Chapter XVII: Part 17

"You are forever searching for what is necessary in nature," Schiller wrote to him once, "but you search for it by the most difficult way. You take the whole of nature in order to obtain light on the particular case; you look into the totality for the explanation of the individual existence. From the simplest organism (in nature) you ascend step by step to the more complicated, and finally construct the most complicated of all--man--out of the materials of the whole of nature. In thus creating man anew under the guidance of nature, you penetrate into his mysterious organism."

And, indeed, as there is a wonderful harmony with nature in Goethe the poet and the man, so there is the same harmony in Goethe the savant and the thinker; nay, even science he practised as a poet. As one of the greatest physicists of our days, Helmholtz, has said of him, "He did not try to translate nature into abstract conceptions, but takes it as a complete work of art, which must reveal its contents spontaneously to an intelligent observer." Goethe never became a thorough experimentalist; he did not want "to extort the secret from nature by pumps and retorts." He waited patiently for a voluntary revelation, _i.e._, until he could surprise that secret by an intuitive glance; for it was his conviction that if you live intimately with Nature she will sooner or later disclose her mysteries to you. If you read his _Songs_, his _Werther_, his _Wahlverwandtschaften_, you feel that extraordinary intimacy--I had almost said identification--with nature, present everywhere. Werther's love springs up with the blossom of all nature; he begins to sink and nears his self-made tomb while autumn, the death of nature, is in the fields and woods. So does the moon spread her mellow light over his garden, as "the mild eye of a true friend over his destiny." Never was there a poet who humanized nature or naturalized human feeling, if I might say so, to the same degree as Goethe. Now, this same love of nature he brought into his scientific researches.

He began his studies of nature early, and he began them as he was to finish them--with geology. Buffon's great views on the revolutions of the earth had made a deep impression upon him, although he was to end as the declared adversary of that vulcanism which we can trace already at the bottom of Buffon's theory--naturally enough, when we think how uncongenial all violence in society and nature was to him, how he looked everywhere for slow, uninterrupted evolution. From theoretical study he had early turned to direct observation; and when his administrative functions obliged him to survey the mines of the little dukedom, ample opportunity was offered for positive studies. As early as 1778, in a paper, _Granite_, he wrote: "I do not fear the reproach that a spirit of contradiction draws me from the contemplation of the human heart--this most mobile, most mutable and fickle part of the creation--to the observation of (granite) the oldest, firmest, deepest, most immovable son of nature. For all natural things are in connection with each other." It was his life's task to search for the links of this coherence in order to find that unity which he knew to be in the moral as well as material universe.

From those "first and most solid beginnings of our existence" he turned to the history of plants and to the anatomy of the animals which cover this crust of the earth. The study of Spinoza confirmed him in the direction thus taken. "There I am on and under the mountains, seeking the divine _in herbis et lapidibus_," says he, in Spinoza's own words; and again: "Pardon me if I like to remain silent when people speak of a divine being which I can know only in _rebus singularibus_." This pantheistic view grew stronger and stronger with years; but it became a pantheism very different from that of Parmenides, for whom being and thinking are one, or from that of Giordano Bruno, which rests on the analogy of a universal soul with the human soul, or even from that of Spinoza himself, which takes its start from the relations of the physical world with the conceptive world, and of both with the divine one. Goethe's pantheism always tends to discover the cohesion of the members of nature, of which man is one: if once he has discovered this universal unity, where there are no gaps in space nor leaps in time, he need not search further for the divine.

It is analogy which helps us to form these intuitive or platonic ideas. It was through analogy that Goethe arrived at his great discoveries in natural science, and I only repeat what such men as Johannes Mueller, Baer, and Helmholtz have been willing to acknowledge, when I say that the poet's eye has been as keen as that of any naturalist. Kant had contended that there might be a superior intelligence, which, contrary to human intelligence, goes from the general to the particular; and Goethe thought--he proved, I might say--that in man too some of this divine intelligence can operate and shine, if only in isolated sparks. It was a spark of this kind which, first at Padua on the sight of a fanpalm-tree, then again, on the eve of his departure from Palermo, during a walk in the public garden amid the Southern vegetation, revealed to him the law of the metamorphosis of plants. He found an analogy between the different parts of the same plant which seemed to repeat themselves: unity and evolution were revealed to him at once.

Three years later the sight of a half-broken sheep-skull, which he found by chance on the sand of the Venetian Lido, taught him that the same law, as he had suspected, applied also to vertebrate animals, and that the skull might be considered as a series of strongly modified vertebræ. He had, in fact, already hinted at the principle, shortly after put forward by Lamarck, and long afterward developed and firmly established by Darwin. He considered the difference in the anatomical structure of animal species as modifications of a type or planned structure, modifications brought about by the difference of life, food, and dwellings. He had discovered as early as 1786 the intermaxillary bone in man, i.e., the remnant of a part which had had to be adapted to the exigencies of the changed structure; and proved thereby that there had been a primitive similarity of structure, which had been transformed by development of some parts and atrophy of others. Goethe's sketch of an _Introduction into Comparative Anatomy_, which he wrote in 1795, urged by A. von Humboldt, has remained, if I may believe those competent to judge, a fundamental stone of modern science. And I may be allowed, as I am unversed in such matters, to invoke the authority of one of the most eminent living physiologists, Helmholtz, who says of Goethe's anatomical essay, that in it the poet "teaches, with the greatest clearness and decision, that all differences in the structure of animal species are to be considered as changes of one fundamental type, which have been brought about by fusion, transformation, aggrandizement, diminution, or total annihilation of several parts. This has, indeed, become, in the present state of comparative anatomy, the leading idea of this science. It has never since been expressed better or more clearly than by Goethe: and after-times have made few essential modifications."[59]

