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young teachers. A dark, mournful spirit rests upon the schools. A fearful mistrust spreads over the teachers; fear arises when a hundred or fifty of them meet together without superintendence; they have ceased "to believe in love and faith"; even a Middendorff could not escape their suspicion, that pure, white human soul, in which, with a microscope, no trace of falsehood and deception could be discovered, who fought in youth for German life, German freedom and unity, and devoted his whole existence to the development and education of German youth!

What could this man as well as Froebel not have done for the creation of the most intrinsic devotion and love to our children, those rarest qualities in teachers, and of the equally rare knowledge of children, so peculiar to them, if the powers and qualities of these men, who do not return to us-for when will another Pestalozzian time come?-if they had been used in suitable places? In vain they made life-long exertions to find a quite suitable and permanent asylum and sufficient means for their object, which was a pedagogic, central point, unifying and acting in all directions; they tried in foreign lands, and even there did not find the right place; the time was past when thousands flocked to Basedow, and a noble prince received him; "faith in love and truth" had vanished, and even the hope of seeing a living central institution for the intellectual culture. of the nation blooming out at Weimar in Goethe's centennial jubilee, proved to be a delusion. They laughed at and derided our plan in Berlin as well as in Weimar, and what have they now reached? One statue more instead of a living institution, an increase of the dead treasures of their closed museum, instead of a factor taking hold of the present time. Froebel mourned over it on his death-bed, and Middendorff was grieved.

Mid

I pass over a great deal, and mention but one thing more. dendorff was no writer; writing was disagreeable to him; the rush of his thoughts hindered a systematic arrangement of them; yet he wrote as he could not help doing, intellectually and subjectively; but his greatest power was not in that, it was shown in the living word; he was an orator. He showed that in Hamburg, in Liebenstein, and in Salzungen. In the autumn of 1850 the friends of Froebel held a meeting in the Liebenstein Kurhause,' at the well-known 'Erdfalle.' On the second day was the exhibition of the fruits of the efforts made for little children in the spirit of Froebel. The teachers told this, the kindergartners that. At last came Middendorff, who told what he had observed in the children of the peasantry and their mothers in the region around Keilhau, which he was in the habit of visiting on Sundays. It went home to all hearts.

And how he spoke in May, 1853, at Salzungen, at the fifth General Assembly of German teachers! I do not deny that there as well as here I trembled with joyful exultation. This extraordinary effect of the appearance of Middendorff I ascribe essentially to his sincerity. Everything was in harmony in him, bodily as well as spiritually. One always knew where to find him. A true, beautiful, beneficent image of him is left to his friends. He stands before their recollection in the perfected harmony of his being. In a man of this kind one cannot ask after this or that peculiarity, whether he possessed this or that quality; that would be impertinent.

He was not this or that; he did not make himself this or that; he was a unit, and therefore he was everything that he had the capacity of being. The pygmies and Lilliputians of the pedagogues of to-day wish to produce this and that; they wish to make everything, to make, that is to pervert and train, but they produce nothing, because they will not let nature, which is God-given, exist or grow. How far removed wert thou, noble friend, from this old-new "wisdom!" Who of those present at the Liebenstein meeting will not remember how he dealt with the man who wanted to subordinate everything to the model of "Christian orthodoxy," and was not willing to recognize the right of each individual to his own natural development.

He, the single-minded, harmoniously-cultivated, perfect man of his kind, felt, as others did, a detestation of the thought of what must yet become of the world which he found so glorious and beautiful in the manifoldness of its manifestations, if the priests of all sects should suceeed, like shepherds, in casting the net of their faith, as the only saving one, over the heads of their flocks! At this idea a terror seized the pure soul which knew so well what it owed to a natural, free development. How this man clung to nature, how he worshiped the hand of the Creator, when he dwelt upon the laws of man's nature! His soul soared into God's free heaven, where he felt at home; there he was nearer to his God, there he understood the decrees of his genius. It moves me when I think of the expression of his face, the glory of his eyes, and the tone of his voice, as he poured out his inmost soul upon the top of the island mountain! He was convinced of the immortal existence of the human soul, and of its progressive development as the source of blessedness.

Where does that pure, transfigured human soul linger now? To see and enjoy thee again, released from earthly tribulations, would alone be a heaven, an unspeakable rapture!

Have pia anima, anima candida,
Never-to-be-forgotten friend !

It was by such hearty characterizations as this of Middendorff, and his earlier notices of Froebel and the Kindergarten in the Rheinische Blätter, and Pädagogishes Jahrbuch, as soon as he became thoroughly acquainted with them, that Diesterweg rendered such essential service to the New Education. Until its principles and methods, its founder and co-laborers were recognized by Diesterweg, the ablest champion of a broad liberal elementary education for the whole people, and whose voice was potential in spite of the disfavor of the court, the Kindergarten had not arrested the attention of pedagogical circles in Germany. Diesterweg, though late in the field, was the first to proclaim the full significance of play, Froebel's addition to pedagogical science, as the firm foundation in the child's earliest instruction, for his own PrussianPestalozzian system of intuitional teaching.* The Baroness Marenholtz Bülow, in all her great and varied and ubiquitous service to the Frobelian cause, never did a better day's work than when she persuaded the great master, in spite of his prejudices "against all fooling in educational matters," to go and listen and see what Froebel had to say and do, on the 15th of July, 1849, in his little modest farm house in Liebenstein. He went, was charmed, and was satisfied that Froebel "had actually something of a seer and looked into the inmost nature of the child as no one else had done." From that day he went every day for weeks afterwards, with the "Mother and Cosset Songs" under his arm, to learn more of the Kindergarten and converse with Froebel.

