and statistical facts were superadded at the end, arranged in concise tables so as to facilitate their recollection. Successfully as this department of knowledge was cultivated in the establishment, there was not among its permanent members any one that felt competent to bring the subject forward on the field of literature; nor was there any urgent necessity for it since the publication of Gutsmuth's and Henning's "Manuals of Elementary Geography," especially that of the latter, who passed several years in the teacher's seminary at the expense of the Prussian government, and whose work is therefore, well calculated to serve as a specimen of the manner in which this science was treated in Pestalozzi's institution.

The last branch of instruction, that can with justice be said to have been organized in a manner conformable to the general principles of the method, is singing. Experiments on this subject were, at an early period, made by Buss, the only one of Pestalozzi's first assistants who had any pretension to musical proficiency; the results, however, were insignificant and unsatisfactory, nor was there any progress made, until an eminent artist of the name of Pfeiffer, who passed some time in the establishment at Yverdon, traced out an appropriate course of exercises, which was subsequently published by him, in conjunction with his friend, the celebrated composer Nægeli of Zuric, who added to it several collections of simple tunes, expressly composed with a view to their use in education. This was altogether a new idea. The art of singing had hitherto been cultivated as an ornamental acquirement for the purposes of amusement and display; as an accessory to the solemnity of worship it had been neglected to a point which rendered church music proverbial for its disharmonious notes. In education it had been considered not as a means, but as an end, and that one to which many a more important object was sacrificed. The method of Pfeiffer and Nægeli, and the spirit in which it was applied in Pestalozzi's institution, restored it to its original purpose, to become subservient to the cultivation of the affections; and the absurd distinction between sacred and

profane music ceased from the moment when music itself was placed on a sacred basis. The cheerful songs with which the youthful choir of Pestalozzi's pupils saluted the rising sun, or the lovely breezes of returning spring, so far from shunning, seemed on the contrary to call for, a reference to the bountiful Author of Nature, whilst the hymns of praise and thanksgiving, especially reserved for solemn occasions of worship, instead of enumerating dry doctrines in pedantic rhymes, teemed with those simple and significant effusions of feeling, of which, in the poetic portions of the sacred volume, we have left us such sublime and ever unparalleled examples.

Of the other departments of knowledge which have been enumerated, as being comprehended in the plan of instruction laid down for the establishment, little more can be said than that the different teachers upon whom they devolved, attempted, every one in his own manner, to adapt their instruction to the view which they took of the general principles of the method. But as not every one that entered under Pestalozzi's roof, drank into the fulness of his spirit, so many of those experiments proved parodies rather than imitations of his mode of proceeding; and though the children might not fare much worse under them than under the dead routine of "the old system," yet the unsettled state in which these parts of instruction necessarily remained, gave an excellent pretext to the enemies of the cause for crying down an institution in which, under the ægis of "the new method," the most unmethodical practices were pursued. This was the case more especially with reference to the instruction in languages, which opened to the pedantic advocates of the old grammar-school-plans a wide field for cavil. Pestalozzi himself had drawn up, in the "Mother's Manual," a course of elementary instruction in the mother tongue, which, however defective in some of the details, presents an excellent outline of what ought to form the first subjects of conversation between a mother and the child on her lap. But what might be excellent in the nursery, was not on that account

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NATURAL SCIENCE AND HISTORY.

sufficient in an institution which extended its plan to preparation for the university; and as Pestalozzi himself, from the peculiar unfitness of his mind for abstract subjects, failed to supply his friends even with leading ideas, such as he had suggested to them on other topics, the "Mother's Manual" was made a general text-book, on which every one founded his own crude notions and ignorant proceedings.

