ered incurably desultory, shallow, and conceited. If
there are readers of Wordsworth who are puzzled at this day about the
drift of his poem, called "Anecdote for Fathers, Showing how the
Practice of Lying May be Taught," let them remember that it was written
at a time when "the Pestalozzian system" was in vogue in England, and
throughout Europe; and then they will see what a good lesson it yields.
If, at this day, the image flits across our memories of some pale child,
with a fretful brow, red eyes, and a constant disposition to get out of
the room, or to hide behind the window curtains, when spoken to, we may
refer that image back to the days of the "Pestalozzian system," as it
was fashionably understood in this country.

It was a cruel injustice to Pestalozzi to render him responsible for all
this mischief. His mission was, not to craze children's brains and break
their hearts, but the very contrary. We, in fact, gave his name to a
mere reaction from a mistake of our own--to one kind of ignorance into
which we fell in our escape from another.

In our desire for popular education, early in the century, we had
supposed the thing to be done was to put certain facts into the
learner's mind--to lay them upon his memory, as it were. To quicken and
spread the process, we set children who had learned a thing one minute
to teach it to other children the next. This did not answer. We called
it "the Lancasterian system," and supposed the nation would be educated
in a trice. When we found, at the end of ten or twenty years, that boys
and girls left school after sitting nine years on the benches, unable to
do any good with book or pen, while they had lost their home-training in
the workshop, the field, or the dairy, we were ready for a reaction; and
to that reaction we most unjustly gave the name of "Pestalozzian
system."

The notion was that we had been all wrong in putting knowledge into
children's heads; and that the right way was to get ideas out of them.
Henceforth we were to develop faculties, and not impose knowledge. It
was a great day for us when the conception was formed, and began to
spread. Without it, education would never have advanced even as far as
it has. But we blundered over it sadly at first; and among our mistakes,
it was not the least that we christened our follies after Pestalozzi.
Every great step in social progress is taken in the name of some
representative man. It is the business of those who come aft