pressed for more than we can tell, our answer must be, in the words of Cicero, Deprecor ne me tanquam philosophum putet scholam sibi istam explicaturum. But though unable to make out--if, indeed, there were any spirit of unity to be made out-in Pestalozzi's scheme, there were certain manifest imperfections in the composition of his plan of education

improprieties to which the longest familiarity could scarcely reconcile, nor the warmest partiality blind even the most determined partisan. In the first place to state them at once, and have done with the unpleasing office of finding fault-it always struck us as a capital error, in a school where books were not allowed, to suffer almost the whole teaching of the classes to devolve upon some leading member of each; for what, in fact, could self-taught lads be expected to teach, unless it were to make a ring or a row-to fish, to whistle, or to skate? Of course, any graver kind of information, conveyed by an infant prodigy to his gaping pupils, must have lacked the necessary precision to make it available to them: first, because he would very seldom be sufficiently possessed of it himself; and secondly, because a boy's imperfect vocabulary and inexperience render him at all times a decidedly bad interpreter even of what he may really know. In place of proving real lights, these little Jack-o'-Lanterns of ours tended rather to perplex the path of the inquiring, and to impede their progress; and when an appeal was made to the master, as was sometimes done, the master-brought up in the same vague, bookless manner, and knowing nothing more accurately, though he might know more than his puzzle-pated pupils-was very seldom able to give them a lift out of the quagmire, where they accordingly would stick, and flounder away till the end of the lesson. It was amusing to see how a boy, so soon as he got but a glimpse of a subject before the class, and could give but the ghost of a reason for what he was eager to prelect upon, became incontinent of the bright discovery, till all his com

panions had had the full benefit of it, with much that was irrelevant besides. The mischiefs which, it would occur to any one's mind, were likely to result in after life from such desultory habits of application in boyhood, actually did result to many of us a few years later at college. It was at once painful and difficult to indoctrinate indocile minds like ours into the accurate and severe habits of university discipline. On entering the lists for honours with other young aspirants, educated in the usual way at home, we were as a herd of unbroken colts pitted against well-trained racers: neither had yet run for the prize-in that single particular the cases were the same; but when degree and race day came, on whose side lay the odds? On theirs who had been left to try an untutored strength in scampering over a wild common, at will, for years, or with those who, by daily exercise in the manège of a public school, had been trained to bear harness, and were, besides, well acquainted with the ground? Another unquestionable error in the system was the absence of emulation, which, from some strange misconception and worse application of a text in St Paul, was proscribed as an unchristian principle; in lieu of which, we were to be brought-though we never were brought, but that was the object aimed at-to love learning for its own sake, and to prove ourselves anxious of excelling without a motive, or to be good for nothing, as Hood has somewhere phrased it.

"Nunquam præponens se aliis, ITA facillime Sine invidia invenias laudem,"

says Terence, and it will be so where envy and conceit have supplanted emulation: yet are the feelings perfectly distinct; and we think it behoves all those who contend that every striving for the mastery is prohibited by the gospel, to show how communism in inferiority, or socialism in dulness, are likely to improve morals or mend society. Take from a schoolboy the motive of rewards and punishments, and you deprive him of that incentive by which your own conduct through life is regulated, and that by which

God has thought fit, in the moral government of his rational creatures, to promote the practice of good works, and to discourage and dissuade from evil. Nor did that which sounds thus ominously in theory succeed in its application better than it sounded. In fact, nothing more unfortunate could have been devised for all parties, but especially for such as were by nature of a studious turn or of quicker parts than the rest; who, finding the ordinary stimulus to exertion thus removed, and none other to replace it, no longer cared to do well, (why should they, when they knew that their feeblest efforts would transcend their slow-paced comrades' best?) but, gradually abandoning themselves to the vis inertia of sloth, incompetence, and bad example, did no more than they could help; repressing the spirit of rivalry and emulation, which had no issue in the school, to show it in some of those feats of agility or address, which the rigorous enactment of gymnastic exercises imposed on all alike, and in the performance of which we certainly did pride ourselves, and eagerly sought to eclipse each other in exhibiting any natural or acquired superiority we might pos

sess.