Both Diosterweg and Froebel were pupils of Pestalozzi, and both found, in the instinctive activity of the child, the impulse and method of mental development; but Froebel was the first to formulate these methods in the Nursery and Kindergarten for the full development of the entire human being, and furnish the basis of the intuitional instruction which Pestalozzi was the first to discover, and Diesterweg and other Directors of Teachers' Seminaries to develop into a system of elementary education for the people.

The Prussian-Pestalozzian system of elementary instruction, as described by Stowe, Bache and Mann, before the restrictions of the 66 Regulativ " " of 1854 were applied to the currriculum and methods of the Primary Teachers' Seminaries, was the creation of such Directors of Seminaries as Harnisch, Diesterweg, and others of the Pestalozzian school.

In the original issue of the Wegweisser we find no special recognition of the Kindergarten. In the latest edition, there is a very valuable paper on both Froebel and the Kindergarten by Ferdinand Winthur.†

* For the contents of this model Guide for German teachers, see Barnard's Journal of Education, vol. vii, p. 312. In the same connection will be found a brief memoir of this great teacher and popular educator. Diesterweg's chapter in edition of 1854, on Intuitional and Speaking Exercises, as published in same Journal (Vol xii, p. 411-430), and Dr. Busse's article in edition of 1876, republished in Vol. xxx, p. 417-450, are in the true spirit and method of Froebel applied to children after leaving the Kindergarten. + This paper will be found in Barnard's Journal xxxi, p. 82-90.

FEMALE EDUCATION IN CONNECTICUT.

LETTER FROM W. C. FOWLER, LL.D.

PERIOD BEFORE 1800.

DEAR DR. BARNARD: To your inquiries respecting female education in ancient Connecticut, I beg to present the following reply :*

In the light of history, a glance at the races and tribes of men on the face of the earth is sufficient to show that the early education of women has generally been conformed to the ideas entertained of her expected duties as a wife and a mother. This is true in the lower and in the higher degrees of civilization; in the kraals of the Hottentots, the wigwams of the American Indians, in the Zenänas of Hindoostan, as well as in the homes of Christian nations.

In the high Christian civilization of Connecticut, the expected duties of woman, as a wife and a mother, were enlarged in proportion to the high sphere in which she was called to act as a denizen of time and a future inhabitant of eternity. She was expected to be a true yokefellow of her husband, that he might, in the language of the Bible, "be won by her conversation." She was expected to train up her children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as fellow-heirs of the grace of life.

Thus acting, these children could not fail to think of her as the busy housewife who plied her incessant cares, or as the queen, issuing her commands, and making order and neatness reign in her domain, and as one from whose heart the spring of sympathy welled up to her eyes in tears, as joy or sorrow ruled the hour. And after she had gone to her home in the heavens, they could think of her as one who, when on earth, had been a ministering spirit for them who were not, as well as for them who were, heirs of salvation. Thus to the families of ancient Connecticut the Gospel of Christ opened a long vista from this into the eternal world, and presented the future inhabitants of that world, clad in the white robes of the saints, walking by the river of life, and plucking the fruits from the trees that grow on both sides of the river. If any Connecticut parents were asked the question, "Whom shall he teach knowledge, and whom shall he make to understand doctrine?" the answer forthcoming would be, "them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts." "For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little and there a little." In other words, parents must teach their children, while they are still young, with constant assiduity. As printed, several additional items are incorporated by the Editor with the consent of the writer. (161)

And knowing that actions speak louder and more distinctly than words, they were careful to illustrate their instructions by examples. God, the great Teacher of the Universe, instructs His creatures by His works and His words; and many judicious and pious parents in Connecticut taught their children, not only by their sayings, but by their doings.

The early settlers of Connecticut brought with them from England a pronounced appreciation of both the higher and lower literary education of the young. They regarded the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the mother country, as the "two eyes" of England. They aided Harvard College for something like sixty years after its foundation, sending to it from time to time young men to be educated, and wheat to sustain the College. They or their successors established Yale College, in the hope that those who were graduated at this institution would be eyes to the blind in the commonwealth and New England. They established primary or common schools at an early period, for the universal attendance of children and youth, and they transmitted to their posterity their attachment to both the higher and lower institutions of learning. What the village schoolmaster and his school in England were, may be partly known from Goldsmith's "Deserted Village"; and what were the schoolmistress in England and her school, may be partly known from Shenstone's poem, entitled "The Schoolmistress."

The common school system in Connecticut was intended from the first to be a general provision for teaching all the children, male and female, to read the Bible. The answer to the first question in the Westminster Catechism is, that "the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." The answer to the second question is, that "The word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify God and enjoy Him." These two answers form the premises to the conclusion that every child ought to be taught to read the word of God in the Old and New Testaments.

There was also the additional reason that every one ought to be able to read the laws of the commonwealth in which he lived, especially if he was a voter.

From the first establishment of common schools in this State, boys and girls were sent to them for instruction in the rudiments of learning. This was in accordance with the practice in England and Scotland. Where the parents had leisure and intelligence, they frequently taught their children to read words of one or two syllables before sending them to school. This they considered a part of home education.

The word "education" is sometimes used in a limited sense, as equivalent to the word "instruction." It is also used in a broader sense, as signifying all those influences, whether designed or undesigned, which contribute to the formation of character. There was also another way in which provision was made for the education of children and youth

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