Now, the same may be said, I am told, in spite of some differences as to details, of his metamorphosis of plants. I do not mean by this to say that Goethe is the real author of the theory of evolution. There is between him and Mr. Darwin the difference which there is between Vico and Niebuhr, Herder and F.A. Wolf. In the one case we have a fertile hint, in the other a well-established system, worked out by proofs and convincing arguments. Nevertheless, when a man like Johannes Mueller sees in Goethe's views "the presentiment of a distant ideal of natural history," we may be allowed to see in Goethe one of the fathers of the doctrine of evolution, which, after all, is only an application of Herder's principle of _fieri_ to the material world.

After having thus gone through the whole series of organisms, from the simplest to the most complicated, Goethe finds that he has laid, as it were the last crowning stone of the universal pyramid, raised from the materials of the whole quarry of nature; that he has reconstructed man. And here begins a new domain; for after all for mankind the _highest_ study must be man himself. The social problems of property, education, marriage, occupied Goethe's mind all his life through, although more particularly in the last thirty years. The relations of man with nature, the question how far he is free from the laws of necessity, how far subject to them, are always haunting him. If you read the _Wahlverwandtschaften_, the _Wanderjahre_, the second _Faust_, you will find those grave questions approached from all sides. I shall not, however, enter here into an exposition of Goethe's political, social, and educational views, not only because they mostly belong to a later period, but especially because they have never found a wide echo, nor determined the opinions of an important portion of the nation, nor entered as integrating principles into its lay creed. Not so with the metaphysical conclusion which he reached by this path, and which is somewhat different from the pantheism of his youth, inasmuch as he combines with it somewhat of the fundamental ideas of Leibnitz, which were also Lessing's, and which, after all, form a sort of return to Christianity, as understood in its widest sense, in the sense in which it harmonizes with Plato's idealism. "Thinking is not to be severed from what is thought, nor will from movement." Nature consequently is God, and God is nature, but in this God-nature man lives as an imperishable monad, capable of going through thousands of metamorphoses, but destined to rest on each stage of this unlimited existence, in full possession of the present, in which he has to expand his whole being by action or enjoyment. This conception of life was not, as you will see, the creation of an imagination longing to pass beyond the conditions of human existence--which is the idealism of the "general"--but the highest result of the poet's insight into the order of nature.

I have said that there was an antagonism between Kant's views and those of Herder and Goethe, and that this antagonism has been ever since sensibly felt in the intellectual history of Germany. Some efforts were made to reconcile them, as for instance by Schiller. Sometimes a sort of alliance took place, as in 1813, when the Romanticists, who were quite under the spell of the Herder-Goethe ideas, invoked the aid of the moral energy, which was a special characteristic of Kant's disciples; but the antagonism lives on not the less even now in the German nation, as the antagonism between Hume and Burke, Locke and Berkeley, Fielding and Richardson, Shakespeare and Milton, nay, between Renaissance and Puritanism in spite of their apparent death, is still living in the English nation. This difference is, as will happen in this world, much more the difference between two dispositions of mind, character, and temperament, than between two opposite theories; or at least the conflicting opinions are much more the result of our moral and intellectual dispositions than of objective observation and abstract argumentation. Germany owes much to the stern unflinching moral principles of Kant; she owes still more, however, to the serene and large views of Goethe. The misfortune of both ideals is that they cannot and will never be accessible save to a small _élite_, that of Kant to a moral, that of Goethe to an intellectual, élite. But are not all ideals of an essentially aristocratic nature? The German ideals, however, are so more than others, and the consequence has been a wide gap between the mass of the nation and the minority which has been true to those ideals. The numerical majority, indeed, of the German nation has either remained faithful to the Church, though without fanaticism, or has become materialistic and rationalistic. It is a great misfortune for a nation when its greatest writer in his greatest works is only understood by the happy few, and when its greatest moralist preaches a moral which is above the common force of human nature. The only means of union between the nation and the intellectual and moral aristocracy, which has kept and guarded that treasure, as well as the only link between these two aristocratic views of life themselves, would be furnished by religion, a religion such as Lessing, Mendelssohn, and above all Schleiermacher, propounded, such as reigned all over Germany forty or fifty years ago, before party spirit had set to work, and the flattest of rationalisms had again invaded the nation--a religion corresponding, for the mass, to what Goethe's and Kant's philosophy, which is neither materialism nor spiritualism, is for the few--a religion based on feeling and intuition, on conscience and reverence, but a religion without dogmas, without ritual, without forms, above all without exclusiveness and without intolerance. I doubt whether this mild and noble spirit, which is by no means indifferentism, will soon revive, as I doubt whether Germany will quickly get over the conflict between the traditional and the rationalistic spirit which mars her public life; whether too she will soon reach that political ideal which England realized most fully in the first half of this century, and which consists in a perfect equilibrium between the spirit of tradition and that of rationalism. However, although Kant's lofty and Goethe's deep philosophy of life is now the treasure of a small minority only, it has none the less pervaded all the great scientific and literary work done up to the middle of this century. It has presided over the birth of our new state; and the day will certainly come when public opinion in Germany will turn away from the tendency of her present literature, science, and politics--a somewhat narrow patriotism, a rather shallow materialism, and a thoroughly false parliamentary _régime_--and come back to the spirit of the generations to whom, after all, she owes her intellectual, though not perhaps her political and material, civilization.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] "Storm and stress," the period of intellectual revolt, struggle, and emancipation in Germany.--ED.

