to pass an afternoon idly; if you would not have him waste his time and estate to divert others, and contemn the dirty acres left him by his ancestors, I do not think you will much care he should be a poet, or that his schoolmaster should enter him in versifying. (§ 174.)

FROM THE EVENING HOUR OF A HERMIT.'

What man is, what he needs, what elevates him and degrades him, what strengthens him and weakens him, such is the knowledge needed both by shepherds of the people, and by the inmate of the most lowly hut.

Everywhere humanity feels this want. Everywhere it struggles to satisfy it with labour and earnestness. For the want of it men live restless lives, and at death they cry aloud that they have not fulfilled the purposes of their being. Their end is not the ripening of the perfect fruits of the year, which in full completion are laid away for the repose of the winter.

The powers of conferring blessings on humanity are not a gift of art or of accident. They exist with their fundamental principles in the inmost nature of all men. Their development is the universal need of humanity.

Central point of life, individual destiny of man, thou art the book of Nature. In thee lieth the power and the plan of that wise teacher; and every school education not erected upon the principles of human development leads astray.

The happy infant learns by this road what his mother is to him; and thus grows within him the actual sentiment of love and gratitude before he can understand the words Duty or Thanks.

. . The truth which rises from our inmost being is universal human truth, and would serve as a truth for the reconciliation of those who are quarrelling by thousands over its husks.

Man, it is thyself, the inner consciousness of thy powers, which is the object of the education of nature.

The general elevation of these inward powers of the human mind to a pure human wisdom is the universal purpose of the education even of the lowest man. The practice, application, and use of these powers and this wisdom under special circumstances and conditions of humanity, is education for a professional or social condition. These must always be kept subordinate to the general object of human training.

Nature develops all the human faculties by practice, and their growth depends upon their exercise.

Men, fathers, force not the faculties of your children into paths too distant before they have attained strength by exercise; and avoid harshness and over-fatigue.

(You leave the right order) when, before making them sensitive to truth and wisdom by the real knowledge of actual objects, you engage them in the thousand-fold confusions of word-learning and opinions; and lay the foundation of their mental character and of the first determination of their powers, not with truth and actual obligations, but with sounds and speech and words.

God is the nearest resource for humanity. . .

...

To suffer pain and death and the grave, without God, thy nature, educated to mildness, goodness, and feeling, has no power.

...

Believe in thyself, O man; believe in the inward intelligence of thine own soul; thus shalt thou believe in God and immortality. Faith in the fatherhood of God is faith in immortality.

Faith in my own father, who is a child of God, is a training for my faith in God.

Faith in God sanctifies and strengthens the bond between parents and children, between subjects and princes. Unbelief dissolves all bonds, destroys all blessing.

Freedom rests on justice, justice on love; therefore even freedom rests on love.

The true disposition of the child is the right source of freedom resting on justice, as the true disposition of the father is the source of all power of government which is exalted enough to do justice and to love freedom. And the source of justice and of all blessing for the world, the source of love and brotherly feeling among men, rests on the great thought of religion that we are children of God, and that belief of this truth is the sure ground of all blessing for the world.

That men have lost the disposition of children towards God is the greatest misfortune of the world, inasmuch as it renders impossible all God's fatherly education of them; and the restoring of this lost childlike disposition is the redemption of the lost children of God upon earth.

The Man of God who, with suffering and death, restored to mankind the universally lost feeling of the child's disposition towards God, is the Redeemer of the World. He is the great sacrificed Priest of the Lord. He is the Mediator between God and God-forgetting mankind. His teaching is pure justice, educating peoples' philosophy; it is the revelation of God to His lost race of children.

FROM RAMSAUER.

As many hundred times in the course of the year as foreigners visited the Pestalozzian Institution, so many hundred times did Pestalozzi allow himself in his enthusiasm to be deceived by

