ady. Owen's "Rational Infant School" attracted
much notice, and an Infant School Society was founded. But even the
enlightened were incapable of understanding that any education was
possible without books, and the promoters rightly, though quite
unconsciously, condemned themselves when they kept the title Infant
School but dropped the qualifying "Rational." Still, Infant Schools had
been started and interest had been aroused. When the edict abolishing
Kindergartens was promulgated in Germany, some of Froebel's disciples
passed to other lands, and Madame von Marenholz came to England in 1854.
Already one Kindergarten had been opened by a Madame Ronge, to which
Rowland Hill sent his children, and to which Dickens paid frequent
visits. In the same year there was held in London an "International
Educational Exposition and Congress," and to this Madame von Marenholz
sent an exhibit, which was explained by Madame Ronge, and by a Mr.
Hoffmann. Dickens, who had watched the actual working of a Kindergarten,
gave warm support to the new ideas, and wrote an excellent article on
"Infant Gardens" for _Household Words_, urging "that since children are
by Infinite Wisdom so created as to find happiness in the active
exercise and development of all their faculties, we, who have children
round about us, shall no longer repress their energies, tie up their
bodies, shut their mouths.... The frolic of childhood is not pure
exuberance and waste. 'There is often a high meaning in childish play,'
said Froebel. Let us study it, and act upon the hints--or more than
hints--that Nature gives."

Dr. Henry Barnard represented Connecticut at this Congress, and he took
the Kindergarten to America, in whose virgin soil the seed took root,
and quickly brought forth abundantly. But the soil was virgin and the
fields were ready for planting, for America in these days had nothing
corresponding to our Infant Schools. The Kindergarten was welcomed by
people of influence. Dr. Barnard found his first ally in Miss Peabody,
one of whose sisters was married to Nathaniel Hawthorne, while another
was the wife of Horace Mann. Miss Peabody began to teach in 1860, but
eight years later, after a visit to Europe, she gave up teaching for
propaganda work. Owing to her efforts the first Free Kindergarten was
opened in Boston in 1870. Philanthropists soon recognised its importance
as a social agency, and by 1883 one lady alone supported thirty-one such
institutions in Bos