The absence of all elementary books of instruction throughout the school, presented another barrier in the way of improvement still more formidable than even the bétise of boy pedagogues, the want of sufficient stimulus to exertion, or the absurd respect paid sometimes to natural incapacity, and sometimes even to idleness. Those who had no rules to learn had of course none to apply when they wanted them; no masters could have adequately supplied this deficiency, and those of the chateau were certainly not the men to remedy the evil. As might therefore have been anticipated, the young Pestalozzian's ideas, whether innate or acquired, and on every subject, became sadly vague and confused, and his grammar of a piece with his knowledge. We would have been conspicuous, even amongst other boys, for what seemed almost a studied impropriety of language; but it was, in fact, nothing more than the unavoidable result of natural indolence and inattention, uncoerced by proper dis

cipline. The old man's slouching gait and ungraceful attire afforded but too apt an illustration of the intellectual nonchalance of his pupils. As to the modern languages, of which so much has been said by those who knew so little of the matter, they were in parlance, to be sure-but how spoken? Alas! besides an open violation of all the concords, and a general disregard of syntax, they failed where one would have thought them least likely to fail, in correctness of idiom and accent. The French-this was the language of the school-abounded in conventional phrases, woven into its texture from various foreign sources, German, English, or Italian, and in scores of barbarous words-not to be found in the Dictionnaire de l'Academie, certainly, but quite current in the many-tongued vernacular of the chateau. Our pronunciation remained unequivocally John Bullish to the end -not one of us ever caught or thought of catching the right intonation; and, whether the fault originated merely in want of ear, or that we could not make the right use of our noses, it is quite certain that all of us had either no accent or a wrong one. The German was as bad as the French: it was a Swiss, not a German German, abounding in patois phrases and provincialisms-in short, a most hybrid affair, to say nothing of its being as much over-guttural as the last was sub-nasal. With regard to Spanish and Italian, as the English did not consort with either of these nations, all they ever acquired of their languages were such oaths and mauvais mots as parrots pick up from sailors aboard ship, which they repeated with all the innocence of parrots. Thus, then, the opportunities offered for the acquisition of modern languages were plainly defective; and when it is further considered that the dead languages remained untaught-nay, were literally unknown, except to a small section of the school, for whom a kind Providence had sent a valued friend and preceptor in Dr M, (whose neat Greek characters were stared at as cabalistical by the other masters of the Pensionat,)-and finally, that our very English became at last defiled and corrupted, by the introduction of a variety of foreign idioms, it will be

seen that for any advantage likely to accrue from the polyglot character of the institution, the Tower of Babel would, in fact, have furnished every whit as good a school for languages as did our turreted chateau. And now, if candour has compelled this notice of some, it must be admitted, serious blemishes in the system of old Pestalozzi, where is the academy without them?

"Whoever hopes a faultless school to see, Hopes what ne'er was, nor is, nor is to be."

Meanwhile the Swiss Pension was not without solid advantages, and might justly lay claim to some regard, if not as a school for learning, at least as a moral school; its inmates for the most part spoke truth, respected property, eschewed mischief, were neither puppies, nor bullies, nor talebearers. There were, of course, exceptions to all this, but then they were exceptions; nor was the number at any time sufficient to invalidate the general rule, or to corrupt the better principle. Perhaps a ten hours' daily attendance in class, coarse spare diet, hardy and somewhat severe training, may be considered by the reader as offering some explanation of our general propriety of behaviour. It may be so; but we are by no means willing to admit, that the really high moral tone of the school depended either upon gymnastic exercises or short commons, nor yet arose from the want of facilities for getting into scrapes, for here, as elsewhere, where there is the will, there is ever a way. We believe it to have originated from another sourcein a word, from the encouragement held out to the study of natural history, and the eagerness with which that study was taken up and pursued by the school in consequence. Though Pestalozzi might not succeed in making his disciples scholars, he certainly succeeded in making many among them naturalists; and of the two - let us ask it without offencewhether is he the happier lad (to say nothing of the future man) who can fabricate faultless pentameters and immaculate iambics to order; or he who, already absorbed in scanning the wonders of creation, seeks with unflagging diligence and zeal to know

VOL. LXVI.-NO. CCCCV.

more and more of the visible works of the great Poet of Nature? "Sæpius sane ad laudem atque virtutem naturam sine doctrinâ, quam sine naturâ valuisse doctrinam;" which words being Cicero's, deny them, sir, if you please.