[59] Written in 1853, five years before the appearance of Mr. Darwin's great work.

PESTALOZZI'S METHOD OF EDUCATION

A.D. 1775

GEORGE RIPLEY

Modern education began when Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi established
his experimental school at Neuhof in 1775. Comenius had shown the
true path of teaching. Pestalozzi was the enthusiast who felt with
burning passion the injustice done to the child in the schoolhouses
of his day. He protested that the old education was all wrong, and
he proved this by his achievements, establishing a little school in
his own home at Neuhof, and then in 1800 a larger one at Burgdorf.

The Swiss Government adopted his ideas. Teachers were sent to learn
of him. From Burgdorf is sprung the whole school system of to-day.
As a practical school-teacher Pestalozzi was nevertheless a failure
in the end, because he relied on no force but that of personal
affection to control his pupils. This divinest of methods succeeded
remarkably while his schools were so small as to bring him into
close paternal contact with every child. But at the large
institution at Yverdon, of which he was master in his later years,
the method broke down badly. Hence there were not wanting in his own
times critics who pronounced him a failure. They did not see that
beside his insistence on love as the "way," the reformer had an even
more important message for the world. "The grand change advocated by
Pestalozzi," says Mr. Quick, "was a change of object. The main
object of the school should not be to teach, but to develop." In
this sentence we have the key to all modern education, though not
every teacher even to-day has digested fully the idea that his duty
is less that of stuffing a child full of facts than of developing
its character and abilities, encouraging whatever of value exists
within itself.

The full importance of Pestalozzi's work was recognized by keener
intellects even in his own lifetime. Queen Louise, the heroine of
Prussia, wished she could fly to Switzerland to grasp Pestalozzi's
hand. His system was introduced throughout Northern Germany and did
wonders for the development of the German people. To-day it is the
system of the world.

After completing the usual course of education, Pestalozzi continued his studies, with a view to engaging in the ministry of the gospel, to which the wishes of his friends, as well as his own deep religious feelings, had early destined him. This course, however, was soon abandoned. He appeared for the first and only time in the pulpit as a candidate, and then, discouraged by the ill-success of the experiment, renounced all aspirations to the sacred office. Soon after, he applied himself to the law, but with a strong predilection for political studies. At this time his inquiries seem to have taken the direction which ultimately led him to the discoveries that characterize his name. He saw clearly the great abuses in society which prevailed in his native country; and by dwelling on their enormity his active mind suggested means of relief which could be realized only by a more thorough and judicious education of the people at large. His first publication, issued while a student at law, contained his views on this subject. It was an essay on the bearing which education ought to have upon our respective callings.

It was not for a mind like Pestalozzi's to behold the evils which had been brought to his notice without deep and painful emotion. This was experienced to such a degree that he was thrown into a state of morbid excitement; and, at length, a dangerous illness broke off his ardent researches. Still his mind was not quieted. His thoughts could not be prevented from dwelling on the painful subjects to which he had given his whole soul. Prostrate on the bed of sickness, he continued to indulge himself in dark musings; and his fancy represented the prospects of the future, both for society and for himself, in gloomy colors. The strength of his constitution, however, carried him through the disorder; and from the moment of his recovery he resolved to follow the leadings of Providence, and, setting aside all human considerations, to act up to the full extent of his conceptions, and if possible to put his views to the test of experience.

He now abandoned all his former studies, committed his papers to the flames, and believing that the evils into which society was plunged were mainly owing to a departure from the straight and simple path of nature, to the school of nature he resolved to go. Accordingly he quitted Zurich and went to Kirchberg, in the Canton of Bern, where he became an apprentice to a farmer of the name of Tschiffeli.

After qualifying himself under the direction of Tschiffeli for the charge of a farm, he purchased a tract of waste land in the neighborhood of Lensburg, in the Canton of Bern, on which he erected a dwelling-house, with suitable buildings, and gave it the name of Neuhof. The work of his hands here was prospered. He soon brought himself into comfortable circumstances, and saw his prospects as bright and happy as could be wished. At this time he formed a connection in marriage with Ann Schulthess, the daughter of one of the wealthiest merchants in Zurich, a young lady of a refined education and great dignity of character. This marriage, while it increased the happiness of his domestic circle, offered him a new sphere of useful exertion, by giving him an interest in a flourishing cotton manufactory.

After eight years of successful industry at Neuhof, Pestalozzi resolved to make a fair trial of the plan, which he had long had at heart, of giving the lower orders such an education as should raise them to a condition more consistent with the capacities of their nature and with the spirit of Christianity.

To avoid the interference of others as much as possible, and to place the beneficial results of his system in a clearer light, he selected the objects of his experiment from the very dregs of the people. If he found a child who was left in destitute circumstances from the death of its parents or from their incompetency and vice, he immediately took him home, so that, in a short time, his house was converted into an asylum, in which fifty orphan or pauper children were fed, clothed, and instructed in the different employments from which they might afterward be able to gain a livelihood, and for the exercise of which his farm and the cotton manufactory, in which he was a partner, afforded an ample opportunity.

