in respect to the education of the people. We have the semblance of faith, love, and wisdom, but not the qualities themselves; and we live in a delusion, really without the virtues of our fathers, while they, though possessing those virtues, were by no means satisfied with themselves, as we are. The good and pious foundation which our fathers had in their mode of life itself for their views, feelings, opinions, and usages generally, and particularly in respect to the training of children and the relief of the poor, has sunk under our feet through the deception of our present artificial and frivolous mode of life. We are no longer what we were, and we have even lost the feeling that we ought to become again in spirit and in truth what we were. While we praise our fathers with our mouths, we are in heart far from them, and in our doings we stand at the very antipodes of them. We have substituted for their ability to do what was necessary, and their ignorance of what was useless, a large acquaintance with what is useless and an inability to do what is necessary. Instead of their healthy spirit, well exercised in mother-wit, we have forms, not so much of thinking as of verbal expressions about what has been thought, which suck the blood out of good sense, like a marten that fixes itself upon the neck of a poor dove. We no longer know our neighbors, our fellow citizens, or even our poor relations; but we make up for it by reading the newspapers and periodicals, by learning the genealogical register of the kings of the world, the anecdotes of courts, of the theatre, and of capital cities, and we raise ourselves to a daily change in our political and religious opinions, as in our clothes, running, on one side, from infidelity to capucinade, and from capucinade to infidelity, just as, on the other side, we run from sans-cullottism to tight-lacing and leading strings. Our fathers cultivated a general, simple, and powerful intellect; but few of them troubled themselves with researches into higher truths, which are difficult to fathom: we do very little indeed toward rendering ourselves capable of cultivating a general and profound spirit of thought and research: but we all learn to talk a great deal about sublime and almost unfathomable truths, and strive very zealously to get to read the results of the profoundest thinking in the popular descriptions of almanacs and daily pamphlets, and to put them into the mouth of people generally. Among our fathers, every honest man sought to do one thing well at least, namely, the work of his calling, and every man might with honor learn every trade; now our notables are mostly born to their callings. Numberless individuals are ashamed of the rank and profession of their fathers, and believe themselves to be called to pry into and carp at the professional knowledge of all ranks; and the habit of prating about all professions and discharging one's own imperfectly is becoming more general every day, among both the notable and unnotable men of our time. All spirit of political strength has fled from amongst us. In the present state of society we no longer ask what we really are, but what we possess and what we know, and how we may set out all our possessions and knowledge for show, put them up for sale, and barter them for the means of feasting ourselves, so that we may tickle our palates with the refined enjoyments of all the five divisions of the globe, whose appetites must by such conduct be almost inevitably engendered in us. And when we have in this way succeeded in rendering ourselves powerless and degraded in body and soul, in respect to the pure claims of the humanity of our nature, and of the eternal and divine essence which lies at its foundation,-then, in the state of debility and giddiness into which the fever has thrown us, we further seek to force up the appearance of a character whose truth and purity we entirely lack. In this state, we seek to cover over the outward appearances of our debility and desolation by a violent employment of the means of adjustment and concealment, which kill heart and spirit and humanity; and verily we have sunk to the employment of such means in many matters connected with the education of the people and the relief of the poor. Thus it is that we kill, in ourselves, the very essence of the powers of the soul, those human gifts divine; and then, when a shadow of the powers which we have killed flutters in us, we ornament the works of its fluttering with golden frames, and hang them up in splendid apartments, whose shining floors are unable to bear any of the good works of the ordinary life of man.” In another place, Pestalozzi says: "The gardener plants and waters, but God giveth the increase." It is not the educator that implants any faculty in man; it is not the educator that gives breath and life to any faculty he only takes care that no external influence shall fetter and disturb the natural course of the development of man's individual faculties. "The moral, the spiritual, and the artistic capabilities of our nature must grow out of themselves, and by no means out of the results produced by art, which has been mixed up with their education. Faith must be called forth again by faith, and not by the knowledge of what is believed; thinking must be called forth again by thinking, and not by the knowledge of what is thought, or of the