Success of the Burgdorf Institute.

and had nearly three years of complete success. In it was carried out Pestalozzi's notion that there should be "no gulf between the home and the school." On one occasion a parent visiting the establishment exclaimed, "Why, this is not a school but a family!” and Pestalozzi declared that this was the highest praise he could give it. The bond which united them all, both teachers and scholars, was love of “Father Pestalozzi." Want of space kept the number of children below a hundred, and these enjoyed great freedom and worked away without rewards and almost without punishments. Both public reports and private speak very highly of the results. In June, 1802, the President of the Council of Public Education in Bern declares: “Pestalozzi has discovered the real and universal laws of all elementary teaching." A visitor, Charles Victor von Bonstetten, writes: "The children know little, but what they know, they know well... They are very happy and evidently take great pleasure in their lessons, which says a great deal for the method. . . As it will be long before there is another Pestalozzi, I fear that the rich harvest his discovery seems to promise will be reserved for future ages.”

The success of the method was specially conspicuous in arithmetic. A Nürnberg merchant who came prejudiced against Pestalozzi was much impressed and has acknowledged: “I was amazed when I saw these children treating the most complicated calculations of fractions as the simplest thing in the world."

§ 60. Up to this point Pestalozzi may be said to have gained by the disposition to "reform" or revolutionise everything, which had prevailed in Switzerland since 1798. But from the reaction which now set in he suffered more than he had gained. Switzerland sent deputies to Paris to

Reaction.

Pestalozzi and Napoleon I.

discuss under the direction of the First Consul Bonaparte what should be their future form of Government. Among these deputies Pestalozzl was elected, and he set off thinking more of the future of the schools than of the future of the Government. At Paris he asked for an interview with Bonaparte, but destruction being in his opinion a much higher art than instruction, the First Consul said he could not be bothered about questions of A, B, C. He, however, deputed Monge to hear what Pestalozzi had to say, but the mathematician seems to have agreed with some English authorities that "there was nothing in Pestalozzi."* On his return to Switzerland Pestalozzi was asked by Buss, "Did you see Bonaparte ?" "No," replied Pestalozzi, "I did not see Bonaparte and Bonaparte did not see me." His presumption in thus putting himself on an equality with the great conqueror seems to have taken away the breath of his contemporaries: but "the whirligig of time brings in his revenges," and before the close of the century Europe already thinks more in amount, and immeasurably more in respect, of Pestalozzi than of Bonaparte.

§ 61. As a result of the reaction the Government of United Switzerland ceased to exist, and the Cantons were restored. This destroyed Pestalozzi's hopes of Government support, and even turned his Institute out of doors. The

* Years afterwards Napoleon, though he could not foresee Sedan, got a notion that after all there was something in Pestalozzi; and that the aim of the system was to put the freedom and development of the individual in the place of the mechanical routine of the old schools, which tended to produce a mass of dull uniformity. With this aim, as Guimps says, Napoleon was quite out of sympathy, and whenever the subject was mentioned he would say, "The Pestalozzians are Jesuits "; thus very inaccurately expressing an accurate notion that there was more in them than could be understood at the first glance.

Fellenberg. P. goes to Yverdun.

Castle of Burgdorf was at once demanded for the Prefect of the District; but Pestalozzi was offered an old convent at Münchenbuchsee near Bern, and thither he was forced to migrate.

§ 62. Close to Münchenbuchsee was Hofwyl where was the agricultural institution of Emmanuel Fellenberg. Fellenberg and Pestalozzi were old friends and correspondents, and as they had much regard for each other and Fellenberg was as great in administration as Pestalozzi in ideas, there seemed a chance of their benefiting by cooperation; but this could not be. The teachers desired that the administration should be put into the hands of Fellenberg, and this was done accordingly, "not without my consent," says Pestalozzi, "but to my profound mortification." He could not work with this "man of iron,” as he calls Fellenberg; so he left Münchenbuchsee and accepting one of several invitations he settled in the Castle of Yverdun near the lake of Neuchatel. Within a twelvemonth he was followed by his old assistants, who had found government by Fellenberg less to their taste than no-government by Pestalozzi.

§ 63. Thus arose the most celebrated Institute of which we read in the history of education. For some years its success seemed prodigious. Teachers came from all quarters, many of them sent by the Governments of the countries to which they belonged, that they might get initiated into the Pestalozzian system. Children too were sent from great distances, some of them being intrusted to Pestalozzi, some of them living with their own tutor in Yverdun and only attending the Institute during the day. The wave of enthusiasm for the new ideas seemed to carry everything before it; but there is nothing stable in a wave, and when

A portrait of Pestalozzi.

the enthusiasm has subsided disappointment follows. This was the case at Yverdun, and Pestalozzi outlived his Institute. But the principles on which he worked and the spirit in which he worked could not pass away; and, at least in Germany, all elementary schoolmasters acknowledge how much they are indebted to his teaching.

§ 64. Of the state of things in the early days of the Institute we have a very lively account written for his own children by Professor Vuillemin, who entered it in 1805 as a child of eight, and was in it for two years. From this I extract the following portrait of Pestalozzi: "Imagine, my children, a very ugly man with rough bristling hair, his face scarred with small-pox and covered with freckles, an untidy beard, no neck-tie, his breeches not properly buttoned and coming down to his stockings, which in their turn descended on to his great thick shoes; fancy him panting and jerking as he walked; then his eyes which at one time opened wide to send a flash of lightning, at another were half closed as if engaged on what was going on within; his features now expressing a profound sadness and now again the most peaceful happiness; his speech either slow or hurried, either soft and melodious or bursting forth like thunder; imagine the man and you have him whom we used to call our Father Pestalozzi. Such as I have sketched him for you we loved him; we all loved him, for he loved us all; we loved him so warmly that when some time passed without our seeing him, we were quite troubled about it, and when he again appeared we could not take our eyes off him" (Guimps, 315).

§ 65. At this time he was no less loved by his assistants, who put up with any quarters that could be found for them, and received no salary. We read that the money paid by

Prussia adopts Pestalozzianism.

the scholars was kept in the room of "the head of the family"; every master could get the key, and when they required clothes they took from these funds just the sum requisite. This system, or want of system, went on for some time with out abuse. As Vuillemin says, it was like a return to the

early days of the Christian Church.

66

§ 66. We have seen that the first Emperor Napoleon "could not be bothered about questions of A, B, C." His was the pride that goes before a fall. On the other hand the Prussian Government which he brought to the dust in the battle of Jena (1806) had the wisdom to perceive that children will become men, and that the nature of the instruction they receive will in a great measure determine what kind of men they turn out. How was Prussia again to raise its head? Its rulers decided that it was by the education of the people. "We have lost in territory," said the king; our power and our credit abroad have fallen; but we must and will go to work to gain in power and in credit at home. It is for this reason that I desire above everything that the greatest attention be paid to the education of the people" (Guimps, 319). About the same time the Queen (Louisa) wrote in her private diary, "I am reading Leonard and Gertrude, and I delight in being transported into the Swiss village. If I could do as I liked I should take a carriage and start for Switzerland to see Pestalozzi; I should warmly shake him by the hand, and my eyes filled with tears would speak my gratitude... With what goodness, with what zeal, he labours for the welfare of his fellowcreatures! Yes, in the name of humanity, I thank him with my whole heart."

So in the day of humiliation Prussia seriously went to work at the education of the people, and this she did on