Great Educators.

This department will present during the year studies of the lives and works of five great educators. Pestalozzi being the center of the educational reform endeavors in the past three hundred years, a specially full treatment will be given of him. Below is published the first installment of Mayo's famous Memwoir of Pestalozzi, carefully revised and annotated. also editorial note on page 64.

The Story of Pestalozzi. I.

By the REV. CHARLES MAYO., LL.D.

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OME years ago an Irish gentleman traveling thru Yverdon, in Switzerland, was prevailed on to spend a couple of hours in the institution of Pestalozzi. The first class he inspected was carried on in a language not familiar to him; yet was he much struck with the intelligence and vivacity portrayed in the features of the pupils. But when he witnessed the power of the method in its application to arithmetic, he discovered in the pupils a clear conception of number and its relation, a precision and rapidity in mental calculation, an animation and an interest in their employment, which convinced him that a secret had been discovered by Pestalozzi, and he resolved, if possible to penetrate it.1 His proposed

1 The main object of Pestalozzi's instruction was the development of the mental powers; and having accomplished this the ability of his pupils displayed in mental arithmetic became the chief means of attracting the attention of the public to his work. Pestalozzianism has often since been judged by the excellency of its arithmetical teaching. Whether a teacher understands and applies the principles of Pestalozzi may be readily known by the character and results of the teaching in this branch of knowledge. It can be easily seen whether he has only reached an explanatory method or arrived at that of developing power. Dr. Mayo in his introduction to "Lessons on Number," says:-"Number presents a most important field on which to develop and strengthen the minds of children. Its obvious connection with the circumstances surrounding them-the simplicity of its data-the clearness and certainty of its processes the neatness and indisputable correctness of its results-adapt it in an eminent degree for early instruction. Arithmetical exercises tend to give clearness, activity, and tenacity to the mind; many an intellect that has not power enough for geometry, nor refinement enough for -language, finds in them a department of study on which it may labor with the invigorating consciousness of success. But the advantages must of course depend on the manner in which arithmetic is taught. More than any other branch of instruction has

visit of two hours terminated at the expiration of three months; nor was his admiration of the method confined to a bare speculative reception of the principles. He transplanted into his own country the practical truths he had learned in Switzerland; and tho Providence has interrupted the course of his more extended labors, he still, in the bosom of his own family, applies the lessons of Pestalozzi, and teaches his children to revere the name. It was not a theoretical examination of the method that affected this conviction and animated to these exertions; it was a personal view of the practical influence of the system, in scenes lit up by the genius and warmed with the benevolence of Pestalozzi himself.

I, too, have seen him surrounded by his pupils; have marked the overflowings of his tenderness; have read in a thousand traits of good nature the confirmation of his history. I have witnessed the affecting simplicity with which he spoke of all he had done, and essayed to do, for humanity.

Could I transport you in thought to the scenes where Pestalozzi lived, and taught, and suffered, with his pupils, the heart would feel, even before the understanding discerned, the beauty and the truth of his principles. A skeleton view of his system might lead to a cold approbation of his views; but the living, the breathing, portraiture of the man cannot fail to awaken love and inspire you to imitate what you have learned to admire.

Three years of confidential intimacy, every day marked with some proof of his affection, may well have knit my heart to his; and among the most cherished recollections of the past is, that Pestalozzi honored me with his friendship, and thanked me for cheering his declining years. Not that he needed the support of any other mind than his own; his spirit, tender where others suffer, is lofty

it suffered, in this country, from the influence of circumstances. The reproach that we are a nation of shopkeepers might seem to have originated in the spirit of our arithmetical studies." Pestalozzi seized the subject as a fit instrument of mental culture, and his disciples have furnished us with admirable methods of turning it to the best advantage.

and self-sustained when affliction assails himself. He, whose house and whose heart were ever the asylum of the distressed, seeks not his own asylum anywhere but in himself. He has tasted the bitterest cup of disappointment, and worn the meanest garb of poverty-but he broods not over his sorrows; he weeps for others and his own heart is relieved; he still hopes for humanity, and his own prospects seem to brighten. Neuhof, the same spot that witnessed his first benevolent exertions, now offers him retirement and repose; but his heart is still warmed with the longings of his youth, his eye still watches over the progress of his method, and some of his fondest expectations are kindled by our infant schools. While he looks back on the labors of his eventful life, he sees failure and disappointment overthrowing every plan in which he has been engaged; but the same storms that have leveled the parent tree have scattered the seeds of his principles around.2

Pestalozzi was born at Zurich, in the year 1745. His ancestors were Protestants of Italian extraction, who, during the troubled period of the Reformation, were driven from the Milanese, and had chosen for their abode a city marked for its attachment to their faith. Under its liberal government they had flourished and risen to

