This lesson of ideas, or the higher grammar, has not been so much perfected, as indicated by genial hints and examples; but, nevertheless, sufficiently so to encourage the more fundamental thinker to take up the thread. This, if properly handled, would afford young people, and even older ones also, an invaluable assistance in working their way through the labyrinth of the world, and appears to me to be a requisite in education.
His excellent method, his amiable manners, his love for children, in all of which he was another Pestalozzi, but with more beautiful plans, and a more lucid mind, attracted to him a great number of pupils. In a short time, his school numbered five hundred children. But Père Girard talked much about nature, and the “Maternal Providence,” and not at all about the infallible Catholic church, and the holy father in Rome. The Jesuits got wind of all this, and—one fine day, Père Girard was removed from his convent, and his beloved, flourishing school at Freyburg, to another convent, in a remote Canton of Switzerland, where he could not busy himself with the education of children. His school in Freyburg was soon after broken up, and his pupils dispersed.
I have obtained a portrait of the fatherly monk. Heart and genius beam from those dear eyes, and from the honest, cheerful countenance. Père Girard lived till within the last two years, and was often visited by traveling strangers.
Von Fellenberg, the third in order in this triumvirate of the Swiss schoolmasters, was the founder of the great educational institution of Hofsvyl, near Berne.