Natural history and physical science were taught entirely without plan, though, in some instances, in a manner decidedly superior. The children were led to observe and to examine for themselves such objects and phenomena as were within reach; and, to enlarge the sphere of their knowledge, their teachers made excursions with them in different directions through the country. Sometimes they would all travel together, at other times they were divided into several troops, who, on their return home, communicated to each other the results of their observations. In an establishment in which there were no standing vacations, a few weeks every year could well be devoted to such expeditions, without encroaching on the time of their regular studies; and, in a country so eminent for the abundance and variety of its natural productions, it was impossible that the pupils should not, under the guidance of intelligent teachers, acquire rich stores of real information. The only objection that day against the method pursued in the institution on these subjects, was that the pupils did not acquire a comprehensive view of the sciences, but that their knowledge, being gathered as it were upon casualties in the first instance, had a tendency afterwards to remain fragmentary.

The historical lessons laboured under still greater imperfections. Pestalozzi, from a sort of prejudice which he had conceived against historical studies, gave but little encouragement to their cultivation in the establishment, and accordingly their treatment by the different teachers was, more than that of any other branch of instruction, subject to endless changes. One man read abstruse lectures, another drew up a set of synchronistical tables; to some it seemed preferable to

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION.

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connect all history with biographical sketches, while others indulged in lengthy discussions on the different forms of government, and the best polity; some hurried over the whole of the records of humankind in a few months; while others found their whole set of pupils changed between their ante and post-diluvian lessons.

A far greater unity of plan was observable in the religious instruction of the establishment, which Niederer, an ordained minister of the Swiss Protestant church, conducted, if not in strict accordance with the principles of Pestalozzi's method, at least in perfect conformity to those of the Gospel, and with a zeal and dignity which, in many instances, were crowned with eminent success. Equally distant from the whining tone of an ostentatious professor, which makes up by diffuseness of language for lack of spirit, and from that absurd and profane theology, which does violence to common sense in the attempt to make religion "rational," and surrounds the records of revelation with deep moral difficulties, in order to get rid of some superficial objections of the carnal understanding, Niederer made it his main object to present the Bible as the book which explains, authoritatively, the mysteries of man's nature and his present condition, and to lead the children to search within their own hearts for the influences of that good and perfect Spirit, by whose operation alone man can be enabled to receive the truths and enjoy the blessings of the Gospel. To bring to view, in all its various bearings, the scheme of eternal love and mercy for the redemption and restoration of a fallen world, was the point, towards which every word of his instruction was directed. But in doing this he lost too much sight of the age and capacities of his hearers, and instead of nursing them up with milk, the appropriate food of babes, he overfed them with the strong meat of his deep doctrinal views. This mistake was the more to be regretted, as the instruction in other branches, which might have served as a sort of preparation, was conducted in a manner little calculated to render it subservient to such a purpose; and those of the children, who were un

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CAVILS OF THE PUBLIC.

able to follow Niederer into all the depths to which he descended, would have derived but very little religious benefit from their abode in the establishment, had it not been for the spirit of piety and Christian love diffused over the whole house, and Pestalozzi's unremitting attention to domestic worship. It was in those solemn moments, when the whole family was assembled in the presence of God, that Pestalozzi, in his conversation and his prayers, directed the attention of the children to their state and their individual religious wants, and supplied the deficiences that arose from the universality with which Niederer viewed and treated the subject, and which rendered his teaching, though inefficient, perhaps, for the majority of the children, yet for adult persons, by whom his lessons were numerously attended, and for the more advanced and gifted pupils, highly interesting and impressive.

That an establishment, whose founder had announced himself as a universal reformer of education, should, upon discovering these various deficiencies in the practical execution of the plan, have to endure severe obloquy, was indeed to be expected. For nothing excites a more irreconcilable enmity in the public mind than the promulgation of principles whose exalted character is an implicit condemnation of the base motives and mean practices of the vulgar, and every man that assumes so dangerous a position must be prepared to find his practical exertions tried by the severest standard his own doctrines will afford, not because the world is anxious for perfection, but because every tittle of failure in him who enforces its claims, diminishes in the sophisticated mind the strength of the obligation. This truth was, perhaps, never more strikingly illustrated than in the judgments which were past upon Pestalozzi's principles, on the ground of the defects that were visible in his establishment. The consideration that a reform of that magnitude required in its very nature not only a considerable portion of time, but also a combination of talents and acquirements, such as could hardly be expected to meet