But this experiment, so happily conceived by Pestalozzi, was destined to prove unsuccessful. He possessed few of the means necessary to bring it to a prosperous issue. His zeal, which led him to undertake the most magnificent enterprises, was not combined with sufficient patience, practical knowledge of human nature, and fixed habits of order and economy to enable him to realize the plans which he proposed; and at length he was obliged to abandon his experiment in despair. It was not, however, altogether useless. He had the satisfaction of knowing that he had rescued more than a hundred children from the degrading influences under which they were born, and planted the seeds of virtue and religion in their hearts; and, in addition to this, his qualifications for the task to which his life was now devoted were greatly increased by this insight he had acquired into its real nature, and the means of its accomplishment. The results of his experience at Neuhof, from the time of opening his asylum in 1775, to its close in 1790, are left on record in the valuable works which he published during that interval. The first of these, entitled _Leonard and Gertrude_, is a popular novel, under which form he chose to convey his ideas respecting the condition of the lower classes, and the means of their improvement. The success of this work was not what he expected. Though universally popular as a novel, there were few who entered into the spirit of the deep wisdom which it contained. This was published in 1781, and, in order to draw the attention of its readers to the great object which he had in view, he published another work in the following year, entitled _Christopher and Eliza_. But this also failed of the purpose for which it was principally intended. Still Pestalozzi was not discouraged in his attempts to make the public acquainted with his new ideas. He now addressed himself to the literary world, as he had before written expressly for the common people. In a journal published at Basel, under the direction of Iselin, a distinguished philanthropist, he inserted a series of essays, entitled _Evening Hours of a Hermit_, which contained a more systematic account of his mode of instruction and his plans for national improvement. But the current of public thought was in an opposite direction, and little attention could be gained to the plans which he labored to introduce. His success was somewhat better in a weekly publication, which he undertook at the beginning of 1782, under the title of the _Swiss Journal_. This was continued for one year, and forms two octavo volumes in which a great variety of subjects is discussed, connected with his favorite purpose of national improvement.

Soon after the breaking up of his establishment at Neuhof, the country began to be agitated with the excesses of the French Revolution, and Pestalozzi, disappointed in the sanguine hopes which he had formed at the commencement of that event, and disgusted with the scenes of brutality and lawlessness which it had occasioned, wrote his _Inquiry into the Course of Nature in the Developement of the Human Species_. This work, published in 1797, marks a new epoch in the development of his views. It was written at a moment when his mind was covered with the deepest gloom, and he was almost ready to sink under the struggle between the bright conceptions of improvement which he had formed and the darkness which hung over the existing institutions of society. The following questions, which he proposes to himself at the commencement of the work, will give some idea of its plan and of the spirit in which it was composed:

"What am I? What is the human species? What have I done? What is the human species doing?

"I want to know what the course of my life, such as it has been, has made of me? and I want to know what the course of life, such as it has been, has made of the human species?

"I want to know on what ground the volition of the human species and its opinions rest under the circumstances in which it is placed?"

The following portrait of himself, which he draws at the close of the volume, is highly characteristic of his feelings at this time:

"Thousands pass away, as nature gave them birth, in the conception of sensual gratification, and they seek no more. Tens of thousands are overwhelmed by the burdens of craft and trade; by the weight of the hammer, the ell, or the crane, and they are no more. But I know a man, who did seek more; the joy of simplicity dwelt in his heart, and he had faith in mankind such as few men have; his soul was made for friendship; love was his element, and fidelity his strongest tie. But he was not made by this world nor for it; and wherever he was placed in it he was found unfit.

"And the world that found him thus, asked not whether it was his fault or the fault of another; but it bruised him with an iron hammer, as the bricklayers break an old brick to fill up crevices. But though bruised, he yet trusted in mankind more than in himself; and he proposed to himself a great purpose, which to attain he suffered agonies and learned lessons such as few mortals had learned before.

"He could not, nor would he, become generally useful, but for his purpose he was more useful than most men are for theirs; and he expected justice at the hands of mankind, whom he still loved with an innocent love. But he found none. Those that made themselves his judges, without further examination confirmed the former sentence, that he was generally and absolutely useless. This was the grain of sand which decided the doubtful balance of his wretched destinies.

"He is no more; thou mayest know him no more; all that remains of him is the decayed remnants of his destroyed existence. He fell as a fruit that falls before it is ripe, whose blossom has been nipped by the northern gale, or whose core is eaten out by the gnawing worm.

"Stranger that passest by, refuse not a tear of sympathy; even in falling, this fruit turned itself toward the trunk, on the branches of which it lingered through the summer, and it whispered to the tree: 'Verily, even in my death will I nourish thy roots.'

"Stranger that passest by, spare the perishing fruit, and allow the dust of its corruption to nourish the roots of the tree, on whose branches it lived, sickened, and died."

But a brighter day for Pestalozzi was about to dawn. He now became sensible of the great error of his former plans, which made too much account of external circumstances, without exerting sufficient influence on the inward nature, which it was his object to elevate. His mind gradually arrived at the important truth, which is the keystone of the system he afterward matured: "That the amelioration of outward circumstances will be the effect, but can never be the means, of mental and moral improvement."

