ciples. Death may be said to have come to him as the greatest blessing: he was removed from this scene of sorrow on the 17th of February, 1827, at Brugg, in the canton of Basel, and his mortal remains were interred in the ground which owed its fertility to the vigorous exertions of his ripening manhood.

To give the system of education which Pestalozzi adopted in detail, would be impossible in our publication; nor would it be interesting to the general reader, and we fear not of much service to the teacher. The leading idea of Pestalozzi was, that the child should be taught as much as possible, by his own examination of things: his knowledge was not to be founded on hear-say evidence, but on his own ocular inspection. This he called, very appropriately, intuitive knowledge; the manuals by which the teacher was to be guided in the course of his instruction, were called intuitive books. At a subsequent period, when Pestalozzi pursued the subject of education to a more advanced age, and when he penetrated more deeply into the mysteries of human nature, he spoke likewise of mental, moral, and religious intuitionthat is to say, of a perception of the understanding, the moral feelings, and the religious faculties of man; which is distinct from all information derived from outward sources, inasmuch as it rests altogether on internal consciousness. The ideas usually conveyed by the terms light of reason, light of conscience, and inward divine light, bear a faint analogy to what Pestalozzi meant to express, when speaking of different sorts of internal or spiritual intuition.

Pestalozzi held, that reasoning with children at an early age, did no good whatever; and that the only way to the real development of their faculties is

1. To enlarge the sphere of their intuition; i.e. to increase the number of objects falling under their own immediate perception.

2. To impress upon them those perceptions of which they have become conscious, with certainty, clearness, and precision.

3. To impart to them a comprehensive knowledge of language for the expression of whatever has become, or is becoming an object of their consciousness, in consequence either of the spontaneous impulse of their own nature, or the assistance of tuition.

In all the courses of his instruction, Pestalozzi's aim was to make education tangible; i.e. to represent every thing first through the media of external objects. His method of teaching to read, was on this principle:-sticks were used about eighteen inches in length and an inch in width; on each of which, only one letter was painted, one under another, twenty-four times in German, and a smaller number of times in French. The advantage of the frequent repetition of the same letter, is, that the pupil is supposed to retain thereby a better recollection of its figure and its sound. The vowel-sticks were first learnt; and when they were accurately known, the consonant-sticks, which have been previously sounded with e mute, were alternately put before and after the vowel-stick, and pronounced each way. Another stick was then taken, on which all the consonants are painted in a perpendicular line, and the vowel-sticks were applied to each letter successively, thus forming as many syllables as there are consonants.

This exercise is varied at pleasure, by adding new sticks, and by composing syllables with any number of letters. Two months were said to be quite sufficient for teaching to read by this method; but this we know to be impossible. According to this plan, many syllables will be composed before the whole alphabet is learned; and no attention is paid to the scrupulous distinction of consonants into labials, gutturals, &c. This is a judicious arrangement, as the explanations with which it is necessary to accompany them, are more apt to bewilder a child than to assist its progress at that early period. Reading and writing were, as with us in our National, and British and Foreign Schools, properly taught together: the slate too was used in the first instance; and the children were kept employed for a considerable time on those letters which contain the elementary characters of others. As often as they learnt a new letter, they were made to write a word, composed of that letter and of others which they knew before; and when they were sufficiently advanced to trace three or four letters with care, the others were generally learned with great facility. In both reading and writing, the main principle was to stop upon even the most trifling points, till perfect accuracy was obtained; never to suffer any retrograde movements; never to allow words to be forgotten which had been once known, or those to be written badly which had once been written well.

The French and German languages were taught in three courses: the first, embracing nothing but the simple usage of the words; the second, a knowledge of grammar; and the last, style and literature in general. The basis of grammar he rather fancifully laid in a practical manner, without the use of abstract terms. In the second course,

much attention was paid to the analysis of words, especially in the German language; in which etymology is an important branch of study. In the elements of prosody, the different feet were distinguished as particular measures were anciently, by the names of different poets; as Ossian, Höltz, Klopstock. Rules were given for the elevation or the lowering of the voice, and three distinct tones were pointed out: that which lays the stress upon the syllables, which marks the meaning of the word, or on those words which mark the meaning of the phrase; that which expresses the nature of the sentiment intended to be conveyed; and a third, which was supposed to hold an intermediary place between the two preceeding.

In the department of geometry, Pestalozzi was said to have paid the greatest attention. In teaching it, in the first place no definitions were employed, but their place was supplied by the examination of the geometrical figures themselves; for which purpose models in wood or pasteboard were used, in order to give more definite ideas. The attention was thus well fixed upon the forms, before proceeding with their admeasurement. Another peculiarity was, that each pupil invented his own figures, and did not merely copy them from tables; they were left to his own choice, giving him only certain conditions, which he was required to fulfil, and directing him only so far as to enable him to advance with order in solving the problems: reasons being always given for each step in the proposition.

VOL. I.-Feb. 1835.

