was done in a way which had no touch of pedagogy or of anything specially
prepared for children, yet every word was easily understood and
interested us.  Besides, his voice had a deep, musical tone, to which
my ear was susceptible at an early age.  He understood children of our
disposition and knew what pleased them.

In Schaale, the first village through which we passed, he said, pointing
to the stream which flowed into the Saale close by: "Look, boys, now we
are coming into our own neighbourhood, the valley of the Schaal.  It owes
its name to this brook, which rises in our own meadows, and I suppose you
would like to know why our village is called Keilhau?"

While speaking, he pointed up the stream and briefly described its
course.

We assented.

We had passed the village of Schaale.  The one before us, with the
church, was called Eichfeld, and at our right was another which we could
not see, Lichtstadt.  In ancient times, he told us, the mountain sides
and the bottom of the whole valley had been clothed with dense oak
forests.  Then people came who wanted to till the ground.  They began to
clear (lichten) these woods at Lichtstadt.  This was a difficult task,
and they had used axes (Keile) for the purpose.  At Eichfeld they felled
the oaks (Fiche), and carried the trunks to Schaale, where the bark
(Schale) was stripped off to make tan for the tanners on the Saale.  So
the name of Lichtstadt came from the clearing of the forests, Eichfeld
from the felling of the oaks, Schaale from stripping off the bark, and
Keilhau from the hewing with axes.

This simple tale of ancient times had sprung from the Thuringian soil,
so rich in legends, and, little as it might satisfy the etymologist, it
delighted me.  I believed it, and when afterward I looked down from a
height into the valley and saw the Saale, my imagination clothed the bare
or pineclad mountain slopes with huge oak forests, and beheld the giant
forms of the ancient Thuringians felling the trees with their heavy axes.

The idea of violence which seemed to be connected with the name of
Keilhau had suddenly disappeared.  It had gained meaning to me, and Herr
Middendorf had given us an excellent proof of a fundamental requirement
of Friedrich Froebel, the founder of the institution: "The external must
be spiritualized and given an inner significance."

The same talented pedagogue had said, "Our education associates
instruction with the external world which surrounds the human being as
child and youth"; and Middendorf carried out this precept when, at the
first meeting, he questioned us about the trees and bushes by the
wayside, and when we were obliged to confess our ignorance of most of
them, he mentioned their names and described their peculiarities.

At last we reached the Keilhau plain, a bowl whose walls formed tolerably
high mountains which surrounded it on all sides except toward Rudolstadt,
where an opening permitted the Schaalbach to wind through meadows and
fields.  So the village lies like an egg in a nest open in one direction,
like the beetle in the calyx of a flower which has lost one of its
leaves.  Nature has girded it on three sides with protecting walls which
keep the wind from entering the valley, and to this, and the delicious,
crystal-clear water which flows from the mountains into the pumps, its
surprising healthfulness is doubtless due.  During my residence there of
four and a half years there was no epidemic disease among the boys, and
on the fiftieth jubilee of the institute, in 1867, which I attended, the
statement was made that during the half century of its existence only one
pupil had died, and he had had heart disease when his parents sent him to
the school.

We must have arrived on Sunday, for we met on the road several peasants
in long blue coats, and peasant women in dark cloth cloaks with gold-
embroidered borders, and little black caps from which ribbons three or
four feet long hung down the wearers' backs.  The cloaks descended from
mother to daughter.  They were very heavy, yet I afterward saw peasant
women wear them to church in summer.

At last we drove into the broad village street.  At the right, opposite
to the first houses, lay a small pond called the village pool, on which
ducks and geese floated, and whose dark surface, glittering with many
hues, reflected the shepherd's hut.  After we had passed some very fine
farmhouses, we reached the "Plan," where bright waters plashed into a
stone trough, a linden tree shaded the dancing-ground, and a pretty house
was pointed out as the schoolhouse of the village children.

A short distance farther away the church rose in the background.
But we had no time to look at it, for we were already driving up to the
institute itself, which was at the end of the village, and consisted of
two rows of houses with an open space closed at the rear by the wide
front of a large building.

