the spirit of the deep wisdom which it
contained. This was published in 1781, and, in order to draw the
attention of its readers to the great object which he had in view, he
published another work in the following year, entitled _Christopher and
Eliza_. But this also failed of the purpose for which it was principally
intended. Still Pestalozzi was not discouraged in his attempts to make
the public acquainted with his new ideas. He now addressed himself to
the literary world, as he had before written expressly for the common
people. In a journal published at Basel, under the direction of Iselin,
a distinguished philanthropist, he inserted a series of essays, entitled
_Evening Hours of a Hermit_, which contained a more systematic account
of his mode of instruction and his plans for national improvement. But
the current of public thought was in an opposite direction, and little
attention could be gained to the plans which he labored to introduce.
His success was somewhat better in a weekly publication, which he
undertook at the beginning of 1782, under the title of the _Swiss
Journal_. This was continued for one year, and forms two octavo volumes
in which a great variety of subjects is discussed, connected with his
favorite purpose of national improvement.

Soon after the breaking up of his establishment at Neuhof, the country
began to be agitated with the excesses of the French Revolution, and
Pestalozzi, disappointed in the sanguine hopes which he had formed at
the commencement of that event, and disgusted with the scenes of
brutality and lawlessness which it had occasioned, wrote his _Inquiry
into the Course of Nature in the Developement of the Human Species_.
This work, published in 1797, marks a new epoch in the development of
his views. It was written at a moment when his mind was covered with
the deepest gloom, and he was almost ready to sink under the struggle
between the bright conceptions of improvement which he had formed and
the darkness which hung over the existing institutions of society. The
following questions, which he proposes to himself at the commencement of
the work, will give some idea of its plan and of the spirit in which it
was composed:

"What am I? What is the human species? What have I done? What is the
human species doing?

"I want to know what the course of my life, such as it has been, has
made of me? and I want to know what the course of life, such as it has
been, has made of the human sp