2 Dr. Mayo remarks in the introduction to "Lessons on Objects," by Miss Mayo: "Pestalozzi was peculiarly solicitous that the IDEA of his method of education should not be confounded with the FORM it might assume. He strongly felt the value, the power, and the truth of that IDEA; and, highly as he was disposed to appreciate the labors of his disciples in the application of it to the work of education, still he saw that they were at best imperfect embodyings of the profound conceptions in which he might be said intellectually to live and move. The continual appeal which he made from the imperfections of his practice, to the beauty and truth of his principles, contributed, perhaps, to attach to himself the character of a benevolent visionary, and to his system the charge of impracticability. Much has been written, and much said, yet little seemed to have been done; for even his own school, miserably conducted in many respects, presented but a distorted exhibition of his views. Hence, the man of lofty mind and feeling heart quitted Yverdon with a sigh of regret; while the shallow reasoner and self-satisfied routier cast a smile of contempt on principles which he could not discover to be true, in the midst of the disorder that impeded and deformed their development,"

the first consequence. Pestalozzi's father, however, does Lot seem to have shared in the general prosperity of the family. His early death left his widow with one son, in very straitened circumstances.3

With his dying breath he commended his family to the care of a female domestic; and the fidelity and devotedness with which she discharged the office she undertook impressed on the tender mind. of Pestalozzi that strong sense of the virtues of the lower orders, that respect and love for the poor which have so marked his character, and exercised so powerful an influence on his life. Barbara sympathized in the family pride, and many were her ingenious contrivances, as Pestalozzi delighted to describe, for maintaining an appearance of respectability in the midst of their poverty. Her great aim seems to have been to nourish in the mind of her young master that feeling of honest independence which prevailed in those days almost with the intensity of a passion. "Never," she would tell him, "never has a Pestalozzi eaten the bread of private compassion since Zurich was a city. Submit to any privation rather than dishonor your family. Look at those children (she would say as the poor orphans of Zurich passed the windows); how unfortunate would you be were it not for a tender mother who denies herself every comfort that you may not become a pauper."

If a tinge of haughtiness be sometimes thrown over the dignity of Pestalozzi, to an influence like this it might not unreasonably be traced. He himself attributes to it

3 Pestalozzi's father was an able physician, but ignorant of the arts of lite necessary to worldly advancement. Both are attested by the reputation he left behind him, and the mediocrity of his finances. Tho reduced to very limited means, the widow was supported in the arduous task whieh had devolved on her. The advice and interest of the more prosperous branches of the Pestalozzi family relieved her desolate condition, and ensured to the growing youth those facilities for entering on an honorable career which, in the small aristocracies of Switzerland, are almost entirely dependent on parentage and connections. A more immediate benefit was derived by Henry from the fostering care of one of those faithful servants of good old patriarchal style, whose character is known in our times as a matter of romance rather than of experience.-Biber.

that master passion of his soul, the desire of conferring true independence on the poor, of raising them above the abjectness of poverty, by elevating their characters to endure what they cannot remedy, by developing their faculties that their resources may be increased, and purifying their taste that they may not be wasted.*

Pestalozzi received a tolerable education in a country celebrated for the facility of attaining it.5

Having early abandoned an intention he had formed of practicing the law," he became deeply interested in all

4 With no companions of his own age, Pestalozzi became so completely a mother's child, that he grew up a stranger to the world he lived in. This lonely childhood had its influence in making him what he remained thru life, a man of excitable feelings and lively imagination, which had so entirely the mastery over him as to prevent the exercise of due circumspection and forethought. An anecdote is told which illustrates this trait of character. When, in after years, he was in great pecuniary distress, and his family without the necessaries of life, he went to a friend's house and borrowed a sum of money. On his way home, he fell in with a peasant who was wringing his hands and lamenting the loss of a cow. Carried away, as usual, by his feelings, Pestalozzi gave the man all the money he had borrowed, and ran away to escape his thanks.-D.

5 He was first sent to a day school, then to a grammar school, where he was kept under the bondage of rigorous discipline and uninteresting tasks, and finally he passed to the college, where he received due preparation for one of the learned professions, and thus may be said to have received a good education. His friends intended that he should become a clergyman, and he had actually preached a trial sermon, which was a failure, and with his usual inaccuracy he even went wrong in repeating the Lord's Prayer. Considering his high moral character, the depth and earnestness of his piety, his singleness of purpose, and his sympathy with sorrow and suffering, he seemed pre-eminently calculated for the sacred calling. When it is considered that Pestalozzi gave, in after life, abundant proofs of eloquence, it is difficult to attribute to a want of that gift this change of his career. It seems more easy to conceive that he, who was ever ready to raise his voice in defending the oppressed and pleading for the fatherless, should not feel the same springs of inspiration within him when endeavoring to dash off a probationary sermon; and an instinctive perception of the nature of the impediment might well determine a youth, intimidated by his first failure, not to expose himself to a second.--Biber.

6 Having turned his back on divinity, he applied himself to the law, impelled, it is said, by his desire of being the champion of the ill-used peasantry. He regarded legal abuses as the cause of all their evils, and a righteous law rightly administered as the proper cure. Consequently, altho he had embraced another profession,