The bakery, a small dwelling, and the large gymnasium were at our left;
on the right, the so-called Lower House, with the residences of the head-
masters' families, and the school and sleeping-rooms of the smaller
pupils, whom we dubbed the "Panzen," and among whom were boys only eight
and nine years old.

The large house before whose central door--to which a flight of stone
steps led--we stopped, was the Upper House, our future home.

Almost at the same moment we heard a loud noise inside, and an army of
boys came rushing down the steps.  These were the "pupils," and my heart
began to throb faster.

They gathered around the Rudolstadt carriage boldly enough and stared at
us.  I noticed that almost all were bareheaded.  Many wore their hair
falling in long locks down their backs.  The few who had any coverings
used black velvet caps, such as in Berlin would be seen only at the
theatre or in an artist's studio.

Middendorf had stepped quickly among the lads, and as they came running
up to take his hand or hang on his arm we saw how they loved him.

But we had little time for observation.  Barop, the head-master, was
already hastening down the steps, welcoming my mother and ourselves with
his deep, musical tones, in a pure Westphalian dialect.




ENTERING THE INSTITUTE.

Barop's voice sounded so sincere and cordial that it banished every
thought of fear, otherwise his appearance might have inspired boys of our
age with a certain degree of timidity, for he was a broad-shouldered man
of gigantic stature, who, like Middendorf, wore his grey hair parted in
the middle, though it was cut somewhat shorter.  A pair of dark eyes
sparkled under heavy, bushy brows, which gave them the aspect of clear
springs shaded by dense thickets.  They now gazed kindly at us, but later
we were to learn their irresistible power.  I have said, and I still
think, that the eyes of the artist, Peter Cornelius, are the most
forceful I have ever seen, for the very genius of art gazed from them.
Those of our Barop produced no weaker influence in their way, for they
revealed scarcely less impressively the character of a man.  To them,
especially, was clue the implicit obedience that every one rendered him.
When they flashed with indignation the defiance of the boldest and most
refractory quailed.  But they could sparkle cheerily, too, and whoever
met his frank, kindly gaze felt honoured and uplifted.

Earnest, thoroughly natural, able, strong, reliable, rigidly just, free
from any touch of caprice, he lacked no quality demanded by his arduous
profession, and hence he whom even the youngest addressed as "Barop"
never failed for an instant to receive the respect which was his due,
and, moreover, had from us all the voluntary gift of affection, nay, of
love.  He was, I repeat, every inch a man.

When very young, the conviction that the education of German boys was his
real calling obtained so firm a hold upon his mind that he could not be
dissuaded from giving up the study of the law, in which he had made
considerable progress at Halle, and devoting himself to pedagogy.

His father, a busy lawyer, had threatened him with disinheritance if he
did not relinquish his intention of accepting the by no means brilliant
position of a teacher at Keilhau; but he remained loyal to his choice,
though his father executed his threat and cast him off.  After the old
gentleman's death his brothers and sisters voluntarily restored his
portion of the property, but, as he himself told me long after, the
quarrel with one so dear to him saddened his life for years.  For the
sake of the "fidelity to one's self" which he required from others he had
lost his father's love, but he had obeyed a resistless inner voice, and
the genuineness of his vocation was to be brilliantly proved.

Success followed his efforts, though he assumed the management of the
Keilhau Institute under the most difficult circumstances.

Beneath its roof he had found in the niece of Friedrich Froebel a beloved
wife, peculiarly suited both to him and to her future position.  She was
as little as he was big, but what energy, what tireless activity this
dainty, delicate woman possessed!  To each one of us she showed a
mother's sympathy, managed the whole great household down to the smallest
details, and certainly neglected nothing in the care of her own sons and
daughters.

A third master, the archdeacon Langethal, was one of the founders of the
institution, but had left it several years before.

As I mention him with the same warmth that I speak of Middendorf and
Barop, many readers will suspect that this portion of my reminiscences
contains a receipt for favours, and that reverence and gratitude, nay,
perhaps the fear of injuring an institution still existing, induces me to
show only the lights and cover the shadows with the mantle of love.