laws of thinking; love must be called forth again by loving, and not by the knowledge of what is loveable or of love itself; and art must be called forth again by ability, and not by endless talk about ability." The reader can judge from the passages just cited whether any degree of youthful freshness still lingered in the mind and heart of the old man of seventy-three. But his "unrivaled incapacity to govern," as he himself calls it, did not forsake him. He established a poor school in 1818 at Clindy, in the vicinity of Yverdun; a commencement was made with twelve boys. "They were to be brought up as poor boys," says Pestalozzi, "and receive that kind of instruction and training which is suitable for the poor." But after a short time, children were admitted to board in the establishment, at a fee of twelve louis d'or per annum; and in a few months the number of these pupils rose to thirty. It may be easily imagined that the presence of paying boarders would of itself destroy the character of the place as a school for the poor. But this result was occasioned in a still higher degree by some remarkably stupid experiments in teaching. An Englishman,* of the name of Greaves, visited Yverdun in 1819; he offered to teach these poor Swiss children English without remuneration, and his offer was accepted. On this step Pestalozzi himself remarks: "This created an impression, which, considering the original destination of these children, led us very far astray." To the instruction in English was added soon after instruction in French and Latin. Pestalozzi says, the poor children had made extraordinary progress in the elementary subjects. He adds, nevertheless, "I had no longer an establishment for the poor; but, on the contrary, two scientific ones, which I could not now allow to remain separated. Thus the so-called poor school at Clindy was amalgamated with the institution at Yverdun." According to Pestalozzi's account, the poor scholars were "models A second Englishman entered the establishment the same year, as the religious instructor of the English pupils who had been admitted. Later, "above half a dozen poor children" were even sent from England to the school! worthy of imitation" to the pupils of the institution, especially in their acquirements. Many of them were employed as teachers. "The instruction which was given by the pupils of our poor school, (says he,) was preferred, on account of its solid and natural character to that of the most accomplished among the elder teachers of our house." (!) They threw their strength chiefly into arithmetic and geometry. Is it to be wondered at, that these poor children soon began to place themselves on a level with the children of the institution, and liked playing with them out of school hours better than chopping wood and carting manure;-that, instructed in three foreign languages, they did not like the idea of becoming masters of poor schools, and of having learnt Latin to no purpose? Pestalozzi acknowledged, when it was too late, "that the establishment had taken such a direction that it was no longer to be looked upon as a poor school, but as a school for imparting the elements of a scientific education." The particular reason of the failure had been "that these children were led into acquirements, habits, pretensions, dreams, and appetites, which did not suit the character of their original destination, and even tended to unfit them for it." Pestalozzi's unhappy disputes with Niederer and others went on uninterruptedly during this time. At last a reconciliation was brought about through the noble exertions of deputy governor Du Thou. On the 31st of December, 1823, Niederer wrote an apology to Schmid in the name of Krüsi and himself, in which, at the same time, it was said that any future dispute should be settled by an arbiter. Unfortunately, newspapers and controversial writings of those years have made the public only too well acquainted with this dispute. Pestalozzi's worst enemies could not have conceived any thing that would have been more calculated to damp the public enthusiasm for him. Who would like to undertake the task of placing before readers the details of these unfortunate occurrences, especially when it is considered that they almost exclusively concerned private interests? On February 1st, 1823, Pestalozzi wrote to Niederer a conciliatory letter, which shines forth in the midst of this lawsuit like a brilliant gem out of the mire. I give the following passage from this letter with pleasure: "DEAR MR. NIEDERER,*-Call to mind what we once hoped from each other and what we were to each other. I would again hope from you what I formerly hoped, and I would again be to you what I formerly was. But we must make the way to this possible for each other; we must help each other to clear the way to it, each from the point on which he stands. Let us do this. Above all, ⚫ In November, 1824, the lawsuit which has been mentioned was arbitration. terminated by No. 10.-[VOL. IV., No. 1.]