"Live on the interest of your fortune, boy; Of some tough, smoke-dried hog, with nettles drest; Shall I, a hapless figure, pale and thin, Glide by transparent, in a parchment skin: That he may strut with more than priestly pride, Go, truck your soul for gain! buy, sell, exchange; -Translated by WILLIAM GIFFORD. He PESTALOZZI, JOHANN HEINRICH, a celebrated Swiss educator and novelist, born at Zurich, Switzerland, January 12, 1746; died at Brugg, Switzerland, February 17, 1827. He is celebrated for his reforms in the methods of education. studied theology and jurisprudence at Zurich, and subsequently gave his attention to agriculture. He determined to devote his life to the education of the people, and in 1775 he established on his estate, Neuhof, a poor school, the expenses of running which were to be raised by popular subscription. He, however, had to give this up in 1780. At this time he published the first account of his method of instruction in Iselin's Ephemeriden with the title Abendstunden Eines Einsiedlers, or Evening Hours of a Hermit. His principal work is the novel Lienhard and Gertrude, a book for the people, written between 1781 and 1785. In 1798 he received the support of the government in founding an institution for poor children at Stanz, which was, however, given up one year later. He then took charge of a school at Burgdorf, which was twice removed, to Münchenbuchsee, and Yverdon, and existed until 1825, at which time, notwithstanding the renown his system of teaching had acquired, the enterprise was abandoned. His collected works were published at Brandenburg, 1869-72, in sixteen volumes. They include Wie Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt (How Gertrude Teaches her Children, 1801); Memoirs of Burgdorf and Yverdon, Meine Lebensschicksale (1826). The following extract from Eva Channing's translation of Pestalozzi's Lienhard and Gertrude introduces us to the one good woman of the dismal hamlet of Bonnal-Gertrude, the mason's wife who trudges many miles to see the county magistrate, and beg work for her husband, and to complain of the bad acts of the wicked bailiff, whose beer makes her husband drunk : GERTRUDE'S MISSION. She prayed throughout the sleepless night, and the next morning took her blooming baby and walked two long hours to the Castle. The nobleman was sitting under a linden-tree at the gate, and saw her as she approached, with tears in her eyes and the infant on her arm. "Who are you, my daughter, and what do you wish?" he asked, in so kind a tone that she took heart to answer: "I am Gertrude, wife of the mason Lienhard in Bonnal." "You are a good woman," said Arner. "I have noticed that your children behave better than all the others in the village, and they seem better fed, although I hear you are very poor. What can I do for you, my daughter?" "O gracious, Sir, for a long time my husband has owed thirty florins to the Bailiff Hummel, a hard man, who leads him into all sorts of temptation. Leonard is in his power: so he dares not keep away from the tavern, where day after day he spends the wages which ought to buy bread for his family. We have seven little children, Sir, and unless something is done we shall all be beggars. I ventured to come to you for help, because I know that you have compassion for the widowed and fatherless. I have brought the money I have laid aside for my children, to deposit with you, if you will be so good as to make some arrangement so that the bailiff shall not torment my husband any more until he is paid." Arner took up a cup which stood near, and said to Gertrude: "Drink this tea, and give your pretty baby |