narrow terraces built on the side of the hill. The dining-room, which is in the south-east corner of the

The 19th of December, 1755.

2 As Mr. Quick has well put it. [Tr.]
Letter to Ith, already que ted.

building, and has large windows looking east and south commanding a beautiful view of the basin of the Limmat, is unchanged, save that a small stove, in white porcelain, has replaced the enormous green structure that formerly stood there.

It was in this place that Pestalozzi, the schoolboy, passed his happy holidays; here that he learned to love Nature and the work of the fields; and here that he first conceived the noble idea to which he was destined to devote his whole life.

Already at that time the peasants of this canton had begun to combine industry with agriculture. As yet there were neither factories nor machinery, it is true, but in every family there was a certain amount of spinning done by hand.

By accompanying his grandfather on his daily visits to the schools, the sick and the poor of his parish, the child was initiated into the realities of the life of the people; and although this was his first acquaintance with their sufferings, he was touched with profound compassion for them, and from that moment there burned in his heart an unquenchable desire to find some remedy for the evil.

A village pastor has a sublime task, but a very difficult one; his duties are innumerable and unceasing. Obliged to be for ever fighting, and often single-handed, against the material, intellectual, and moral poverty that surrounds him, and which, in spite of all his efforts, seems ever the same, he would lose heart and courage if he were not supported by a sure and well-tried faith. Young Pestalozzi's grandfather was one of those men who devote their whole energy to the office they have chosen. His faith, which was simple and sincere, living and active, naturally made a strong impression on his grandchild, who used to say afterwards:

"The best way for a child to learn to fear God is to see and hear a real Christian.”

At the same time, this life of active charity and sacrifice, corresponding with the boy's deeper feelings, and appealing strongly to his emotional nature, soon became his ideal and his ambition; and he made up his mind to be a pastor like his grandfather. It was therefore decided that he should study theology.