them. On the arrival of every fresh visitor, he would go to the teachers in whom he placed most confidence, and say to them, 'This is an important personage, who wants to become acquainted with all we are doing. Take your best pupils and their analysisbooks (copy-books in which the lessons were written out), and show him what we can do, and what we wish to do.' Hundreds and hundreds of times there came to the Institution silly, curious, and often totally uneducated persons, who came because it was the fashion. On their account we usually had to interrupt the class instruction, and hold a kind of examination. In 1814, the aged Prince Esterhazy came. Pestalozzi ran all over the house, calling out, Ramsauer, Ramsauer, where are you? Come directly, with your best pupils, to the Maison Rouge (the hotel at which the Prince had alighted). He is a person of the highest importance and of infinite wealth; he has thousands of serfs in Hungary and Austria. He is certain to build schools and set free his serfs, if he is made to take an interest in the matter.' I took about fifteen pupils to the hotel. Pestalozzi presented me to the Prince with these words, 'This is the teacher of these scholars, a young man who, fifteen years ago, migrated with other poor children from the Canton of Appenzell and came to me. He received an elementary education according to his aptitudes, without let or hindrance. Now he is a teacher himself. Thus you see that there is as much ability in the poor as in the richest, frequently more; but it is seldom developed, and even then not methodically. It is for this reason that the improvement of the popular schools is so highly important. But he will show you everything we do better than I could. I will, therefore, leave him with you for the present.' I now examined the pupils, taught, explained, and bawled, in my zeal, till I was quite hoarse, believing that the Prince was thoroughly convinced about everything. At the end of an hour Pestalozzi returned. The Prince expressed his pleasure at what he had seen. He then took leave, and Pestalozzi, standing on the top of the stairs of the hotel, said, 'He is quite convinced, quite convinced, and will certainly establish schools on his Hungarian estates.' When we had descended the stairs, Pestalozzi said, 'Whatever ails my arm? It is so painful! Why, see, it is quite swollen; I can't bend it!' And in truth his wide sleeve was now too small for his arm. I looked at the key of the house-door of the Maison Rouge, and said to Pestalozzi, 'Look here! you struck yourself against this key when we were going to the Prince an hour ago!' On closer observation, it appeared that Pestalozzi had actually bent the key by hitting his elbow against it. In the first hour afterwards he had not noticed the pain for the excess of his zeal and his joy.*

*For an account of Ramsauer, see Barnard's Pestalozzi.

APPENDIX.

313

HELPS, STEPHEN, &c.

Mr. Helps, in his admirable essay on reading, in 'Friends in Council,' makes some observations which, although they refer to the reading of grown persons, may be applied to early education as well. He would have everyone

Take something for the main stem and trunk of their culture, whence branches might grow out in all directions, seeking light and air for the parent tree, which it is hoped might end in becoming something useful and ornamental, and which, at any rate, all along will have had life and growth in it.

He concludes his remarks on the connection of knowledges as follows:

In short, all things are so connected together that a man who knows one subject well cannot, if he would, have failed to have acquired much besides; and that man will not be likely to keep fewer pearls who has a string to put them on, than he who picks them up and throws them together without method. This, however, is a very poor metaphor to represent the matter; for what I would aim at producing, not merely holds together what is gained, but has vitality in itself is always growing. And anybody will confirm this who, in his own case, has had any branch of study or human affairs to work upon; for he must have observed how all he meets seems to work in with, and assimilate itself to, his own peculiar subject. During his lonely walks, or in society, or in action, it seems as if this one pursuit were something almost independent of himself, always on the watch, and claiming its share in whatever is going on.

Sir James Stephen also made some excellent remarks to the same effect in his lecture on 'Desultory and Systematic Reading,' delivered at Exeter Hall :—

By sound-that is solid-learning (he said), I mean such knowledge as relates to useful and substantial things, and as in itself is compact, coherent, all of a piece-having its several parts fitted into each other, and mutually sustaining and illustrating one another.

We must with a firm hand draw our own meridian line in the world of learning :

For learning is a world, not a chaos. The various accumulations of human knowledge are not so many detached masses.

They are all connected parts of one great system of truth, and though that system be infinitely too comprehensive for any one of us to compass, yet each component member of it bears to every other component member relations which each of us may, in his own department of study, search out and discover for himself. A man is really and soundly learned in exact proportion to the number and to the importance of those relations which he has thus carefully examined and accurately understood.

In discussing the advantage of learning one subject thoroughly, we must not overlook the valuable testimony of Professor De Morgan :

When the student has occupied his time in learning a moderate portion of many different things, what has he acquired extensive knowledge or useful habits? Even if he can be said to have varied learning, it will not long be true of him, for nothing flies so quickly as half-digested knowledge; and when this is gone, there remains but a slender portion of useful power. A small quantity of learning quickly evaporates from a mind which never held any learning except in small quantities; and the intellectual philosopher can perhaps explain the following phenomenon-that men who have given deep attention to one or more liberal studies, can learn to the end of their lives, and are able to retain and apply very small quantities of other kinds of knowledge; while those who have never learnt much of any one thing, seldom acquire new knowledge after they attain to years of maturity, and frequently lose the greater part of that which they once possessed.

I am indebted for this quotation to Mr. Payne's pamphlet, 'The Curriculum of Modern Education, &c.,' 1866. This pamphlet contains a most interesting discussion of the questions-Many subjects or few? and, Shall language or science have precedence? In considering these matters, Mr. Payne has an advantage possessed at present by very few Englishmen-knowledge derived both from teaching, and from studying the theory of teaching.-Vide his evidence before Middle Schools Commission.

MANGNALL'S QUESTIONS.

The long-continued success of this book is a melancholy proof of the stupidity which is at work, vigorously destroying the intelligence of youthful minds. When I referred