I will not deny that a boy from eleven to fifteen years readily overlooks
in those who occupy an almost paternal relation to him faults which would
be immediately noted by the unclouded eyes of a critical observer; but I
consider myself justified in describing what I saw in my youth exactly as
it impressed itself on my memory.  I have never perceived the smallest
flaw or even a trait or act worthy of censure in either Barop,
Middendorf, or Langethal.  Finally, I may say that, after having learned
in later years from abundant data willingly placed at my disposal by
Johannes Barop, our teacher's son and the present master of the
institute, the most minute details concerning their character and work,
none of these images have sustained any material injury.

In Friedrich Froebel, the real founder of the institute, who repeatedly
lived among us for months, I have learned to know from his own works and
the comprehensive amount of literature devoted to him, a really talented
idealist, who on the one hand cannot be absolved from an amazing contempt
for or indifference to the material demands of life, and on the other
possessed a certain artless selfishness which gave him courage, whenever
he wished to promote objects undoubtedly pure and noble, to deal
arbitrarily with other lives, even where it could hardly redound to their
advantage.  I shall have more to say of him later.

The source of Middendorf's greatness in the sphere where life and his own
choice had placed him may even be imputed to him as a fault.  He, the
most enthusiastic of all Froebel's disciples, remained to his life's end
a lovable child, in whom the powers of a rich poetic soul surpassed those
of the thoughtful, well-trained mind.  He would have been ill-adapted for
any practical position, but no one could be better suited to enter into
the soul-life of young human beings, cherish and ennoble them.

A deeper insight into the lives of Barop and Langethal taught me to prize
these men more and more.

They have all rested under the sod for decades, and though their
institute, to which I owe so much, has remained dear and precious, and
the years I spent in the pleasant Thuringian mountain valley are numbered
among the fairest in my life, I must renounce making proselytes for the
Keilhau Institute, because, when I saw its present head for the last
time, as a very young man, I heard from him, to my sincere regret, that,
since the introduction of the law of military service, he found himself
compelled to make the course of study at Rudolstadt conform to the system
of teaching in a Realschule.--[School in which the arts and sciences as
well as the languages are taught.-TR.]--He was forced to do so in order
to give his graduates the certificate for the one year's military
service.

The classics, formerly held in such high esteem beneath its roof, must
now rank below the sciences and modern languages, which are regarded as
most important.  But love for Germany and the development of German
character, which Froebel made the foundation of his method of education,
are too deeply rooted there ever to be extirpated.  Both are as zealously
fostered in Keilhau now as in former years.

After a cordial greeting from Barop, we had desks assigned us in the
schoolroom, which were supplied with piles of books, writing materials,
and other necessaries.  Ludo's bed stood in the same dormitory with mine.
Both were hard enough, but this had not damped our gay spirits, and when
we were taken to the other boys we were soon playing merrily with the
rest.

The first difficulty occurred after supper, and proved to be one of the
most serious I encountered during my stay in the school.

My mother had unpacked our trunks and arranged everything in order.
Among the articles were some which were new to the boys, and special
notice was attracted by several pairs of kid gloves and a box of pomade
which belonged in our pretty leather dressing-case, a gift from my
grandmother.

Dandified, or, as we should now term them, "dudish" affairs, were not
allowed at Keilhau; so various witticisms were made which culminated when
a pupil of about our own age from a city on the Weser called us Berlin
pomade-pots.  This vexed me, but a Berlin boy always has an answer ready,
and mine was defiant enough.  The matter might have ended here had not
the same lad stroked my hair to see how Berlin pomade smelt.  From a
child nothing has been more unendurable than to feel a stranger's hand
touch me, especially on the head, and, before I was aware of it, I had
dealt my enemy a resounding slap.  Of course, he instantly rushed at me,
and there would have been a violent scuffle had not the older pupils
interfered.  If we wanted to do anything, we must wrestle.  This suited
my antagonist, and I, too, was not averse to the contest, for I had
unusually strong arms, a well-developed chest, and had practised
wrestling in the Berlin gymnasium.

