At the Philanthropinum.

gone through the oddest performances. They play at 'word of command.' Eight or ten stand in a line like soldiers, and Herr Wolke is officer. He gives the word in I atin, and they must do whatever he says. For instance, when he says Claudite oculos, they all shut their eyes; when he says Circumspicite, they look about them; Imitamini sartorem, they all sew like tailors; Imitamini sutorem, they draw the waxed thread like the cobblers. Herr Wolke gives a thousand different commands in the drollest fashion. Another game, 'the hiding game,' I will also teach you, Some one writes a name, and hides it from the children— the name of some part of the body, or of a plant, or animal, or metal-and the children guess what it is. Whoever guesses right gets an apple or a piece of cake. One of the visitors wrote Intestina, and told the children it was a part of the body. Then the guessing began. One guessed caput, another nasus, another os, another manus, pes, digiti, pectus, and so forth, for a long time; but one of them hit it at last. Next Herr Wolke wrote the name of a beast, a quadruped. Then came the guesses: leo, ursus, camelus, elephas, and so on, till one guessed right—it was mus. a town was written, and they guessed Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, London, till a child won with St. Petersburg. They had another game, which was this: Herr Wolke gave the command in Latin, and they imitated the noises of different animals, and made us laugh till we were tired. They roared like lions, crowed like cocks, mewed like cats, just as they were bid."

Then

§ 15. The subject that was next handled had also the effect of making the strangers laugh, till a severe reproof from Herr Wolke restored their gravity A picture was brought, in which was represented a sad-looking woman,

Methods in the Philanthropinum.

whose person indicated the approaching arrival of another subject for education. From one part of the picture it also appeared that the prospective mother, with a prodigality of forethought, had got ready clothing for both a boy and a girl. After a warning from Herr Wolke, that this was a most serious and important subject, the children were questioned on the topics the picture suggested. They were further taught the debt of gratitude they owed to their mothers, and the German fiction about the stork was dismissed with due contempt.

Here

§ 16. Next came the examination in arithmetic. there seems to have been nothing remarkable, except that all the rules were worked vivâ voce. From the arithmetic Herr Wolke went on to an Attempt at various small drawings." He asked the children what he should draw. Some one answered leonem. He then pretended he was drawing a lion, but put a beak to it; whereupon the children shouted Non est leo-leones non habent rostrum ! He went on to other subjects, as the children directed him, sometimes going wrong that the children might put him right. In the next exercise dice were introduced, and the children threw to see who should give an account of an engraving. The engravings represented workmen at their different trades, and the child had to explain the process, the tools, &c. A lesson on ploughing and harrowing was given in French, and another, on Alexander's expedition to India, in Latin. Four of the pupils translated passages from Curtius and from Castalio's Bible, which were read to them. "These children," said the teacher, "knew not a word of Latin a year ago." "The listeners were well pleased with the Latin,” writes Fred, "except two or three, whom I heard grumbling that this was all child's play, and that if Cicero, Livy, and

The Philanthropinum criticised.

Horace were introduced, it would soon be seen what was the value of Philanthropinist Latin." After the examination, two comedies were acted by the children, one in French, the other in German.

Most of the strangers seem to have left Dessau with a favourable impression of the Philanthropin. They were especially struck with the brightness and animation of the children.

§ 17. How far did the Philanthropinum really deserve their good opinion? The conclusion to which we are driven by Fred's narrative is, that Basedow carried to excess his principle" Treat children as children, that they may remain the longer uncorrupted;" and that the Philanthropinum was, in fact, nothing but a good infant-school. Surely none of the thirteen children who were the subjects of Basedow's experiments could have been more than ten years old. But if we consider Basedow's system to have been intended for children, say between the ages of six and ten, we must allow that it possessed great merits. At the very beginning of a boy's learning, it has always been too much the custom to make him hate the sight of a book, and escape at every opportunity from school-work, by giving him difficult tasks, and neglecting his acutest faculties. "Children love motion and noise," says Basedow: "here is a hint from nature." Yet the youngest children in most schools are expected to keep quiet and to sit at their books for as many hours as the youths of seventeen or eighteen. Their vivacity is repressed with the cane. Their delight in exercising their hands and eyes and ears is taken no notice of; and they are required to keep their attention fixed on subjects, often beyond their comprehension, and almost always beyond the range of their interests. Everyone who

B.'s improvements in teaching children.

has had experience in teaching boys knows how hard it is to get them to throw themselves heartily into any task what ever; and probably this difficulty arises in many cases, from the habits of inattention and of shirking school-work, which the boys have acquired almost necessarily from the dreariness of their earliest lessons.* Basedow determined to change all this; and in the Philanthropin no doubt he succeeded. We have already seen some of the expedients by which he sought to render school-work pleasurable. He appealed, wherever it was possible, to the children's senses; and these, especially the sight, were trained with great care by exercises, such as drawing, shooting at a mark, &c. One of these exercises, intended to give quick perception, bears a curious likeness to what has since been practised in a very different educational system. A picture, with a somewhat varied subject, was exhibited for a short time and removed. The boys had then, either verbally or on paper, to give an account of it, naming the different objects in proper order. Houdin, if I rightly remember, tells us that the young thieves of Paris are required by their masters to make a mental inventory of the contents of a shop window, which they see only as they walk rapidly by. Other exercises of the Philanthropinum connected the pupils with more. honourable callings. They became acquainted with both

* "Who has not met with some experience such as this? A child with an active and inquiring mind accustomed to chatter about everything that interests him is sent to school. In a few weeks his vivacity is extinguished, his abundance of talk has dried up. If you ask him about his studies, if you desire him to give you a specimen of what he has learnt, he repeats to you in a sing-song voice some rule for the formation of tenses or some recipe for spelling words. Such are the results of the teaching which should be of all teaching the most fruitful and the most attractive !" Translated from Quelques Mots, &c., by M. Bréal.

Basedow's successors.

skilled and unskilled manual labour. Every boy was taught a handicraft, such as carpentering and turning, and was put to such tasks as threshing corn. Basedow's division of the

twenty-four hours was the following: Eight hours for sleep, eight for food and amusement, and, for the children of the rich, six hours of school-work, and two of manual labour. In the case of the children of the poor, he would have the division of the last eight hours inverted, and would give for school-work two, and for manual labour six. The development of the body was specially cared for in the Philanthropinum Gymnastics were now first introduced into modern schools; and the boys were taken long expeditions on foot-the commencement, I believe, of a practice now common throughout Germany.

He

§ 18. As I have already said, Basedow proved a very unfit person to be at the head of the model Institution. Many of his friends agreed with Herder, that he was not fit to have calves entrusted to him, much less children. soon resigned his post; and was succeeded by Campe, who had been one of the visitors at the public examination. Campe did not remain long at the Philanthropinum; but left it to set up a school, on like principles, at Hamburg. His fame now rests on his writings for the young; one of which "Robinson Crusoe the Younger "-is still a general favourite.

Other distinguished men became connected with the Philanthropin-among them Salzmann, and Matthison the poet-and the number of pupils rose to over fifty; gathered we are told, from all parts of Europe between Riga and Lisbon. But this number is by no means a fair measure of the interest, nay, enthusiasm, which the experiment excited. We find Pastor Oberlin raising money on his wife's earrings