r Pestalozzi was about to dawn. He now became
sensible of the great error of his former plans, which made too much
account of external circumstances, without exerting sufficient influence
on the inward nature, which it was his object to elevate. His mind
gradually arrived at the important truth, which is the keystone of the
system he afterward matured: "That the amelioration of outward
circumstances will be the effect, but can never be the means, of mental
and moral improvement."

He had now succeeded in awakening the attention of the Swiss Government
to the importance of his plans for national education, and was invited
to take charge of an asylum for orphans and other destitute children,
which should be formed under his own direction and supported at the
public expense. The place selected for this experiment was Stanz, the
capital of the Canton of Underwalden, which had been recently burned and
depopulated by the French Revolutionary troops. A new Ursuline convent,
which was then building, was assigned to Pestalozzi as the scene of his
future operations. On his arrival there he found only one apartment
finished, a room about twenty-four feet square, and that unfurnished.
The rest of the building was occupied by the carpenters and masons; and
even had there been rooms, the want of beds and kitchen furniture would
have made them useless. In the mean time, it having been announced that
an asylum was to be opened, crowds of children came forward, some of
them orphans, and others without protection or shelter, whom it was
impossible, under such circumstances, to send away. The one room was
devoted to all manner of purposes. In the day it served as a schoolroom,
and at night, furnished with some scanty bedding, was occupied by
Pestalozzi with as many of the scholars as it would hold. The remainder
were quartered out for the night in some of the neighboring houses and
came to the asylum only in the day. Of course, under such circumstances,
anything like order or regularity was out of the question. Even personal
cleanliness was impossible; and this, added to the dust occasioned by
the workmen, the dampness of the new walls, and the closeness of the
atmosphere in a small and crowded apartment, made the asylum an
unhealthy abode.

The character of the children, too, was a great obstacle to Pestalozzi's
success. Many of them were the offspring of beggars and outlaws and had
long been inured to wretchedness and vice; others had