esistance of their parents, and had the satisfaction of entering
the institution, which soon numbered between thirty and forty scholars.
In order to regulate the instruction according to the requirements, I
was obliged to alter the prescribed plan. I did it on my own
responsibility, and when at the close of the first year, I reported
this to the government, what I had done was approved, and a wish
expressed that the same course might be pursued in the other district
schools. In the summer I kept school only from six to ten o'clock in
the morning, in order that the boys might be employed in house and
field labour. Besides this, the great work of the hay and corn harvest
was in the holidays. The objects of study I limited in number, but went
more deeply into them; I honestly lamented that the pastor gave no
religious instruction, for the boys came from the preparatory school
very much neglected in this important branch; they had only been
impressed with two points, the indispensableness of the Ecclesiastical
order, and the value of relics; of biblical history they were almost
entirely ignorant. If the pastor did not teach religion, neither did I
teach politics, but left the Fatherland State system to the school of
life. On the other hand, the German and French languages, together with
practice in composition, history, and geography, arithmetic and
geometry, were carried on with great zeal, and it gave me pleasure to
observe how forward boys of natural capacity might be brought in a
short time, when all bombast was abolished, things represented simply,
and each individual suitably assisted in his intellectual work.

"It was my good fortune to have a tolerable number of clever scholars,
and for these I always endeavoured to do more than was prescribed. I
gave them, therefore, at particular hours, instruction in Latin; and I
made use of this to enlarge their views, and to guide and excite their
love of learning. They formed a nucleus which gave the school a firm
position. To them I owe the absence of anxiety about the discipline of
the school, for their earnest orderly characters had an effect on all.
During the three years of my office as teacher, I never had recourse to
punishment; if a boy was idle or untruthful, I used, after admonishing
him to amend, to add the notification, that the other scholars would
bear no bad lads amongst them. It certainly sometimes happened that at
the end of the lesson, in which I had been obli