* “The castle is a huge, plain, square building, with few windows, and a round tower at each corner with an extinguisher top. This has been assigned to Pestalozzi; and having taken up our quarters at the Maison Rouge, forth we sallied to pay our respects to this celebrated personage.

“We ascended the steps and got into the court; the first person whom we accosted was a boy, who proved to be a young Philistine, and replied with a petition for petite charité; just then we got sight of one of the scholars, and at his summons Pestalozzi himself came out to us. I have seen many strange figures in my time, but never a stranger than was now presented to our view: a man whose face and stray tusk-like teeth would mark him for fourscore, if his hair, more black than gray, did not belie the wrinkles of his countenance; this hair a perfect glib in full undress, no hat or covering for the head, no neckcloth, the shirt collar open, a pair of coarse dark trousers, and a coat, if coat it may be called, of the same material, which Hyde would as little allow to be cloth as he would the habilement to be ‘a coat at all.’ He speaks French nearly as ill as I do, and much less intelligibly, because his speech is rapid and impassioned, and moreover much affected by the loss of his teeth. I introduced myself as a friend of Dr. Bell, who had read M. Julien’s book,

and the American work upon his system, but was desirous of obtaining a clearer insight into it. In his gesticulations to welcome us he slipt into a deep hole, and might very easily have met with a serious hurt. He led me into a small school-room, hung round with vile portraits of some favourite pupils, apparently works of the school; his own bust was there, strikingly like him, but large enough for Goliath, he himself being rather below the middle size. There happened to be a display of fencing; where the beau monde of Yverdun were at this time assembled, and the military band giving them tunes between the acts. Here his tutors were gone, and many of his boys, but in the evening, he said, he hoped to show us practically the system which he now explained: the sum of his explanation was, that true education consists in properly developing the talents and faculties of the individual. It was not likely that so metaphysical a head should think more of Dr. Bell than Dr. Bell, in his practical wisdom, thinks of such metaphysics. I mentioned Owen of Lanark, and the Essay upon the Formation of Character, and presently perceived that I had touched the right string. We parted till the evening. A large party were dining at the hotel, as if it were a club or public meeting, which, however, the waiter said was not the case: but there was unusual business in the house; perhaps many persons had come from the country round to see the fencing. We walked about the town, and saw the view which it commands.

“We met Pestalozzi in a walk without the town; he had dressed himself, and was in a black coat, but still without a hat, and he was arm-in-arm with a figure more extraordinary than his own; a man some twenty-five or thirty years of age, dressed in a short and neat slate-coloured jacket and trousers trimmed with black, his bonnet of the same materials and colour; and his countenance so full, so fixed, so strongly and dismally charactered, that a painter might select him for one of the first disciples of St. Francis or of Loyola. In the course of our walk we went behind the castle into a large open garden, and there we saw some of the pupils employed in developing their bodily powers: a pole, about eighteen feet high, was securely fixed in an inclined position against a ladder; the boys ascended the ladder and slid down the pole; others were swinging in such attitudes as they liked from a gallows. About six, P. called upon us to show us the practice of his system; it was exhibited by two very intelligent teachers as applied to drawing and arithmetic. In drawing, they were made to draw the simplest forms, and were not instructed in the laws of perspective till the eye and hand had acquired correctness; just as we learn to speak by habit before we know the rules of grammar. In arithmetic, it appeared to me that the questions served only to quicken the intellect, but were of no utility in themselves, and acted upon boys just as the disputes of the schoolmen formerly acted

upon men. A son of Akerman’s, in the Strand, was one of the boys, and said he was much happier than at an English school. His cousin of the same name, a German by birth, is one of the teachers; he had been in England, where he knew Wordsworth, and he studied under Mr. Johnson at the Central School, and he had travelled in Switzerland with Dr. Bell. He also was very curious concerning Owen; with him I had much conversation, and was much pleased with him. M. Julien also was introduced to us; author of those books which I bought at Aix-la-Chapelle. We wrote our names at parting, and although Mr. P. knew no more of mine than he did of Tom Long the carrier’s, he was evidently gratified by our visit, and we parted good friends, with all good wishes.”—From his Journal.