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APPRENTICESHIP IN FARMING.

ately after his convalescence he committed all his papers to the flames. A number of scraps on various topics connected with the study of law and politics, and extensive extracts on the history of Switzerland, compiled with reference to the same subject, perished in this auto de fé upon labours which had led him to so unsatisfactory a conclusion. The bewildering influence of books he shunned, henceforth, as the Nazarite did wine and strong drink; and although this antipathy was somewhat softened in after-life, yet he could never quite reconcile his mind to the records of history and the stores of literature. He had felt, that most of the ills into which society was plunged, had their origin in a strange departure from what appeared to him the straight and simple path of nature; and to the school of nature, therefore, he resolved to go.

Abandoning all his former prospects and pursuits, he left Zurich, and went to Kirchberg, in the canton of Berne, where he apprenticed himself to a farmer of the name of Tschiffeli, who enjoyed a great reputation at that time, not only for his superiority in rural economy, but also for the warm interest he took in the improvement of the agricultural classes. Here a new sphere was opened to him; instead of the lecture room he now frequented the stable; the sedentary engagements of the study were exchanged for constant exercise in the open air. Occasionally he set his hand to the plough and the spade; and whilst he had returned to the primitive employment of man, "to till the ground from which he is taken," he was meditating on the best manner of making this simplest of all callings the means of mental and moral improvement. The health and bodily strength which he acquired in this new mode of living, braced his weak and irritated nerves; and his removal from the scene of artificial life enabled him to regain that peace of mind, of which his first conflict with the world had deprived him. That harmless tranquillity, that unconscious security of feeling, which characterizes childhood, increases in proportion as man ap⚫proaches a patriarchal state of society, and diminishes in pro

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portion as he is more involved in the complicated workings of the social machine. Pestalozzi had, as a boy, possessed that childlike simplicity in an eminent degree, and now, in the intercourse with nature and with men of primitive habits, he recovered it so fully, that whenever in after-life he alludea to the studies of his earlier years, he spoke of them in a manner, as if they were so many recollections of a previous state, altogether unconnected with his present existence.

After he had, under the direction of Tschiffeli, qualified himself for the conduct of a rural establishment, he employed the small patrimony which his father had left him, in the purchase of a tract of waste land in the neighbourhood of Lenzburg, in the canton of Berne, on which he erected a dwelling-house with the necessary outbuildings, and gave it the name of Neuhof, that is, the New farm. With all the energy and the sanguine anticipations of a young man of twenty-two years, he now applied himself to the cultivation of his estate, which indeed, to deserve that name, required years of persevering labour. But his courage, borne out by the vigor of youth, conquered all difficulties; the work of his hands prospered, and he soon saw his new creation in a flourishing condition, and his prospects as easy and cheerful as he could well have wished. At this bright epoch of his life, when all his good stars seemed to have met in a happy constellation, he sought and obtained the hand of Anne Schulthess, a young woman on whom nature and education had vied in bestowing their accomplishments. Greater praise, however, than to the gifts which adorned her, is due to the elevation of character which she evinced in uniting herself to a man, in whom there was, indeed, nothing to love but the kindness of his disposition and his warm zeal in the cause of humanity. His eccentricity had at that time already gained him the shoulder-shrugging compassion of the wiseacres among his fellow-citizens; his personal appearance was far from attractive, and his establishment at Neuhof, whatever value it might have had for himself, could never be worth the consideration of the daughter of one of

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the wealthiest merchants at Zurich. The woman that gave him her hand, set at defiance the voice of public opinion, the tastes of her sex, and all considerations of worldly interest; and, by this triumph of love over the meaner feelings of human nature, she proved herself worthy to share the affections and the destinies of a man, whom God had chosen to raise the voice of reform in his generation.