The struggle began under the direction of the older pupils, and the grip
on which I had relied did not fail.  It consisted in clutching the
antagonist just above the hips.  If the latter were not greatly my
superior, and I could exert my whole strength to clasp him to me, he was
lost.  This time the clever trick did its duty, and my adversary was
speedily stretched on the ground.  I turned my back on him, but he rose,
panting breathlessly.  "It's like a bear squeezing one."  In reply to
every question from the older boys who stood around us laughing, he
always made the same answer, "Like a bear."

I had reason to remember this very common incident in boy life, for it
gave me the nickname used by old and young till after my departure.
Henceforward I was always called "the bear."  Last year I had the
pleasure of receiving a visit from Dr. Bareuther, a member of the
Austrian Senate and a pupil of Keilhau.  We had not met for forty years,
and his first words were: "Look at me, Bear.  Who am I?"

My brother had brought his nickname with him, and everybody called him
Ludo instead of Ludwig.  The pretty, bright, agile lad, who also never
flinched, soon became especially popular, and my companions were also
fond of me, as I learned, when, during the last years of my stay at the
institute, they elected me captain of the first Bergwart--that is,
commander-in-chief of the whole body of pupils.

My first fight secured my position forever.  We doubtless owed our
initiation on the second day into everything which was done by the
pupils, both openly and secretly, to the good impression made by Martin.
There was nothing wrong, and even where mischief was concerned I can term
it to-day "harmless."  The new boys or "foxes" were not neglected or
"hazed," as in many other schools.  Only every one, even the newly
arrived younger teachers, was obliged to submit to the "initiation."
This took place in winter, and consisted in being buried in the snow and
having pockets, clothing, nay, even shirts, filled with the clean but wet
mass.  Yet I remember no cold caused by this rude baptism.  My mother
remained several days with us, and as the weather was fine she
accompanied us to the neighbouring heights--the Kirschberg, to which,
after the peaceful cemetery of the institute was left behind, a zigzag
path led; the Kohn, at whose foot rose the Upper House; and the Steiger,
from whose base flowed the Schaalbach, and whose summit afforded a view
of a great portion of the Thuringian mountains.

We older pupils afterwards had a tall tower erected there as a monument
to Barop, and the prospect from its lofty summit, which is more that a
thousand feet high, is magnificent.

Even before the completion of this lookout, the view was one of the most
beautiful and widest far or near, and we were treated like most new-
comers.  During the ascent our eyes were bandaged, and when the
handkerchief was removed a marvellous picture appeared before our
astonished gaze.  In the foreground, toward the left, rose the wooded
height crowned by the stately ruins of the Blankenburg.  Beyond opened
the beautiful leafy bed of the Saale, proudly dominated by the
Leuchtenburg.  Before us there was scarcely any barrier to the vision;
for behind the nearer ranges of hills one chain of the wooded Thuringian
Mountains towered beyond another, and where the horizon seemed to close
the grand picture, peak after peak blended with the sky and the clouds,
and the light veil of mist floating about them seemed to merge all into
an indivisible whole.

I have gazed from this spot into the distance at every hour of the day
and season of the year.  But the fairest time of all on the Steiger was
at sunset, on clear autumn days, when the scene close at hand, where the
threads of gossamer were floating, was steeped in golden light, the
distance in such exquisite tints-from crimson to the deepest violet blue,
edged with a line of light-the Saale glimmered with a silvery lustre amid
its fringe of alders, and the sun flashed on the glittering panes of the
Leuchtenburg.

We were now old enough to enjoy the magnificence of this prospect.  My
young heart swelled at the sight; and if in after years my eyes could
grasp the charm of a beautiful landscape and my pen successfully describe
it, I learned the art here.

It was pleasant, too, that my mother saw all this with us, though she
must often have gone to rest very much wearied from her rambles.  But
teachers and pupils vied with each other in attentions to her.  She had
won all hearts.  We noticed and rejoiced in it till the day came when
she left us.

