l congress of teachers held in Gotha. When
he appeared that large assembly rose to greet him as one man; and
Middendorff, too, who was inseparable from Froebel, so that when one
appeared the other was not far off, had before his death (in 1853) the
joy of hearing a similar congress at Salzungen declare the system of
Froebel to be of world-wide importance, and to merit on that account
their especial consideration and their most earnest examination.

A few words on Middendorff, culled from Lange's account, may be
serviceable. Middendorff was to Froebel as Aaron was to Moses. Froebel,
in truth, was "slow of speech and of a slow tongue" (Exod. iv. 10), and
Middendorff was "his spokesman unto the people" (v. 16). It was the
latter's clearness and readiness of speech which won adherents for
Froebel amongst people who neither knew him nor could understand him. In
1849 Middendorff had immense success in Hamburg; but when Froebel came,
later on, to occupy the ground thus conquered beforehand, he had to
contend against much opposition, for every one missed the easy eloquence
of Middendorff, which had been so convincing. Dr. Wichard Lange came to
know Froebel when the latter visited Hamburg in the winter of 1849-50.
At this time he spent almost every afternoon and evening with him, and
held the post of editor of Froebel's _Weekly Journal_. Even after this
close association with Froebel, he found himself unable thoroughly
to go with the schemes for the education of little children, the
Kindergarten, and with those for the training of Kindergarten teachers.
"Never mind!" said Froebel, out of humour, when Lange told him this; "if
you cannot come over to my views now, you will do so in ten years' time;
but sooner or later, _come you must_!" Dr. Lange nobly fulfilled the
prophecy, and the edition of Froebel's collected works (Berlin 1862),
from which we derive the present text (and much of the notes), was his
gift of repentance to appease the wrath of the Manes of his departed
friend and master. Nor was he content with this; but by his frequent
communications to _The Educational Journal_ (_Die Rheinischen Blaetter_),
originally founded by Diesterweg, and by the Froebelian spirit which he
was able to infuse into the large boys'-school which he long conducted
at Hamburg, he worked for the "new education" so powerfully and so
unweariedly that he must be always thankfully regarded as one of the
principal adherents of the great teacher. His