as he fears his mother's rod; and this so that the fear of the lesser evil may help to save him from the greater. He uses this parable in support of his view: "If the mother sees her child on the banks of a stream, across which there is a dangerous plank, she says: 'Do not cross!' Should he try to cross, and thus be in danger of drowning, she rushes to the treacherous plank and, pale and trembling, snatches him from peril. Again she warns him, with urgent emphasis: 'Do not go on the plank, for you may drown yourself!' When she gets him in doors she shows him the rod, saying, 'If you go there again, I shall whip you!' If, nevertheless, he does again try to cross the plank, she whips him; and then he never again ventures there, but still he loves his mother as before."

In Leonard and Gertrude a mother thus speaks to her child who has been gossiping, after repeated warnings not to do it: "You have been told, once for all, that you are not to talk of anything that is no business of yours; but it is all in vain. There is no getting you out of this habit, except by severe means; and the very first time that I catch you again in any such idle gossip, I shall take to the rod.'

"The tears burst from poor Betty's eyes when her mother mentioned the rod. The mother saw it and said to her: The greatest mischief, Betty, often arises out of idle gossip, and you must be cured of that fault '."

A want of thoroughness and carefulness in work, so far as the child was really capable of these, was regarded as a fault to be cured. "I always made the children learn perfectly even the least important things, and I never allowed them to lose ground; a word once learnt, for instance, was never to be forgotten, and a letter

once well written never to be written badly again. I was very patient with all who were weak and slow, but very severe with those who did anything less well than they had done it before."

Ramsauer, describing his own experiences as a pupil at the institution in Burgdorf, says: "Although Pestalozzi at all times strictly prohibited his assistants from using any kind of corporal punishment, yet he by no means dispensed with it himself, but very often dealt out boxes on the ears right and left. But most of the scholars rendered his life very unhappy; so much so that I felt a real sympathy for him, and kept myself all the more quiet."

M. Soyaux, of Berlin, who visited the institute at Yverdon, says: "As to discipline, the guiding principle is to allow the greatest possible liberty to the children, only trying to prevent abuses. In no case does the restrictive side of a rule predominate. Masters and pupils are as easy and natural in their manner as the lonely mountain-dwellers. They know nothing of the refinements of polite society, of polished phrases, or of high etiquette. While, however, enjoying complete liberty they keep within certain reasonable limits; obstinacy, bullying, quarrelsomeness, etc., are extremely unusual among them. . . . The masters never think of enforcing their authority by commands or reproofs.

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"The children are, indeed, under too little restraint. There are, in effect, hardly any rules at all. During lessons they sit or stand as they feel inclined, and wherever they choose. . . . Naturally, owing to their youthful vivacity, they are more like a mob of people pushing and shoving to get the best places rather than a class of pupils who desire to learn, among whom

there should be proper order, if such an end is to be gained."

De Guimps tells us that: "Three times a week the masters rendered an account to Pestalozzi of the pupils' work and behaviour. The latter were summoned by the old man, five or six at a time, to receive his exhortations or remonstrances. He would take them one by one into a corner of his room, and ask them in a low voice if they had something to tell him, or to ask him. He tried in this way to gain their confidence, to find out if they were happy, what pleased them, or what troubled them."

Pestalozzi trained his pupils, as far as was possible, in methods of self-government. He says: "I appealed to them in all matters that concerned the establishment. It was generally in the quiet evening hours that I appealed to their free judgment. When, for example, it was reported in the village that they had not enough to eat, I said to them, 'Tell me, my children, if you are not better fed than you were at home? . . . Do you lack anything that is really necessary? Do you think

I could reasonably and justly do more for you?' In the same way, when I heard that it was reported that I punished them too severely, I said to them: 'You know how I love you, my children; but tell me, would you like me to stop punishing you? Do you think that in any other way I can free you from your deeply rooted bad habits, or make you always mind what I say?' You were there, my friend [Gessner], and saw with you own eyes the sincere emotion with which they answered, 'We do not complain of your treatment. Would that we never deserved punishment; but when we do, we are willing to bear it.'

"I shall never forget the impression that my words produced, when in speaking of a certain disturbance that had taken place amongst them, I said, 'My children, it is the same with us as with every other household; when the children are numerous, and each gives way to his bad habits, such disorder follows that even the weakest mother is obliged to be reasonable, and make them submit to what is just and right. And that is what I must do now. If you do.not willingly assist in the maintenance of order, our establishment cannot go on, you will fall back into your former condition, and your misery-now that you have been accustomed to a good home, clean clothes, and regular food-will be greater than ever."

But Pestalozzi was not less clear and definite in the conviction that to do without corporal punishment is the better way, and the end for which to strive. In his letter about Stanz he says: "The pedagogical principle which says we must win the hearts and minds of our children by words alone without having recourse to corporal punishment, is undoubtedly good, and to be applied under favourable conditions and circumstances. But with children with such widely different ages as mine; children for the most part beggars; and all full of deeply rooted faults; a certain amount of corporal punishment was inevitable, especially as I was anxious to arrive surely, quickly, and by the simplest means, at obtaining an influence over them all, to the end that I might put them all on the right road.

"I was compelled to punish them, but it would be a mistake to suppose that I thereby, in any way, lost the confidence of my pupils. It is not the rare and isolated actions that form the opinions and feelings of children,

but the impressions of every day and every hour. From such impressions they judge whether we are kindly disposed to them or not, and this decides their general attitude towards us."

Again he writes: "I have urged the supreme character of the motive of sympathy as the one that should early, and indeed principally, be employed in the management of children” (On Infants' Education).