He had now succeeded in awakening the attention of the Swiss Government to the importance of his plans for national education, and was invited to take charge of an asylum for orphans and other destitute children, which should be formed under his own direction and supported at the public expense. The place selected for this experiment was Stanz, the capital of the Canton of Underwalden, which had been recently burned and depopulated by the French Revolutionary troops. A new Ursuline convent, which was then building, was assigned to Pestalozzi as the scene of his future operations. On his arrival there he found only one apartment finished, a room about twenty-four feet square, and that unfurnished. The rest of the building was occupied by the carpenters and masons; and even had there been rooms, the want of beds and kitchen furniture would have made them useless. In the mean time, it having been announced that an asylum was to be opened, crowds of children came forward, some of them orphans, and others without protection or shelter, whom it was impossible, under such circumstances, to send away. The one room was devoted to all manner of purposes. In the day it served as a schoolroom, and at night, furnished with some scanty bedding, was occupied by Pestalozzi with as many of the scholars as it would hold. The remainder were quartered out for the night in some of the neighboring houses and came to the asylum only in the day. Of course, under such circumstances, anything like order or regularity was out of the question. Even personal cleanliness was impossible; and this, added to the dust occasioned by the workmen, the dampness of the new walls, and the closeness of the atmosphere in a small and crowded apartment, made the asylum an unhealthy abode.

The character of the children, too, was a great obstacle to Pestalozzi's success. Many of them were the offspring of beggars and outlaws and had long been inured to wretchedness and vice; others had seen better days, and, oppressed by disappointment and suffering, had lost all disposition to exert themselves; while a few, who were from the higher classes of society, had been spoiled by indulgence and luxury, and were now conceited, petulant, and full of scornful airs toward their companions.

The whole charge of the establishment thus composed devolved upon Pestalozzi. From motives of economy and from the difficulty of procuring suitable assistants, he employed no one but a housekeeper. The burden of this task was increased by the caprice and folly of many of the parents, whose children had been sent to the asylum. They were prejudiced against him as a Protestant and an agent of the Helvetic Government, and spared no complaints which their unreasonableness or ignorance could suggest. Mothers who were in the daily practice of begging from door to door would come on some silly pretext and take away their children because they would be no worse off at home. On Sundays especially the whole family circle, from parents to the remotest cousin, would assemble in a body at the asylum, and, after filling the minds of the children with their idle whims, would either take them home or leave them peevish and unhappy.

Sometimes children were brought to the asylum merely to obtain clothing, which being done they were soon removed and no reasons given. In many instances, parents required payment for leaving their children, to compensate for the loss occasioned by taking them off from their begging. In others, they desired to make an agreement for a certain number of days in the week, in which they could have permission to send them out to beg; and this being refused, they indignantly declared that they would remove them forthwith--a threat which was not unfrequently executed.

Such was the character of the materials on which Pestalozzi was obliged to commence his great experiments. He was deprived of the ordinary means of instruction and authority; and thus thrown entirely upon his own resources, the inventive genius, for which he was afterward distinguished, was awakened within him, and the spirit of humanity received a fresh impulse. One of the first benefits which he derived from his apparently untoward circumstances was the necessity of resorting to the power of love in the child's heart as the only source of obedience. There was nothing either in the disposition of the parents or the children to aid him in his efforts; on the contrary, a spirit of contempt on the one side and of open hostility on the other placed those obstacles in his way which a less original and energetic mind than his would not have been able to surmount. The usual methods of punishment could not be applied with any success; accordingly, he discarded them all. He made no attempt to frighten his refractory troop into order and obedience, but used only the instrument of an all-forbearing kindness. Even when obliged to apply coercive measures, he employed them with such a spirit as showed the children that he did not have recourse to them through anger, but that their use occasioned no less distress to him than to themselves.

His mode of instruction partook of the character of his discipline. Both were marked with the simplicity of nature. He had none of the ordinary apparatus of teaching, not even books. Himself and his pupils were all. The result was that he abandoned the common artificial systems of instruction and gave his whole attention to the original elements of knowledge which exist in every mind. He taught numbers instead of ciphers, living sounds instead of dead characters, deeds of faith and love instead of abstruse creeds, substances instead of shadows, realities instead of signs. He led the intellect of his children to the discovery of truths which, in the nature of things, they could never understand.

In the midst of his children he forgot that there was any world beside his asylum. And as their circle was a universe to him, so was he to them all in all. From morning till night he was the centre of their existence. To him they owed every comfort and every enjoyment; and, whatever hardships they had to endure, he was their fellow-sufferer. He partook of their meals and slept among them. In the evening he prayed with them before they went to bed; and from his conversation they dropped into the arms of slumber. At the first dawn of day it was his voice that called them to the light of the rising sun and to the praise of their heavenly Father. All day he stood among them, teaching the ignorant and assisting the helpless; encouraging the weak and admonishing the transgressor. His hand was daily with them, joined in theirs; his eye, beaming with benevolence, rested on theirs. He wept when they wept, and rejoiced when they rejoiced. He was to them a father, and they were to him as children. Seventy or eighty children, whose dispositions were of the most unpromising character, were converted, in a short time, into a peaceful and happy family circle. Their tempers were meliorated, their manners softened, their health improved, and their whole appearance so changed that it was almost impossible to recognize them as the same persons whose haggard and stupid faces had formerly been noticed by every visitor at the asylum.