She was obliged to start very early in the morning, in order to reach
Berlin the same evening.  The other boys were not up, but Barop,
Middendorf, and several other teachers had risen to take leave of her.
A few more kisses, a wave of her handkerchief, and the carriage vanished
in the village.  Ludo and I were alone, and I vividly remember the moment
when we suddenly began to weep and sob as bitterly as if it had been an
eternal farewell.  How often one human being becomes the sun of another's
life!  And it is most frequently the mother who plays this beautiful
part.

Yet the anguish of parting did not last very long, and whoever had
watched the boys playing ball an hour later would have heard our voices
among the merriest.  Afterwards we rarely had attacks of homesickness,
there were so many new things in Keilhau, and even familiar objects
seemed changed in form and purpose.

From the city we were in every sense transferred to the woods.

True, we had grown up in the beautiful park of the Thiergarten, but only
on its edge; to live in and with Nature, "become one with her," as
Middendorf said, we had not learned.

I once read in a novel by Jensen, as a well-attested fact, that during an
inquiry made in a charity school in the capital a considerable number of
the pupils had never seen a butterfly or a sunset.  We were certainly not
to be classed among such children.  But our intercourse with Nature had
been limited to formal visits which we were permitted to pay the august
lady at stated intervals.  In Keilhau she became a familiar friend, and
we therefore were soon initiated into many of her secrets; for none
seemed to be withheld from our Middendorf and Barop, whom duty and
inclination alike prompted to sharpen our ears also for her language.

The Keilhau games and walks usually led up the mountains or into the
forest, and here the older pupils acted as teachers, but not in any
pedagogical way.  Their own interest in whatever was worthy of note in
Nature was so keen that they could not help pointing it out to their less
experienced companions.

On our "picnics" from Berlin we had taken dainty mugs in order to drink
from the wells; now we learned to seek and find the springs themselves,
and how delicious the crystal fluid tastes from the hollow of the hand,
Diogenes's drinking-cup!

Old Councillor Wellmer, in the Crede House, in Berlin, a zealous
entomologist, owned a large collection of beetles, and had carefully
impaled his pets on long slender pins in neat boxes, which filled
numerous glass cases.  They lacked nothing but life.  In Keilhau we found
every variety of insect in central Germany, on the bushes and in the
moss, the turf, the bark of trees, or on the flowers and blades of grass,
and they were alive and allowed us to watch them.  Instead of neatly
written labels, living lips told us their names.

We had listened to the notes of the birds in the Thiergarten; but our
mother, the tutor, the placards, our nice clothing, prohibited our
following the feathered songsters into the thickets.  But in Keilhau we
were allowed to pursue them to their nests.  The woods were open to every
one, and nothing could injure our plain jackets and stout boots.  Even in
my second year at Keilhau I could distinguish all the notes of the
numerous birds in the Thuringian forests, and, with Ludo, began the
collection of eggs whose increase afforded us so much pleasure.  Our
teachers' love for all animate creation had made them impose bounds on
the zeal of the egg-hunters, who were required always to leave one egg in
the nest, and if it contained but one not to molest it.  How many trees
we climbed, what steep cliffs we scaled, through what crevices we
squeezed to add a rare egg to our collection; nay, we even risked our
limbs and necks!  Life is valued so much less by the young, to whom it is
brightest, and before whom it still stretches in a long vista, than by
the old, for whom its charms are already beginning to fade, and who are
near its end.

I shall never forget the afternoon when, supplied with ropes and poles,
we went to the Owl Mountain, which originally owed its name to
Middendorf, because when he came to Keilhau he noticed that its rocky
slope served as a home for several pairs of horned owls.  Since then
their numbers had increased, and for some time larger night birds had
been flying in and out of a certain crevice.

It was still the laying season, and their nests must be there.  Climbing
the steep precipice was no easy task, but we succeeded, and were then
lowered from above into the crevice.  At that time we set to work with
the delight of discoverers, but now I frown when I consider that those
who let first the daring Albrecht von Calm, of Brunswick, and then me
into the chasm by ropes were boys of thirteen or fourteen at the utmost.
Marbod, my companion's brother, was one of the strongest of our number,
and we were obliged to force our way like chimney sweeps by pressing our
hands and feet against the walls of the narrow rough crevice.  Yet it now
seems a miracle that the adventure resulted in no injury.  Unfortunately,
we found the young birds already hatched, and were compelled to return
with our errand unperformed.  But we afterward obtained such eggs, and
their form is more nearly ball-shape than that seen in those of most
other birds.  We knew how the eggs of all the feathered guests of Germany
were coloured and marked, and the chest of drawers containing our
collection stood for years in my mother's attic.  When I inquired about
it a few years ago, it could not be found, and Ludo, who had helped in
gathering it, lamented its loss with me.




