for making such promises; only endeavour to fulfil them, and God will bless you: you will be happy, and your parents will love and rejoice in you. The importance which Pestalozzi attaches to a right domestic education, the strong recommendations and arguments which he produces in its favour, and the earnest appeal which he makes to Mothers, require to be frequently pressed on their attention, and kept constantly in view. What the Mother is, and ought to be to her child, has never been conceived and expressed with so much truth, force, and warmth, as by Pestalozzi. It is, perhaps, by Mothers and Infants only that the value of the system can be fully understood: it is through them alone that it can ever arrive at general adoption. Had Pestalozzi confined the communication of his theory, in the first instance, to those whom he always considered and acknowledged as the proper instruments for carrying it into practice; had be bestowed upon Mothers and Infants his time, his powers, and his means, the excellence of the system would, ere this, have been more generally admitted, and the practice more widely diffused. In his endeavours to explain the treatment which children require, and to make himself understood by school-masters, by the learned, (who were incapable of comprehending him, and still less capable of carrying his ideas into practice,) he encountered only unavailing toil, and harassing delay. Had his establishment, at the commencement of his undertaking, instead of being composed of masters possessing knowledge, but incapable of communicating it, and who could not condescend to the simplicity required by Pestalozzi in elementary teaching, consisted of Mothers and young children, he would have been spared the anxieties, difficulties, struggles, and disappointments which incessantly attended him through the course of his long and arduous career: these miseries and impediments would have been replaced by the happiness which he so well merited, that of daily witnessing the truth, the inestimable value of his principles; he would have enjoyed the rich fruits of his labours in a scene best suited to his tender and benevolent heart; and would have been enabled to look forward, with hope and confidence, to the future, from the conviction that, through the instrumentality of Mothers and children trained by himself, the soundness of his views, the excellence of his system, the divine spirit of philanthropy which animated him would become manifest, would be acknowledged and acted upon, not only by Mothers and during infancy, but subsequently by Masters, and through every period of instruction; most important advantages would thus have been obtained in public, as well as in private education. An appeal to Mothers must be continued. It is through the instrumentality of Parents and children that Pestalozzi's noble views may still be promoted, his darling wish be accomplished, that of producing, by judicious and harmonious education, a general reform and amelioration in the condition of man. According to Pestalozzi, the means for giving strength to the body, clearness to the understanding, and purity to the heart; the means, in short, for the proper exercise of all the powers, exist where nature first placed the child at the Mother's breast in the domestic circle. As the Parent's love is the sun under whose influence, so the domestic circle is the ground upon which only the tender plant can prosper and expand. Reared in a life of liberty, of innocence, and of interior satisfaction, every hour nourishes the feelings of LOVE, FAITH, and GRATITUDE-the pure elements of morality every day new exercises give strength to the body, every day awakens some new glimpse of intellect. Sheltered from the infections of the world, the child grows up in the whole vigour of his existence-far from all desire to shine, and to appear more than he really is. Nothing disturbs his inward peace. and harmony: he is proceeding, step by step, in a well-regulated path of natural development, to the full perfection which he is capable of attaining. All who have the permanent good of mankind at heart, all who allow that the cause of religion and virtue mainly depends upon a just moral development-upon a right training; who are convinced that the influence of education is not confined to this world; that it extends to the world to come; all such should zealously strive that the work which Pestalozzi has so successfully begun, may survive him; that his principles and their effects may stand as unrivalled monuments of his enlightened, humane, pure, and disinterested mind, long after his angelic spirit shall have soared to better regions, and his earthly tabernacle mouldered into dust. Printed by Harvey, Darton, and Co. 10 |