"CITIZEN MINISTER,

"Convinced that the country is in urgent need of some improvement in the education and schools of the people, and feeling certain that three or four months' experience would produce the most important results, I address myself, in the absence of Citizen Minister Stapfer, to Citizen Minister Meyer, to offer through him my services to the country, and to beg him to take the necessary steps with the Directory for the carrying out of my patriotic purposes.

"With republican greeting,

"PESTALOZZI."

Thus ends another epoch of Pestalozzi's life; a period which must have been filled with many an agony of despondency, despair and deprivation, only partly expressed by his statement in a letter to M. Zschokke. "" Do you know that I have wanted the bare necessities? Do you know that until now I have kept out of society, away from church, because I had neither clothes nor money to buy them? O Zschokke, do you know that I am the laughing-stock of the passers-by because I look like a beggar? Do you know that? More than a thousand times I was obliged to go without dinner, and at noon, when even the poorest were seated around a table, I devoured a morsel of bread upon the highway and all this that I might minister to the needs of the poor, by the realisation of my principles.”

Yet, happily, even in these dark times there were bursts of glorious sunshine. His writings had made him, to a certain extent, famous. He visited Germany and became acquainted with Goethe, Wieland, Herder, Fichte and other great men, in 1792; and in the same year he

was declared a "Citizen of the French Republic," in company with such men as Bentham, Tom Payne, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Washington, Madison, Klopstock, Kozciusko, etc. Karl von Bonstetten asked Pestalozzi to live with him on his estate in Italian Switzerland; the Austrian Minister of Finance, Count Zinzendorf, wished to have him in his neighbourhood; and the Grand Duke of Tuscany desired to give him an appointment.

CHAPTER V.

STANZ AND BURGDORF_"I WILL TURN SCHOOLMASTER."

ONE of the five Swiss Directors was Le Grand, who had been the friend and helper of Pastor Oberlin in his great educational work in the Ban de la Roche, and he was only too pleased to take Pestalozzi at his word. Arrangements were being made for Pestalozzi to open a school in the canton of Argovie when war put an end to the project. But though the war closed one opening it created another. On the 9th of September, 1798, the town of Stanz was burnt by the French, and the people put to the sword with the greatest ferocity. Crowds of fatherless and motherless children wandered about destitute and homeless. Le Grand called upon Pestalozzi to go to the rescue of the orphans at Stanz. He gladly went.

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The regulations and aim of the institution-a poorhouse-to be established are set forth in the decree issued by the Directory on the 5th of December, 1798. They are: (1) The immediate control of the poorhouse at Stanz is entrusted to Citizen Pestalozzi. (2) Children of both sexes, taken from among the poorest, and specially from the orphans in the Stanz district, will be received in it and brought up free of charge. (3) Children will not be received under the age of five

years; they will remain till they are fit to go into service, or to learn such a trade as cannot be taught to them in the institution.

"(4) The poor-house will be conducted with all the care and economy that befits such an institution. will be the rule that children shall be gradually led to take part in all the work necessary for the carrying on and support of the establishment. The time of the pupils will be divided between work in the fields, the house and the schoolroom. An endeavour will be made to develop in the pupils as much skill, and as many useful powers, as the funds of the institution will permit. So far as it is possible to do so without endangering the industrial ends which are to be aimed at, a few lessons will be given during the manual work.

"(5) All the out-buildings of the women's convent at Stanz are to be given up to the work of the institution, and also a sufficient portion of the adjoining meadowland. The buildings will at once be repaired and fitted up for the accommodation of eighty pupils, in accordance with the plans drawn up by Citizen Schmid, of Lucerne. (6) For the founding of the asylum the Minister of the Interior will, once for all, place a sum of two hundred and forty pounds at the disposal of the Committee of the Poor" [Pestalozzi; Truttman, the sub-prefect of Arth; and Businger, the parish-priest of Stanz]. This decree was based upon a plan drawn up by Pestalozzi, and warmly approved by Stapfer, Rengger and Le Grand.

The actual plan of work is given by Pestalozzi in a letter to Rengger: "The hours of work and study are now fixed as follows: from six to eight, lessons; then

manual work till four in the afternoon; then lessons again till eight ". This letter was written on the 19th April, 1799.

A very real interest was taken by Government in the institution, as is shown by the frequent reports concerning it, and by the fact that on the 24th of May, 1799, Pestalozzi took all his children to Lucerne, where they were welcomed by the members of the Executive Directory. On this occasion each child received a silver coin as a present.

While the convent was being built and as soon as a single room could be made use of, Pestalozzi received forty children-very soon after increased to eightyand began his work. This was in January, 1799, in a time of severe cold. Here, in this one room in which master and pupils had to live both by day and night, was made an experiment in practical education the history of which will, probably, never die. For five months Pestalozzi worked like any slave and nearly killed himself by overwork. He was almost without help: "I opened the establishment with no other helper than a woman-servant ". pared for the children: "Neither beds were ready to receive them. source of incredible trouble. For the first few weeks I was shut up in a very small room; the weather was bad, and the alterations, which made a great dust and filled the corridors with rubbish, rendered the air very unhealthy. The want of beds compelled me at first to send some of the poor children home at night; and they came back next day covered with vermin.

Nothing was prekitchen, rooms, nor At first this was a

"Most of them on their arrival were very degenerated specimens of humanity. Many of them had a sort of