The Pension, during the period of our sojourn at Yverdun, contained about a hundred and eighty élèves, natives of every European and of some of distribution into classes, according Oriental states, whose primitive mode to age and acquirements, during school hours, was completely changed in playtime, when the boys, finding it easier to speak their own tongue than to acquire a new one, divided themselves into separate groups according to their respective nations. The English would occasionally admit a German or a Prussian to their coterie; but that was a favour seldom conferred upon any other foreigner: for the Spaniards, who were certainly the least well-conducted of the whole community, did not deserve it: among them were to be found the litigious, the mischief-makers, the quarrellers, and-for, as has been hinted, we were not all honest-the exceptional thieves. The Italians we could never make out, nor they us: we had no sympathy with Pole or Greek; the Swiss we positively did not like, and the French just as positively did not like us; so how could it be otherwise? ushers, for the most part trained up in the school, were an obliging set of men, with little refinement, less pretension, and wholly without learning. A distich from Crabbe describes them perfectly

The

"Men who, 'mid noise and dirt, and play and prate,

Could calmly mend the pen, and wash the slate."

Punishments were rare; indeed, flogging was absolutely prohibited; and the setting an imposition would have been equally against the genius loci, had lesson-books existed out of which to hear it afterwards. A short imprisonment in an unfurnished room-anot very formidable black-hole-with the loss of a goutte, now and then, and at very long intervals, formed the mild summary of the penal "code Pestalozzi."

It was Saturday, and a half holiday, when we arrived at Yverdun, and oh the confusion of tongues which there prevailed! All Bedlam and Parnassus let loose to rave together, could not have come up to that diapason of discords with which the high corridors were ringing, as, passing through the throng, we were conducted to the venerable head of the establishment in his private apartments beyond. In this gallery of mixed portraits might be seen long-haired, highborn, and high-cheek - boned Germans; a scantling of French gamins much better dressed; some dark-eyed Italians; Greeks in most foreigneering attire; here and there a fair ingenuous Russian face; several swart sinister-looking Spaniards, models only for their own Carravagio; some dirty specimens of the universal Pole; one or two unmistakeable English, ready to shake hands with

are four English boys come from their distant home, to be naturalised in this establishment, and made members of our family. Boys, receive them kindly, and remember they are henceforth your brothers." A shout from the crowd proclaiming its ready assent and cordial participation in the adoption, nothing remained but to shake hands à l'Anglaise, and to fraternise without loss of time. The next day being Sunday, our skulls were craniologically studied by Herr Schmidt, the head usher; and whatever various bumps or depressions phrenology might have discovered thereon were all duly registered in a large book. After this examination was concluded, a week's furlough was allowed, in order that Herr Schmidt might have an opportunity afforded him of seeing how far our real character squared with phrenological observation and measurement, entering this also into the same ledger as a note. What a contrast were we unavoidably drawing all this

It

time between Yverdun and Westminster, and how enjoyable was the change to us! The reader will please to imagine as well as he can, the sensations of a lately pent up chrysalis, on first finding himself a butterfly, or the not less agreeable surprise of some newly metamorphosed tadpole, when, leaving his associates in the mud and green slime, he floats at liberty on the surface of the pool, endowed with lungs and a voice,-if he would at all enter into the exultation of our feelings on changing the penitential air of Millbank for the fresh mountain breezes of the Pays de Vaud. seemed as if we had-nay, we had actually entered upon a new existence, so thoroughly had all the elements of the old been altered and improved. If we looked back, and compared past and present experiences, there, at the wrong end of the mental telescope, stood that small dingy house, in that little mis-yclept Great Smith Street, with its tiny cocoon of a bedroom, whilom our close and airless prison; here, at the other end, and in immediate contact with the eye, a noble chateau, full of roomy rooms, enough and to spare. Another retrospective peep, and there was Tothill Fields, and its seedy cricket ground; and here, again, a level equally perfect, but carpeted with fine turf, and extending to the margin of a broad living lake, instead of terminating in a nauseous duck-pond; while the cold clammy cloisters adjoining Dean's Yard were not less favourably replaced by a large open airy play-ground, intersected by two clear trout-streams -and a sky as unlike that above BirdCage Walk as the interposed atmosphere was different; whilst, in place of the startling, discordant Keleusmata of bargees, joined to the creaking, stunning noise of commerce in a great city, few out-of-door sounds to meet our ear, and these few, with the exception of our own, all quiet, pastoral, and soothing, such as, later in life, make

