put into the sticks and straws, that are the
material part of a child's education. Take
away the animating mind, and there is nothing
that we may not laugh at in the mechanical
part of the Infant Garden system. On the
other hand there is a class of sincere men who,
looking to its spirit only, grieve over it as
godless, because it does not recognise original
corruption in the child. Froebel and his disciples
have based all their labour on a love of children,
like that of the Master who set up a little child
as pattern to us. Heresy or not, faith in the
child, and a firm trust in its natural affections,
are at the bottom of the doctrine which it is
the business of the Herr and the Frau Ronge to
disseminate in England. We are to put our
hearts into the belief that every child is sent
from Heaven, which appoints for it a first school
upon earth, in the mother's lap and by the
mother's knee. We are called upon to assent,
not passively, but actively, to the fact that
mothers have to begin the education of mankind
—that all mothers are teachers of evil if not of
good. Women have an instinct for teaching given
to them. The little girl in the nursery is quite
ready to set herself up as guide and monitress
to brothers two or three years older than
herself; girls become mentors at a very early age,
and how many husbands are kept in good order
by the love of training that is in the nature of
their wives! It makes of the ill-natured and
ill-bred, a scold or a busybody; but of a right
woman the wholesomest of friends. According
to the promoters of the Infant Gardens, "woman's
mission" is to teach. The unmarried may help
the married. If any unmarried woman can say
that she does not like children, or that she finds
teaching irksome, then there must have been
some great defect in her own education;
perhaps, also, she does not attempt to teach in the
right manner, or her efforts are not met in the
right spirit by those whose duty it is, and whose
pleasure it ought to be, to encourage her with
helpful ways and thankful words. If, indeed,
the mother herself were always the first teacher
of good to a child, she would know what love
and happy patience any woman must use who
attempts to aid her in her office; she would
know that the value of a teacher is not tested
by the accuracy of her French pronunciation, or
the firmness of her touch on a piano. The question
is, what is her touch upon that most exquisite
of instruments, the heart of a young child?
For upon that there is no hour of the day in
which she does not play, and she had better
break every string in the piano than put that out
of tune by her unskilful handling. But where so
much of the skill is simply love and the calm
womanly instinct that reaches to as good
conclusions as the best male treatise upon ethics, it
must be the height of stupidity in any mother
who has called for woman's help in education of
her children, to chill in that woman the impulses
of love, to wound the instincts on whose healthy
action the well-being of her little ones depends.

The promoters of the Infant Gardens bid us
trust in mothers, and endeavour to show girls
the way to a sort of knowledge that shall make
them in due time able to give thorough help to
children of their own. Therefore, they are
beginning to associate with their infant training
system, Higher Schools and Ladies' Schools.

Fourteen years ago, Herr Ronge first organised
schools in Germany upon the principle of direct
co-operation between parents and teachers.
During the first four years of his labour, that is
to say, until the year 'forty-nine, many such
schools were formed, especially in the large
towns where there were Reform Communities
bent upon developing in every way their guiding
principle. Teacher and reformer were alike bent
upon respecting the individual character of every
one, and removing all unjust restraints upon its
growth. With more or less of zeal, they strove
in Germany against the Jesuit and the diplomatist,
whose care it was to trim men closely to one
pattern in the Church and in the State. Against
the astuteness of these people, the new school
of teachers proposed to bring into action something
more invincible than they—a simple mother's
love. It was said, Let mothers but know
how to watch over the free and wholesome
energy of children's minds; let little ones be
trained to freedom in their earliest movements,
and taught to acquire their earliest ideas by
thinking for themselves; let them be, in the
child's way, active and reasonable, and in their
manhood who shall make them slaves? Therefore,
these German Reform Communities were at
the same time educational societies; each of them
had a yearly election of its managing committee,
and a quarterly meeting for report and discussion.
There were founded also by Herr Ronge, Ladies'
Societies composed of mothers who were not
disposed or able to join any association having
objects more remote than the immediate training
of the young. The establishing of some very
excellent schools was the result of these efforts.

There followed the reaction of the year 'fifty
and Herr Rouge's exile. He brought his good
thoughts with him to England, and his energy
never abated. There was a new language to
learn and an old effort to maintain by help of it.
Avoiding all that was sectarian in its form,
regarding it purely in Froebel's light as a means
of bringing women and young children into the
happiest and wholesomest relations with each
other as teachers and taught, the sturdy labourer
for genuine and individual development of every
mind, became our apostle of the Kindergarten
system, with his wife at his right hand helping
him with all a woman's tact, and with much
more than average ability. It is she who has
conspicuously shown, by successful practice, the
good sense of the educational doctrine that her
husband has so long been preaching.

After a couple of years' effort with his English
Kindergarten, Mr. Ronge proceeded to another
part of his old scheme and organised, in 'fifty-
three, a religious Reform Community; the
members of which yielded a working committee after
a few months. This committee helped in the
foundation of a training school, but as the special
aim of its religious effort is to be itself of no