-8. let us, without circumlocution and without condition, forgive each other, and unite with a pure intention in true love, in true friendship, and in an undertaking which will be for our mutual happiness. Niederer, become again as far as you can my old Niederer-such as you were twenty years ago. Madame Niederer, be also to me again something of what you were then. I will readily be to both of you again, as far as I can, what I then was. How I long for the time when our hearts shall bring us to ourselves again, and when, in the path of real self-knowledge we shall attain to love, which is equally our duty as Christians, and the pressing need of our condition. Oh! Niederer, how I long for the time when strengthened and sanctified by this renewed love, we shall be able to go once more to the Holy Sacrament, when the festival comes round, without having to fear that the entire commune in which we live, scandalized by our conduct, will shudder at our coming to the Lord's table, and will cast upon us looks of indignation as well as pity. Oh! Niederer, the path of this renewed love is the only one which will lead to true honor, as it is also the only one which will lead to the restoration of a lost semblance of honor. Oh! Niederer, think not that the tricks and chicanery of law can ever bring us to the pinnacle of honor to which we can raise ourselves by the restoration of our love. My old friend, let us make clean the inside of the platter, before we trouble ourselves about the false glitter of the outside." These lamentable lawsuits had naturally the worst influence on the hybrid institution. Pestalozzi felt this most painfully, and thought that his poor school would succeed, if he could only transfer it from unlucky Yverdun to Neuhof, in the canton of Argovia-the same Neuhof where, many years before, he had made his first important educational experiments. He had a new house built there for the purpose. Each of the poor children who had been admitted into the school had bound himself to remain in it five years, from 1818 till 1823. The five years ran out. Pestalozzi confidently hoped that many of these children would follow him to Neuhof, and form the nucleus of the new establishment. But not one remained. As I have already remarked, they had imbibed grander ideas from the instruction which they had enjoyed, and they sought to make their fortune in other ways. "They considered it," says Pestalozzi, "beneath their dignity to be appointed teachers in a Pestalozzian poor school at Neuhof." When at last even a favorite pupil of his rejected all his offers, and went away clandestinely from Yverdun, the old man's heart was full. "The illusion, in my mind," he says, "as to the possibility of transplanting to Neuhof an establishment in Yverdun of which not an inch was in reality any longer mine, was now entirely dispelled. To resign myself to this conviction, required me to do no less than abandon all my hopes and aims in regard to this project, as for me completely unattainable. I did so at last, and on March 17th, 1824, I announced my total inability further to fulfill the expectations and hopes which I had excited, by my projected poor school, in the hearts of so many philanthropists and friends of education." At length, in the year 1825, Pestalozzi also broke up the institution, after it had stood for a quarter of a century; and he returned, an old man of eighty years, and tired of life, to Neuhof, where, exactly half a century before, he had begun his first poor school. says, “it was as if I was putting an end to my life return, so much pain did it give me." "Verily," he itself by this Pestalozzi had but one child, a son, who was born in 1770, and died at the early age of twenty-four, leaving a son himself.* This grandson of Pestalozzi was in possession of the estate of Neuhof; to him the old man went. In these last years of his life, he wrote the "Song of the Dying Swan" and the "Fortunes of my Life." He looked back with deep pain on so many shipwrecked enterprises, and acknowledged that the blame was his, as the wreck had been brought on by his incompetency to manage the helm. He speaks, as we have seen, with equal candor of his fellow-workers. man. These last writings of Pestalozzi have been regarded by many as the melancholy and languid outpourings of the heart of a dying old As far as concerns the old man's judgments on the institution, as it was at the time of my stay at Yverdun, I have already remarked that I consider them for the most part highly truthful, and as affording evidence that he was not deficient in manly clearness and penetration even in his old age. In May of the year 1825, he was elected President of the Helvetian Society of Shinznach, of which he was the oldest member. The following year he delivered a lecture before the Education Society of Brugg, on, "The simplest means which art can employ to educate the child, from the cradle, to the sixth year, in the domestic circle." Thus the gentle influence of home education remained to the last the object of his love, as it had been fifty-six years before, when he wrote "Leonard and Gertrude." On the 21st of July, 1826, Pestalozzi, in company with Schmid, visited the establishment of the excellent Zeller in Bruggen. The children received him with singing. An oak wreath was handed to him, but he did not accept it: "Not to me," he said, "but to Innocence belongs the wreath." The children sang to him the song by Goethe which he has introduced into " Leonard and Gertrude." Thou art from highest skies, Every storm and sorrow stilling; Come, oh come within my breast. Tears choked the voice of the old man. The widow, an excellent woman, subsequently married a Mr. Kuster, and remained attached to Pestalozzi with true affection. |