He wished to give to his establishment the character of a family, rather than of a public school. He often related to his pupils narratives of a happy and well-regulated household; and endeavored to awaken their hearts to a sense of the blessings which men may bestow upon each other by the exercise of Christian love. He taught this, whenever he could, by examples taken from real life. Thus when Altorf, the capital of the Canton of Uri, was laid in ashes, having informed them of the event he suggested the idea of receiving some of the sufferers into the asylum. "Hundreds of children," said he, "are at this moment wandering about as you were last year, without a home, perhaps without food or clothing. What would you say of applying to the Government, which has so kindly provided for you, for leave to receive about twenty of these poor children among you?"

"Oh, yes," exclaimed his pupils; "yes, dear Mr. Pestalozzi, do apply if you please."

"Nay, my children," replied he, "consider it well first. You must know I cannot get as much money as I please for our house-keeping; and if you invite twenty children among us, I shall, very likely, not get any more for that. You must, therefore, make up your minds to share your bedding and clothing with them, and to eat less and work more than before; and if you think you cannot do that readily and cheerfully, you had better not invite them!"

"Never mind," said the children; "though we should not be so well off ourselves, we should be very glad to have these poor children among us."

But the prosperity which Pestalozzi here enjoyed proved to be of short duration. Before the expiration of a year from the commencement of his undertaking, Stanz was taken by the Austrians, and he was obliged to abandon his experiment at the very moment of its greatest success. This took place in the summer of 1799. He was now exposed to the ridicule of many, who had always derided his plan as visionary and enthusiastic, and to whom he was prevented, by this untimely removal, from giving the evidence of facts in demonstration of its excellence. His disappointment and sufferings on this account were severe. Depressed and unhappy, he retired into the solitude of the Alps, and amid the rocks and the steeps of the Gurnigal sought rest for his weary soul, and health for his exhausted nerves. But he could not long remain inactive. The enjoyment of the majestic scenes of nature among which he was placed, and the kindness and sympathy of a friend named Zehender, soon restored him to a cheerful state of mind; and he descended from the mountains, determined to resume his experiment from the point where it had been cut short at Stanz.

The Helvetic Government at this time made him a grant of about thirty pounds a year, which in 1801 was raised to one hundred, but was stopped entirely in 1803, by the dissolution of the Government. This was barely sufficient for his own subsistence, and the small remains of his private fortune were absorbed in the maintenance of his family.

In the autumn of 1799, by the advice of his friends, Pestalozzi removed to Burgdorf, an ancient Swiss city, in the Canton of Bern, where after several unsatisfactory attempts, on a small scale, to carry his plans into execution, he at last succeeded by the end of the year in opening an establishment which in 1800 numbered twenty-six pupils, and in 1801 thirty-seven. About one-third of these were sons of representatives of different cantons in Switzerland, and a part belonged to wealthy tradesmen and agriculturists, and the rest were children of respectable families reduced in their circumstances, who were placed by their friends under the care of Pestalozzi. The expenses of this undertaking were defrayed, at first, by a loan, which he was afterward enabled, but with great difficulty, to repay. But it would have been impossible to continue the institution had not the Helvetic Government voted him, in addition to the grant before mentioned, an annual supply of fuel, and a salary of twenty-five pounds each to two of his assistants, Kruesi and Buss, who, however, generously declined receiving it themselves, but devoted it to the general funds of the institution, from which they received nothing but their board and lodging.

At this time Pestalozzi published a work at the request of his friend Gessner, of Zurich, under the title of _How Gertrude Teaches her Children_, in which he gave a historical account of his experiments up to that period, and a general outline of his principles of education. This book made a very favorable impression upon the public; it excited a greater attention to his plans, confirmed the hopes of his friends, and convinced many of the soundness of his ideas who had heretofore regarded them as wild speculations.

The current of popularity now set so strong in his favor that he was chosen in 1802 as one of the deputies to Paris, pursuant to a proclamation of the French Consul, to frame a new constitution for Switzerland. He now made his appearance again as a political writer, and presented his views on the state of the country and the means of improving it, in a pamphlet entitled _View of the Objects to which the Legislature of Switzerland has chiefly to direct its Attention_. The moderate and liberal opinions expressed in this publication, and the wisdom of the proposals which it suggested, conciliated the best men of all parties, and offended none but the few who cherished an extravagant and bigoted attachment to the ancient order of things.

In all his labors Pestalozzi had a most efficient assistant in his wife, who interested herself especially in cultivating the affections of the younger pupils; while the different branches of domestic economy fell upon his daughter-in-law and an old housekeeper who had been in his family for more than thirty years and lived in it rather as a friend than a servant. The domestic arrangements had for their object to form habits of order, and to insure the enjoyment of good health to the children. In the morning, half an hour before six, the signal was given for getting up: six o'clock found the pupils ready for their first lesson, after which they were assembled for morning prayer. Between this and breakfast, the children had time left them for preparing themselves for the day; and at eight o'clock they were again called to their lessons, which continued, with the interruption of from five to seven minutes' recreation between every two hours, till twelve o'clock. Half an hour later, dinner was served up; and afterward the children were allowed to take moderate exercise till half-past two, when the afternoon lessons began, and were continued till half-past four. From half-past four till five there was another interval of recreation, during which the children had fruit and bread distributed to them. At five, the lessons were resumed till the time of supper at eight o'clock, after which, the evening prayer having been held, they were conducted to bed about nine. The hours of recreation were mostly spent in innocent games on a fine common situated between the castle and the lake and crossed in different directions by beautiful avenues of chestnut and poplar trees.