CHAPTER XII.

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL'S IDEAL OF EDUCATION.

Dangerous enterprises were of course forbidden, but the teachers of the
institute neglected no means of training our bodies to endure every
exertion and peril; for Froebel was still alive, and the ideal of
education, for whose realization he had established the Keilhau school,
had become to his assistants and followers strong and healthy realities.
But Froebel's purpose did not require the culture of physical strength.
His most marked postulates were the preservation and development of the
individuality of the boys entrusted to his care, and their training in
German character and German nature; for he beheld the sum of all the
traits of higher, purer manhood united in those of the true German.

Love for the heart, strength for the character, seemed to him the highest
gifts with which he could endow his pupils for life.

He sought to rear the boy to unity with himself, with God, with Nature,
and with mankind, and the way led to trust in God through religion, trust
in himself by developing the strength of mind and body, and confidence in
mankind--that is, in others, by active relations with life and a loving
interest in the past and present destinies of our fellow-men.  This
required an eye and heart open to our surroundings, sociability, and a
deeper insight into history.  Here Nature seems to be forgotten.  But
Nature comes into the category of religion, for to him religion means: To
know and feel at one with ourselves, with God, and with man; to be loyal
to ourselves, to God, and to Nature: and to remain in continual active,
living relations with God.

The teacher must lead the pupils to men as well as to God and Nature, and
direct them from action to perception and thought.  For action he takes
special degrees, capacity, skill, trustworthiness; for perception,
consciousness, insight, clearness.  Only the practical and clear-sighted
man can maintain himself as a thinker, opening out as a teacher new
trains of thought, and comprehending the basis of what is already
acquired and the laws which govern it.

Froebel wishes to have the child regarded as a bud on the great tree of
life, and therefore each pupil needs to be considered individually,
developed mentally and physically, fostered and trained as a bud on the
huge tree of the human race.  Even as a system of instruction, education
ought not to be a rigid plan, incapable of modification, it should be
adapted to the individuality of the child, the period in which it is
growing to maturity, and its environment.  The child should be led to
feel, work, and act by its own experiences in the present and in its
home, not by the opinions of others or by fixed, prescribed rules.
From independent, carefully directed acts and knowledge, perceptions,
and thoughts, the product of this education must come forth--a man, or,
as it is elsewhere stated, a thorough German.  At Keilhau he is to be
perfected, converted into a finished production without a flaw.  If the
institute has fulfilled its duty to the individual, he will be:

To his native land, a brave son in the hour of peril, in the spirit of
self-sacrifice and sturdy strength.

To the family, a faithful child and a father who will secure prosperity.

To the state, an upright, honest, industrious citizen.

To the army, a clear-sighted, strong, healthy, brave soldier and leader.

To the trades, arts, and sciences, a skilled helper, an active promoter,
a worker accustomed to thorough investigation, who has grown to maturity
in close intercourse with Nature.

To Jesus Christ, a faithful disciple and brother; a loving, obedient
child of God.

To mankind, a human being according to the image of God, and not
according to that of a fashion journal.

No one is reared for the drawing-room; but where there is a drawing-room
in which mental gifts are fostered and truth finds an abode, a true
graduate of Keilhau will be an ornament.  "No instruction in bowing and
tying cravats is necessary; people learn that only too quickly," said
Froebel.

The right education must be a harmonious one, and must be thoroughly in
unison with the necessary phenomena and demands of human life.