"Silence in the heart

For thought to do her part," and which are not without their charm even to him "who whistles as he goes for want of thought." No wonder, then, if Yverdun seemed Paradisaical in its landscapes. Nor was this all.

If the views outside were charming, our domestic and social relations within doors were not less pleasing. At first, the unwelcome vision of the late head-master would sometimes haunt us, clad in his flowing black D.D. robes-"tristis severitas in vultu, atque in verbis fides," looking as if he intended to flog, and his words never belying his looks. That terrible Olympian arm, raised and ready to strike, was again shadowed forth to view; while we could almost fancy ourselves once more at that judicial

table, one of twenty boys who were to draw lots for a hander." How soothingly, then, came the pleasing consciousness, breaking our reverie, that a very different person was now our headmaster-a most indulgent old man whom we should meet ere long, with hands uplifted, indeed, but only for the purpose of clutching us tight while he inflicted a salute on both cheeks, and pronounced his affectionate guten morgen, liebes kind, as he hastened on to bestow the like fatherly greeting upon every pupil in turn.

The sleeping apartments at the chateau occupied three of the four sides of its inner quadrangle, and consisted of as many long rooms, each with a double row of windows; whereof one looked into the aforesaid quadrangle, while the opposite rows commanded, severally, views of the garden, the open country, and the Grande Place of the town. They were accommodated with sixty uncurtained stump bedsteads, fifty-nine of which afforded gite to a like number of boys; and one, in no respect superior to the rest, was destined to receive the athletic form of Herr Gottlieb, son-in-law to Vater Pestalozzi, to whose particular charge we were consigned during the hours of the night. These bedrooms, being as lofty as they were long, broad, and over-furnished with windows, were always ventilated; but the in-draught of air, which was sufficient to keep them cool during the hottest day in summer, rendered them cold, and sometimes very cold, in the winter. In that season, accordingly, especially when the bise blew, and hail and sleet were pattering against the casements, the compulsory rising to class by candlelight was an ungenial and unwelcome process; for which, however, there being no remedy, the next best thing was to take it as coolly, we were going to say that of course-but, as patiently as might be. The disagreeable anticipation of the réveil was frequently enough to scare away sleep from our eyes a full hour before the command to jump out of bed was actually

issued. On such occasions we would lie awake, and, as the time approached, begin to draw in our own breath, furtively listening, not without trepidation, to the loud nose of a distant comrade, lest its fitful stertor should startle another pair of nostrils, on whose repose that of the whole dormitory depended. Let Æolus and his crew make what tumult they liked inside or outside the castle-they disturbed nobody's dreams-they never murdered sleep. Let them pipe and whistle through every keyhole and crevice of the vast enceinte of the building

sigh and moan as they would in their various imprisonments of attic or corridor; howl wildly round the great tower, or even threaten a forcible entry at the windows, nobody's ears were scared into unwelcome consciousness by sounds so familiar to them all. It was the expectation of a blast louder even than theirs that would keep our eyes open-a blast about to issue from the bed of Herr Gottlieb, and thundering enough, when it issued, to startle the very god of winds himself! Often, as the dreaded six A.M. drew nigh, when the third quarter past five had, ten minutes since, come with a sough and a rattle against the casements, and still Gottlieb slept on, we would take courage, and begin to dream with our eyes open, that his slumbers might be prolonged a little; his face, turned upwards, looked so calm, the eyes so resolutely closedevery feature so perfectly at rest. It could not be more than five minutes to six-might not he who had slept