On Wednesday and Sunday afternoons, if the weather permitted, excursions of several miles were made through the beautiful scenery of the surrounding country. In summer the children went frequently to bathe in the lake, the borders of which offered, in winter, fine opportunities for skating. In bad weather they resorted to gymnastic exercises in a large hall expressly fitted up for that purpose. This constant attention to regular bodily exercise, together with the excellent climate of Yverdon, and the simplicity of their mode of living, proved so effectual in preserving the health of the children that illness of any kind made its appearance but very rarely, notwithstanding that the number of pupils amounted at one time to upward of one hundred eighty. Such was the care bestowed upon physical education in Pestalozzi's establishment; and an equal degree of solicitude was evinced for the intellectual and moral well-being of the children.

Successful, however, as the purposes of Pestalozzi were at Yverdon, the scene which is most intimately associated with his name, and which was the theatre of his brightest and most useful achievements, he was destined again to meet with bitter disappointment, and finally to go down to his grave in sorrow. After a series of embarrassments, occasioned principally by the artifices of an unprincipled and intriguing adventurer among his teachers, and having suffered in his property, his happiness, and to a certain extent in his character, and witnessed the gradual destruction of his establishment, he died at Brugg, in the Canton of Basel, on February 17, 1827, at the advanced age of eighty-two years.

CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME

A.D. 1716-1775

JOHN RUDD, LL.D.

CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME

A.D. 1716-1775

JOHN RUDD, LL.D.

Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page.

Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated.

A.D.

1716. Establishment of Law's bank in Paris in connection with the Mississippi Scheme. See "JOHN LAW PROMOTES THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME," xiii, 1.

Parliament passes the Septennial Act limiting the duration of a parliament to seven years.

Unsuccessful invasion of Norway by Charles XII.

War on Turkey by Austria; Battle of Peterwardein; victory of Prince Eugene.

1717. Occupation of Sardinia by Philip V of Spain.

Walpole resigns the English ministry.

A triple alliance formed between Britain, Holland, and France.

Battle of Belgrad; defeat of the Turks by Prince Eugene. See "PRINCE EUGENE VANQUISHES THE TURKS," xiii, 16.

1718. Foundation of New Orleans, Louisiana, by the French.

Invasion of Sicily by the Spaniards; Austria joins the Triple Alliance; the Spanish fleet defeated off Cape Passaro.

Another attempt on Norway by Charles XII; he is killed while besieging Frederikshald.

St. Petersburg becomes the capital of Russia.

1719. Philip V submits to the alliance; the Spaniards evacuate Sicily and Sardinia.

Ravaging of the coast of Sweden by the Russian fleet.

Great speculative craze in England.

1720. "BURSTING OF THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE." See xiii, 22.

Disastrous end of Law's financial schemes in France.

Sweden and Prussia arrange the Treaty of Stockholm; Prussia acquires a large portion of Hither Pomerania.

Sardinia becomes a kingdom, raised out of the Savoy dominions.

1721. Walpole again First Lord of the Treasury (prime minister) of England.

France becomes financially bankrupt.

1722. A patent granted Wood for the coinage of copper coin for Ireland; this led Swift to write of the "wooden halfpence."

Persia conquered by the Afghans.

A Jacobite plot against George I of England discovered.

Founding of a Moravian brotherhood at Herrnhut, Saxony.

War on Persia by Peter the Great.

1723. Majority of Louis XV of France.

Large territories secured from Persia by Peter the Great.

"BACH LAYS THE FOUNDATION OF MODERN MUSIC." See xiii, 31.

1724. A professorship of modern history founded by George I at Oxford and at Cambridge university.

Resignation of the Spanish crown by Philip V in favor of his son, Louis; the latter dies after a short reign, and his father reassumes the government.

1725. Treaty of Vienna between Austria and Spain, assenting to the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VI.

Treaty of Hanover between Great Britain, France, and Prussia.

Death of Peter the Great; his widow, Catharine I, succeeds to the throne of Russia.

1726. Russia joins in the Treaty of Vienna.

1727. Spain makes an unsuccessful attempt to blockade and fails in her siege of Gibraltar.

Death of George I; George II succeeds to the throne of England.

Persia freed from the Afghans by Nadir Kuli, Shah of Persia.

For having published the proceedings in the British House of Commons Edward Cane is taken into custody by the sergeant-at-arms.

1728. Assembling at Soissons of a congress of the great powers.

Discovery of the strait bearing his name by Bering.

1729. Great Britain, France, and Spain arrange the Treaty of Seville.

Purchase of Carolina by the crown; two royal provinces instituted, North and South Carolina; plot of the negroes in the latter to murder their masters.

Revolt of Corsica against the Genoese.

1730. Introduction by Réaumur of his thermometer.

Baltimore, Maryland, founded.

Opening of the first railway, between Manchester and Liverpool, England.

1731. An earthquake convulses Chile for twenty-seven days; Santiago nearly engulfed.

Origin of Methodism by the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield.

1732. Oglethorpe founds a settlement in Georgia. See "SETTLEMENT OF GEORGIA," xiii, 44.

Franklin establishes the first subscription library in the United Colonies.

