At Keilhau. "Education of Man" published.

year or two later, when the school had been moved to Keilhau, another of the Thuringian villages, which became the Mecca of the new faith. In Keilhau, Froebel, Langethal, Middendorff, and Barop, a relation of Midden dorff's, all married and formed an educational community. Such zeal could not be fruitless, and the school gradually increased, though for many years its teachers, with Froebel at their head, were in the greatest straits for money, and at times even for food. Karl Froebel, who was brought up in the school, tells how, on one occasion, he and the other children were sent to ramble in the woods till some of the seed-corn provided for the coming year had been turned into bread for them. Besides these difficulties the community suffered from the panic and reaction after the murder of Kotzebue (1819), and were persecuted as a nest of demagogues. But "the New Education" was sufficiently successful to attract notice from all quarters; and when he had been ten years at Keilhau (1826) Froebel published his great work, The Education of Man.

§ 9. Four years later he determined to start other institutions in connexion with the parent institution at Keilhau; and being offered by a private friend the use of a castle on the Wartensee, in the canton of Lucerne, he left Keilhau under the direction of Barop, and with Langethal made a settlement in Switzerland. The ground, however, was very ill chosen. The Catholic clergy resisted what they considered as a Protestant invasion, and the experiment on the Wartensee and at Willisau in the same canton, to which the institution was moved in 1833, never had a fair chance. It was in vain that Middendorff at Froebel's call left his wife and family at Keilhau, and laboured for four years in Switzerland without once seeing them. The Swiss institution

Froebel fails in Switzerland.

never flourished. But the Swiss Government wished to turn to account the presence of the great educator; so young teachers were sent to Froebel for instruction, and finally he removed to Burgdorf (a town already famous from Pestalozzi's labours there thirty years earlier) to undertake the establishment of a public orphanage, and also to superintend a course of teaching for schoolmasters. The elementary teachers of the canton were to spend three months every alternate year at Burgdorf, and there compare experiences, and learn of distinguished men such as Froebel and Bitzius.

§ 10. In his conferences with these teachers Froebel found that the schools suffered from the state of the raw

material brought into them. Till the school age was reached the children were entirely neglected. Froebel's conception of harmonious development naturally led him to attach much importance to the earliest years, and his great work on The Education of Man, published as early as 1826, deals chiefly with the education of children. At Burgdorf his thoughts were much occupied with the proper treatment of young children, and in scheming for them a graduated course of exercises modelled on the games in which he observed them to be most interested. In his eagerness to carry out his new plans he grew impatient of official restraints; and partly from this reason, partly on account of his wife's ill health, he left Burgdorf without even actually becoming "Waisenvater" (father of the orphans).* After a sojourn of some months in Berlin, where he was detained through family affairs, but used the

* This office was first filled by Langethal and afterwards by Ferdinand Froebel. I learned this at Burgdorf from Herr Pfarrer Heuer, whose father had himself been Waisen vater.

The first Kindergarten.

opportunities thus afforded of examining the recently founded infant schools, Froebel returned to Keilhau, and soon afterwards opened the first Kindergarten, or "Garden of Children," in the neighbouring village of Blankenburg (A.D. 1837). Not only the thing but the name seemed to Froebel a happy inspiration, and it has now become inseparably connected with his own. Perhaps we can hardly understand the pleasure he took in it unless we know its predecessor, Kleinkinderbeschäftigungsanstalt.

11. Firmly convinced of the importance of the Kindergarten for the whole human race, Froebel described his system in a weekly paper (his Sonntagsblatt) which appeared from the middle of 1837 till 1840. He also lectured in great towns; and he gave a regular course of instruction to young teachers at Blankenburg.

§ 12. But although the principles of the Kindergarten were gradually making their way, the first Kindergarten was failing for want of funds. It had to be given up; and Froebel, now a widower (he had lost his wife in 1839), carried on his course for teachers firsť at Keilhau, and from 1848, for the last four years of his life, at or near Liebenstein, in the Thuringian Forest, and in the duchy of Meiningen. It is in these last years that the man Froebel will be best known to posterity; for in 1849 he attracted within the circle of his influence a woman of great intellectual power, the Baroness von Marenholtz-Bülow, who has given us in her Recollections of Friedrich Froebel the only life-like portrait we possess. In these records of personal intercourse we see the truth of Deinhardt's words: "The living perception of universal and ideal truth which his talk revealed to us, his unbounded enthusiasm for the education and happiness of the human race, his willingness to offer up everything he

F.'s last years. Prussian edict against him.

possessed for the sake of his idea, the stream of thoughts which flowed from his enthusiasm for the ideal as from an inexhaustible fountain, all these made Froebel a wonderful appearance in the world, by whom no unprejudiced spectator could fail to be attracted and elevated."

§ 13. These seemed likely to be Froebel's most peaceful days. He married again; and having now devoted himself to the training of women as educators, he spent his time in instructing his class of young female teachers. But trouble came upon him from a quarter whence he least expected it. In the great year of revolutions, 1848, Froebel had hoped to turn to account the general eagerness for improvement, and Middendorff had presented an address on Kindergartens to the German Parliament. Besides this a nephew of Froebel's published books which were supposed to teach socialism. True the uncle and nephew differed so widely that "the New Froebelians" were the enemies of the "Old." But the distinction was overlooked, and Friedrich and Karl Froebel were regarded as the united advocates of " some new thing." In the reaction which soon set in, Froebel found himself suspected of socialism and irreligion; and in 1851 the Cultus-minister Raumer issued an edict forbidding the establishment of schools "after Friedrich and Karl Froebel's principles" in Prussia. It was in vain that Froebel proved that his principles differed fundamentally from his nephew's. It was in vain that a congress of schoolmasters, presided over by the celebrated Diesterweg, protested against the calumnious decree. The Minister turned a deaf ear, and the decree remained in force ten years after the death of Froebel (i.e., till 1862). But the edict was a heavy blow to the old man, who looked to the Government of the "Cultus-staat" Prussia for support, and

His end. Attitude towards Reformers.

was met with denunciation.

Of the justice of the charge brought by the Minister against Froebel the reader may judge from the account of his principles given below.

Whether from the worry of this new controversy, or from whatever cause, Froebel did not long survive the decree. His seventieth birthday was celebrated with great rejoicings in May, 1852, but he died in the following month, and lies buried at Schweina, a viilage near his last abode, Marienthal.

14. Throughout these essays my object has been to collect what seemed to me the most valuable lessons of various Reformers. In doing this I have had to judge and decide what was most valuable, and at times to criticise and differ from my authorities. This may perhaps give rise to the question, Do you then think yourself the superior or at least the equal of the great men you criticise? and I could only reply in all sincerity, I most certainly do not. If I am asked further, what then is my attitude towards them? I reply, it differs very much with different individuals. I cannot say I am prepared to sit at the feet of Mulcaster, or Dury, or Petty. In writing of these men I simply point out very early expression of ideas that following generations have developed partially and we are developing still. When we come to the great leaders we see among them men like Comenius who unite a thorough study of what has already been thought and done with a genius for original thinking, men like Locke with splendid intellectual gifts and a power of happy and clear expression, men like Rousseau with a talent for shaking themselves free from "custom"-custom which "lies upon us with a weight, Heavy as frost and deep almost as life," and besides this (in his case at least) endowed with a voice to be heard