a few friendly words, and then draws back into his shell.

"When, however, one can get him to notice wellgrounded objections and doubts he becomes keen and talkative. He speaks fluently and to the point, in an energetic and definite way. Contradiction does not irritate him, and has seldom any effect other than making him more convinced than ever of the rightness of his opinions. His heart is most affectionate and friendly. . . . He shrinks from no sacrifice if the end is good and noble. He carries his forgetfulness of his own and his family's interests too far-he takes in too many pupils free of charge.

"The firmness and independence of his mind show themselves in his personal appearance. . . . Unused to the usages of European society, he freely follows the natural impulses of his heart and mind. He is quiet, sincere, earnest, modestly firm, lively without being carried away by physical impulses, sympathetically attentive, but lacking in refinement because uninfluenced in his words and actions by outside opinions. As he has not been educated by men, he does not know how to exert an active influence on them. He is a thinker rather than an educator."

We will take one more glimpse of the whole man, and this through the eyes of Dr. Mayo-an English clergyman who was chaplain to the English children at Yverdon-who was three years at the institute on terms of intimacy and confidence with Pestalozzi, and thus writes of him in a private letter to a friend: "Pestalozzi completes this day his seventy-sixth year. His grey hair, his careworn countenance, his hollow eye, and bent figure proclaim that many days, and those days of trouble,

have passed over his head. His heart, however, seems still young; the same warm and active benevolence, the same unconquerable hope, the same undoubting confidence, the same generous self-abandonment animate it now, that have led to the many sacrifices and have supported him under the many difficulties and trials of his eventful life.

"In a thousand little traits of character, which unconsciously escape him, I read the confirmation of his history. It is an affecting sight, when the venerable object of the admiration of emperors and princes appears in the midst of his adopted children. Rich and poor, natives and foreigners share alike his paternal caress, and regard him with the same fearless attachment. From the sacrifice of time, property and health, for the benefit of a people who knew not how to value his merit, to the picking up a child's plaything, or the soothing of an infant's sorrow, Pestalozzi is ever prompt to obey the call of humanity and kindness. The sentiment of love reigns so powerfully in his heart, that acts of the highest benevolence, or of the most condescending good nature seem to require no effort, but appear the spontaneous manifestation of one over-ruling principle.

"Though honoured with the most flattering testimonies of esteem and approbation by courts and universities, Pestalozzi is the most modest and unassuming of men. To all who take an interest in his method of education he addresses himself in the most touching expressions of gratitude, as if they conferred the greatest obligation by examining into the truth of his opinions and the utility of his plans. . . . 'Examine my method; adopt what you find to be good and reject what you

cannot approve. We are doing something here towards the execution of my principles of education, but what we do is still very imperfect.'

"You cannot conceive the interest which Pestalozzi awakens or the influence which he insensibly acquires. All the little barriers, behind which reserve or suspicion teach us to entrench ourselves, fall before the childlike simplicity, the unaffected humility and feminine tenderness of his heart. Self-interest is shamed into silence, while we listen to the aspirations of his boundless benevolence; and if one spark of generous feeling glows in the bosom, the elevated enthusiasm of his character must blow it into a flame. The powers of his original mind serve to maintain the interest which his character first excites. In conversation, however, he is most frequently a listener. Towards those with whom he lives in perfect intimacy he sometimes indulges in a playful but forcible raillery; careful meanwhile to avoid giving the slightest pain or uneasiness. He is peculiarly successful in portraying some great character by two or three masterly strokes; in marking either in retrospect, or by anticipation, the influence of political events on national character, or national prosperity; in characterising the different methods of education in vogue; or in tracing the difference between his views and those of certain philosophers with which they have been confounded.

"There is nothing studied about him. Often as I have heard him enter on the subject of his system for the information of strangers, I do not recollect him to have taken it up twice from the same point of view. When we have conversed on these subjects, I have sometimes thought his ideas wild and his views im

practicable. The faint and misty but still beautiful light which emanated from his mind I have regarded with a feeling of melancholy delight, for it seemed to indicate that the sun of his genius had set. Still, I have been unable to dismiss from my mind his loose and ill-digested hints. After frequent reconsideration of them they have appeared more clear and more feasible; and I have subsequently traced their influence on the opinions I have adopted and on the plans of instruction which I have pursued.

"Pestalozzi once known is never forgotten. I have talked with men who have not seen him for years, or whom the current of events has separated from all intercourse with him. His honoured image lives as fresh in their memory as if their communication had never been suspended or broken. Anecdotes illustrating his benevolence are current in their families, and their children anticipate the delight of one day receiving the parental caress of good Father Pestalozzi. Many of my own countrymen who have enjoyed the privilege of his society will, I am sure, carry the remembrance of him to their graves.'

CHAPTER IX.

PESTALOZZI THE THINKER.

STARTING with the fact that Pestalozzi was gifted with a mind which by its native power could pierce more deeply, fully and independently into the inner meaning and significance of things and ideas than the minds of other men-in a word, that he was a genius-we can usefully consider the influences which helped to develop his mind in the direction which it actually took, and the work it did. There is not the least doubt but that the influence of his mother, and the fact that he was entirely under the influence of women during his early years, had a very important and abiding effect upon him. Again, his own wife, and the faithful and devoted Elizabeth Naef, were the only persons who really believed in and supported him in his most terrible time of failure and want at Neuhof. No wonder, therefore, that Elizabeth was immortalised as Gertrude; and that the woman and the mother are regarded by Pestalozzi as the very corner-stone of education and the foundations of society. Education must be based upon the mother's influence and work; and, hence, it must be domestic and industrial in the earliest stages.

His own reading and study at school and college would bring him into touch with at least some of the ideas of the great classical writers on education and