This marriage, while it gave more reality to the image which Pestalozzi had made to himself of his domestic circle, offered him a new sphere of useful exertion, by putting him in possession of a share in a flourishing cotton manufactory. As might be expected, he took an active part in the conduct of it, with a view not only to acquire a knowledge of this branch of national industry, which had been recently introduced in Switzerland, but also to become acquainted with the character of the manufacturing classes, and to compare the influence of their occupation with that of agriculture, upon the minds and morals of the people. The result of his observations brought him back to the conclusion, that the then prevailing system of popular education was not by any means calculated to fit mankind for the discharge of their duties in after-life, and the attainment of a tranquil and happy existence. The effect which this conviction produced upon him, was, however, very different now from what it had been, when he had gathered it from conflicting theories. The school of life, it is true, had shown him the same evils, but it had also taught him, what his books never could teach him, to find and to apply a remedy. Hence it was that the same views, which had once plunged him into a state of gloom approaching to misanthropy, now aroused his soul to courageous exertion, and kindled in him a zeal and energy, for which no sacrifice was too great, no difficulty too appalling.

CHAPTER II.

Orphan School-Its Difficulties and Failure-The French Revolution Lessons taught by it- Writings of this period-Plans

of National Improvement-Stantz.

EIGHT years of assiduous labour had brought the Neuhof into a prosperous state of cultivation, when Pestalozzi resolved to make the experiment, how far it might be possible, by education, to raise the lower orders to a condition more consistent with a Christian state of society. To secure himself against extraneous influence, which might be at variance with his own views and plans, and to enhance the value of the results which he hoped to obtain, he selected the objects of his care from the very dregs of the people. Wherever he knew a child that was bereaved, or one whom the beggary or vagrancy of his parents rendered in another sense fatherless, he took him into his house; and, in a short time, his establishment was converted into an asylum in which fifty orphan or pauper children were provided with food, clothing, and instruction. He was deeply convinced that pauperism and vice, so far from being counteracted by extensive relief funds and strict police measures, received, on the contrary, an additional stimulus and new nourishment from institutions founded upon the supposition that these evils are necessary, and that all the state can do is to bring them within the bounds and forms of a regular system. He felt that the improvement of the lower orders required an internal stimulus to be awakened in their own breast; that no correction would make them good, and no support happy, unless there were a determination on their part to be good and happy. He saw, moreover, that even such a determination could be of no avail, unless they had it in their power to rise from the low condition to which they had sunk; and he turned, therefore, towards education

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with a view not only to give them that mental and moral cultivation, which he expected would produce in them a tendency to good, but also to lead them to acquire those practical abilities and industrious habits, by which they would be enabled to keep themselves in a situation favorable to their improvement. His object was to show, not how the state might provide for the poor and correct them, but how it might enable the poor to provide for and correct themselves. He wanted to establish the fact, that by taking the evil at the root, an easy and infallible remedy was at hand: he wanted, moreover, to gain for himself that practical knowledge of the means to be employed for the attainment of his purpose, which at the hand of experience alone he could hope to find. His views were by no means confined to the establishment of a private charity; his ulterior object was to effect a reform in the popular education of his country. He knew that it would be vain for him, at that time, to urge the subject upon the attention of the Swiss governments, and he wished, therefore, both to qualify himself better for the task of advocating it, and to procure such evidence in support of his arguments, as it would be impossible either to confute or

to resist.

The purpose of his undertaking was essentially national, and he endeavoured, accordingly, to combine in it, as far as possible, the chief branches of national industry. The children whom he had rescued from the most abject poverty, were initiated in his establishment in the different employments of domestic and rural economy, and from the cotton manufactory in which he was a partner, he procured sufficient work to make them acquainted likewise with this sort of labour, and to keep up industrious habits at those seasons of the year in which agricultural pursuits are necessarily suspended. But he did not imagine, as some have done, that the mechanical acquirement of certain abilities and habits would of itself tend to improve the circumstances of his pupils in after-life; much less did he expect that an amendment of circumstances would better their moral condi

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