Expulsion of the Protestants from Salzburg.

1733. Death of Augustus II of Poland; War of the Polish Succession between Austria and France.

Invention in England of the fly-shuttle for weaving, by John Kay, aided by Arkwright.

1734. Austrian campaign against France and Sardinia in Northern Italy; Philip V enters Naples and proclaims himself king. Battle of Bitonto; defeat of the Austrians, May 25; Capua falls in November.

Siege of Philippsburg by the French under Berwick; the fortress taken, Berwick slain.

Trial of Zenger in New York, establishing the principle of freedom of the English colonial press.

1735. First settlement of the Moravians in America, made at Georgia.

Don Carlos conquers Sicily; is crowned king as Charles III.

1736. Issue of a papal bull against freemasonry.

Glass lamps used in the streets of London.

War of Russia against Turkey; capture of Azov by the former.

Nadir Shah (Kuli Khan) succeeds to the Persian throne.

1737. War on Turkey by Charles VI.

End of the Medici line in Tuscany; Francis Stephen becomes grand duke.

English theatres are placed under control of the lord chamberlain.

Birth of Edward Gibbon, historian.

1738. Conquest of Afghanistan by Nadir (Kuli) Shah.

At Vienna is signed the definitive treaty between Charles VI of Germany and Louis XV of France.

Forming of the first Methodist Society in England, by John Wesley. See "RISE OF METHODISM," xiii, 57.

1739. War of Jenkins's Ear between England and Spain; in 1731 an English merchant-vessel was boarded by a Spanish guardship, and the captain, Robert Jenkins, cruelly used, an ear being torn off.

Nadir Shah captures Delhi; he sacks the city and massacres the people. See "CONQUESTS OF NADIR SHAH," xiii, 72.

Recovery of Belgrad and Servian territory by the Turks, arranged by treaty between Austria and Turkey.

1740. Death of Frederick William I; accession of Frederick the Great to the Prussian throne. Treachery of the powers which had guaranteed the succession of the Austrian throne to Maria Theresa. See "FREDERICK THE GREAT SEIZES SILESIA," xiii, 108.

A Moravian settlement formed at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

"FIRST MODERN NOVEL." See xiii, 100.

1741. A revolution places Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, on the throne of Russia; Ivan, an infant, and his parents are imprisoned.

Alliance between England and Austria.

War between Sweden and Russia.

Unsuccessful attack of Admiral Vernon on Cartagena, New Granada.

Final separation of New Hampshire from Massachusetts.

Pretended negro plot in New York.

1742. Election and coronation of the Elector of Bavaria as Emperor Charles VII of Germany.

Silesia and Glatz ceded to Frederick the Great.

The French are expelled Bohemia.

1743. Second Bourbon Family Compact between the kings of France and Spain.

Great Britain supports the cause of Maria Theresa. Battle of Dettingen; victory of the English and Hanoverian army.

1744. War renewed with Austria by Frederick the Great; he invades Bohemia, captures Prague, but is forced to retreat.

Beginning of King George's War in America.

1745. Last Jacobite rebellion in Britain; Scotland rises for the Young Pretender, Charles Edward; Battle of Prestonpans; he is victorious and advances into England, but is compelled to retreat.

Capture of Louisburg by British-American colonists.

Death of Emperor Charles VII; Maximilian Joseph, his successor in Bavaria, makes peace with Maria Theresa. Battle of Fontenoy; victory of the French, under Marshal Saxe, over the allies under the Duke of Cumberland. Victories of the Prussians at Hohenfriedberg, Sohr, Hennersdorf, and Kesseldorf. Francis I, husband of Maria Theresa, elected to the imperial throne. Peace between Austria and Prussia.

Invention of the Leyden jar, named from the city where first used.

1746. Battle of Falkirk; victory of the Young Pretender; he is overthrown at the Battle of Culloden. See "DEFEAT OF THE YOUNG PRETENDER AT CULLODEN," xiii, 117.

Conquest of the Austrian Netherlands by the French.

Madras, India, surrenders to the French.

Genoa surrenders to the Austrians; they are expelled by a popular rising.

1747. Naval victory of the English, off Cape Finisterre, under Anson and Warren, over the French. They suffer another defeat at the hand of Admiral Hawke at Belle-Isle. Battle of Rocourt; Marshal Saxe defeats the allies under the Duke of Cumberland, at Lawfeld. Russia supports the cause of Maria Theresa.

"FRANKLIN EXPERIMENTS WITH ELECTRICITY." See xiii, 130.

1748. Marshal Saxe captures Maestricht; Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, ending the War of the Austrian Succession.

Excavations begin at Pompeii.

Pompadour's ascendency over the French King.

Pondicherry successfully defended by Dupleix against the English under Boscawen and Lawrence.

1749. George II grants a charter to the Ohio Company.

1750. Bounties granted and a company formed in England to encourage the herring and cod fisheries.

1751. Clive begins his successful career in India.

1752. Change from the Old to the New (or Gregorian) style of calendar in England.

1753. Founding of the British Museum, due to the legacy of Sir Hans Sloane, who bequeaths his library, antiquities, and collection of natural curiosities for that purpose.

1754. Encroachments of the French in North America; Washington, colonel of a provincial regiment, sent from Virginia to drive them from the Ohio, is defeated and made prisoner.

King's College, now Columbia, founded at New York.