Thus the Keilhau system of education must claim the whole man, his inner
as well as his outer existence.  Its purpose is to watch the nature of
each individual boy, his peculiarities, traits, talents, above all, his
character, and afford to all the necessary development and culture.  It
follows step by step the development of the human being, from the almost
instinctive impulse to feeling, consciousness, and will.  At each one of
these steps each child is permitted to have only what he can bear,
understand, and assimilate, while at the same time it serves as a ladder
to the next higher step of development and culture.  In this way Froebel,
whose own notes, collected from different sources, we are here following,
hopes to guard against a defective or misdirected education; for what the
pupil knows and can do has sprung, as it were, from his own brain.
Nothing has been learned, but developed from within.  Therefore the boy
who is sent into the world will understand how to use it, and possess the
means for his own further development and perfection from step to step.

Every human being has a talent for some calling or vocation, and strength
for its development.  It is the task of the institute to cultivate the
powers which are especially requisite for the future fulfilment of the
calling appointed by Nature herself.  Here, too, the advance must be step
by step.  Where talent or inclination lead, every individual will be
prepared to deal with even the greatest obstacles, and must possess even
the capacity to represent externally what has been perceived and thought
--that is, to speak and write clearly and accurately--for in this way the
intellectual power of the individual will first be made active and
visible to others.  We perceive that Froebel strongly antagonizes the
Roman postulate that knowledge should be imparted to boys according to a
thoroughly tested method and succession approved by the mature human
intellect, and which seem most useful to it for later life.

The systematic method which, up to the time of Pestalozzi, prevailed in
Germany, and is again embodied in our present mode of education, seemed
to him objectionable.  The Swiss reformer pointed out that the mother's
heart had instinctively found the only correct system of instruction, and
set before the pedagogue the task of watching and cultivating the child's
talents with maternal love and care.  He utterly rejected the old system,
and Froebel stationed himself as a fellow-combatant at his side, but went
still further.  This stand required a high degree of courage at the time
of the founding of Keilhau, when Hegel's influence was omnipotent in
educational circles, for Hegel set before the school the task of
imparting culture, and forgot that it lacked the most essential
conditions; for the school can give only knowledge, while true education
demands a close relation between the person to be educated and the world
from which the school, as Hegel conceived it, is widely sundered.

Froebel recognized that the extent of the knowledge imparted to each
pupil was of less importance, and that the school could not be expected
to bestow on each individual a thoroughly completed education, but an
intellect so well trained that when the time came for him to enter into
relations with the world and higher instructors he would have at his
disposal the means to draw from both that form of culture which the
school is unable to impart.  He therefore turned his back abruptly on
the old system, denied that the main object of education was to meet the
needs of afterlife, and opposed having the interests of the child
sacrificed to those of the man; for the child in his eyes is sacred, an
independent blessing bestowed upon him by God, towards whom he has the
one duty of restoring to those who confided it to him in a higher degree
of perfection, with unfolded mind and soul, and a body and character
steeled against every peril.  "A child," he says, "who knows how to do
right in his own childish sphere, will grow naturally into an upright
manhood."

With regard to instruction, his view, briefly stated, is as follows: The
boy whose special talents are carefully developed, to whom we give the
power of absorbing and reproducing everything which is connected with his
talent, will know how to assimilate, by his own work in the world and
wider educational advantages, everything which will render him a perfect
and thoroughly educated man.  With half the amount of preliminary
knowledge in the province of his specialty, the boy or youth dismissed
by us as a harmoniously developed man, to whom we have given the methods
requisite for the acquisition of all desirable branches of knowledge,
will accomplish more than his intellectual twin who has been trained
according to the ideas of the Romans (and, let us add, Hegel).

I think Froebel is right.  If his educational principles were the common
property of mankind, we might hope for a realization of Jean Paul's
prediction that the world would end with a child's paradise.  We enjoyed
a foretaste of this paradise in Keilhau.  But when I survey our modern
gymnasia, I am forced to believe that if they should succeed in equipping
their pupils with still greater numbers of rules for the future, the
happiness of the child would be wholly sacrificed to the interests of the
man, and the life of this world would close with the birth of overwise
greybeards.  I might well be tempted to devote still more time to the
educational principles of the man who, from the depths of his full, warm
heart, addressed to parents the appeal, "Come, let us live for our
children," but it would lead me beyond the allotted limits.