In arithmetic the same principle of presenting the first elements visibly to the senses was preserved. Counters, or beans, were not used; but unity was represented on the slate by one line, two by two, and so on, as far as ten. The pupil was then set to compose any number with this series, as many times as possible, with the different groups of lines drawn before him. He was afterwards asked in how many ways he could destroy any number? say for example the number seven; viz. by taking away six and one, five and two, four and three, &c. The pupil had this series of lines before him, and calculated by sight, till he could dispense with this, and when they were laid aside, and similar operations were formed by the head, the fractions were expressed by halves, thirds, quarters of lines, &c.; and after these lines or exercises were perfectly learned, calculation by figures commenced, the unit being placed opposite to the lines which correspond to its number. The same gradual steps were followed in algebra. Before the algebraic signs were used, one unknown quantity was compared with known quantities, and calculated by rule, without sign or formula, and thus the number of the unknown quantities were augmented successively. L'Huilier has adopted the same system of preliminary reasoning in the head, by means of problems, without algebraical signs in the first instance, in his "Elements of Algebra," published at Geneva, in 1804. The method succeeded under Pestalozzi; and the mathematics were considered the branch of study in which the pupils of his establishment made the greatest progress. The manner of working in a class was as follows: the question was first communicated by the master, and then written on a slate, so as to be seen by all. Each boy then copied it on his slate at separate desks, and repeated it aloud for the sake of correctness. The master then passed to perform the same operation to the second class, while the first was calculating, and then returning, rapidly inspected the slates, and proceeded to set another problem. Those who had not worked out the first question, were not allowed to proceed to the second; and the whole was carried on without noise or confusion, and without any appearance of embarrassment from the presence of strangers.

In geography and history, similar care was taken to simplify the first elements of each science. The description of the sphere, which is usually placed at the head of geography, was properly deferred, till the course of elementary instruction is finished. In history preliminary notions were conveyed, by the successive consideration of an individual, a family, a tribe, and a people. Schlaeger's Chronological and Synchronical Chart was used, which answers nearly to Priestley's Historical Tables, except that it preserves a distinction between brilliant and obscure Epochs, by means of the degrees of shade in the colours which represented each period.

History, however, as well as the teaching of foreign languages, must be confessed to have been complete failures with Pestalozzi. The historical lessons laboured under great imperfections, and his historical studies, were, more than any other branch of education, subject to sudden changes. One man read abstruse lectures; another drew up

a set of synchronical tables: it seemed to some preferable to connect all history with biographical sketches; while others dwelt in lengthy discussions on the different forms of government, and the best polity; some hurried over the records of human kind in a few months; while others found their whole set of pupils changed between their ante and post diluvian lessons. Gymnastics were taught, but only partially : like many other of Pestalozzi's ideas, they were not fully carried out. He thought that the education of the body, and the various powers of muscles should accompany mental cultivation; and therefore attempted to reduce the various motions of the limbs to a sort of system. Such a plan, however, was very un-Pestalozzian, and, like history and the study of languages, did not make much progress at Yverdon.

The religious instruction imparted by Pestalozzi was open to objections, although the manner of it was not; holding peculiar notions himself, the spirit of those notions was indicated by his pupils at an early age, by an absence of those points of belief which formed the ground-work of the Christian faith: with this objection, and it is one which we deem of no mean importance, the establishment at Yverdon was conducted in a Christian spirit, and a genuine brotherly feeling seemed to exist between all the members of the institution. The children saw in Pestalozzi their father, in the teachers of the house their elder brethren, and they needed few rules to keep them in subjection, when a constant exercise of kindness imposed on them the restraint of daily and hourly obligation. The domestic arrangements had for their object to form habits of order, and to ensure 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 afterwards 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 being read, 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 chesnut and poplar trees. On Wednesday and Sunday afternoons, if the weather permitted it, 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 attendance 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 the number of pupils amounted at one time to upwards of one hundred and eighty.

Such is the outline of Pestalozzi's career, and his system of instruction; the first presents a chequered picture, and the second a crude and disjointed plan, containing the elements of what is good, but in many parts neither developed according to its own principles, nor carried out with the effect it might have been under more favourable auspices. The fault does not appear to rest with Pestalozzi, whose energies were alive to the last, and who pursued his objects with an enthusiasm and constancy, which deserved a success of the highest kind that can attend human exertions. The most imperfect part of the undertaking was perhaps that to which the public attention has been chiefly directed, and which has been most vaunted by the new method of instruction. The spirit which pervaded the whole, and which constituted the vital principle of Pestalozzi's education, was less tangible than a set of printed tables, and hence is it that travellers, inquirers, and observers from near and far, while they have hardly caught a glimpse of the former, have inundated the world with fragments of the latter, which could not but prove inefficient and worthless, like to a branch which must necessarily wither when it is cut off from the tree on which it grew. Much of the reproach which has from various quarters, and on various grounds, been heaped upon the cause, is to be attributed to this circumstance: the disproportion between the effects announced, and the results actually obtained, by men who converted the means engrafted upon the life of the institution at Yverdon, into a dead system, and transferred them on a dead ground, has prejudiced many even against those branches of his method which Pestalozzi and his teachers had succeeded in establishing; while the imperfect state in which they themselves left some departments of instruction, furnished an additional argument against them with the large mass of the public, who care not whether their judgment be fair or unfair, so as they can support it by facts. It was not indeed to be expected that a discovery, which tended to a universal reform of all human knowledge, not merely in the manners of conveying it, but in the basis on which it is to be founded, and the purpose for which it is to be imparted, should be practically applied to the whole range of science, by a man, who, at the time when he engaged in the work, had attained an age at which most men retire from active pursuits. If those who are unable to comprehend, or unwilling to acknowledge whatever is more lofty or more enlarged than the common-place chronicle of their own consciousness, must needs have something to be surprised at, let them wonder that Pestalozzi realized so much of his views, rather than that he did not realize them all. The task which he undertook will not be done in one or two generations; but the seeds are sown and will germinate, because they are in unison with nature. The infant schools have already dipped into the principles of Pestalozzi: had Pestalozzi never lived, they perhaps would not have existed; and these principles are