Many of Froebel's pedagogical principles undoubtedly appear at first
sight a pallid theorem, partly a matter of course, partly impracticable.
During our stay in Keilhau we never heard of these claims, concerning
which we pupils were the subject of experiment.  Far less did we feel
that we were being educated according to any fixed method.  We perceived
very little of any form of government.  The relation between us and our
teachers was so natural and affectionate that it seemed as if no other
was possible.

Yet, when I compared our life at Keilhau with the principles previously
mentioned, I found that Barop, Middendorf, and old Langethal, as well as
the sub-teachers Bagge, Budstedt, and Schaffner, had followed them in our
education, and succeeded in applying many of those which seemed the most
difficult to carry into execution.  This filled me with sincere
admiration, though I soon perceived that it could have been done only by
men in whom Froebel had transplanted his ideal, men who were no less
enthusiastic concerning their profession than he, and whose personality
predestined them to solve successfully tasks which presented difficulties
almost unconquerable by others.

Every boy was to be educated according to his peculiar temperament, with
special regard to his disposition, talents, and character.  Although
there were sixty of us, this was actually done in the case of each
individual.

Thus the teachers perceived that the endowments of my brother, with whom
I had hitherto shared everything, required a totally different system of
education from mine.  While I was set to studying Greek, he was released
from it and assigned to modern languages and the arts and sciences.  They
considered me better suited for a life of study, him qualified for some
practical calling or a military career.

Even in the tasks allotted to each, and the opinions passed upon our
physical and mental achievements, there never was any fixed standard.
These teachers always kept in view the whole individual, and especially
his character.  Thereby the parents of a Keilhau pupil were far better
informed in many respects than those of our gymnasiasts, who so often
yield to the temptation of estimating their sons' work by the greater or
less number of errors in their Latin exercises.

It afforded me genuine pleasure to look through the Keilhau reports.
Each contained a description of character, with a criticism of the work
accomplished, partly with reference to the pupil's capacity, partly to
the demands of the school.  Some are little masterpieces of psychological
penetration.

Many of those who have followed these statements will ask how the German
nature and German character can be developed in the boys.

It was thoroughly done in Keilhau.

But the solution of the problem required men like Langethal and
Middendorf, who, even in their personal appearance models of German
strength and dignity, had fought for their native land, and who were
surpassed in depth and warmth of feeling by no man.

I repeat that what Froebel termed German was really the higher traits of
human character; but nothing was more deeply imprinted on our souls than
love for our native land.  Here the young voices not only extolled the
warlike deeds of the brave Prussians, but recited with equal fervor all
the songs with which true patriotism has inspired German poets.  Perhaps
this delight in Germanism went too far in many respects; it fostered
hatred and scorn of everything "foreign," and was the cause of the long
hair and cap, pike and broad shirt collar worn by many a pupil.  Yet
their number was not very large, and Ludo, our most intimate friends,
and I never joined them.

Barop himself smiled at their "Teutonism" but indulged it, and it was
stimulated by some of the teachers, especially the magnificent Zeller, so
full of vigour and joy in existence.  I can still see the gigantic young
Swiss, as he made the pines tremble with his "Odin, Odin, death to the
Romans!"

One of the pupils, Count zur Lippe, whose name was Hermann, was called
"Arminius," in memory of the conqueror of Varus.  But these were external
things.

On the other hand, how vividly, during the history lesson, Langethal, the
old warrior of 1813, described the course of the conflict for liberty!

Friedrich Froebel had also pronounced esteem for manual labour to be
genuinely and originally German, and therefore each pupil was assigned a
place where he could wield spades and pickaxes, roll stones, sow, and
reap.

These occupations were intended to strengthen the body, according to
Froebel's rules, and absorbed the greater part of the hours not devoted
to instruction.

Midway up the Dissauberg was the spacious wrestling-ground with the
shooting-stand, and in the court-yard of the institute the gymnasium for
every spare moment of the winter.  There fencing was practised with
fleurets (thrusting swords), not rapiers, which Barop rightly believed