so corrupted that they shamefully neglect their children,-to whom, therefore, society should be a father, in order to raise up a generation of better parents."

Leaving now the wood that had afforded us a temporary shelter from the rain, which had begun to descend most plenteously, we came to an open space, part of which had been cleared by his boys. Some stumps and roots had been heaped together beside the path; and pointing to them he exclaimed, "to deracinate these has constituted a part of the education of the young colonists: such labours have given them strength and perseverance."

We dismounted a few yards above the habitation of the colonists; and had the weather been propitious, the prospect from this elevated spot would have been of the grandest description. The stately Jungfrau*, queen of the Alps of the Cantons, with her retinue of mountains, robed in virgin snows, would have been now receiving the first glow of their evening's rosy lustre. The rays of the sun would have also gilded around us the just tinted, burnished foliage of autumn; and the villages beneath would have been gladdened in the brightness. But if I missed this glorious scenery, I had little leisure to reflect upon my loss, being engrossed with the conversation of my intelligent and revered guide. I might enjoy mountain scenery another day, but I might not again have such an opportunity at once to improve my mind, and to enlarge the affections of my heart.

This school consists of twenty boys, of different ages. Their master's name is Pfyfer. M. Fellenberg was warmly greeted by them, and was received as a respected and beloved benefactor.

One of his letters, dated the 5th of January, 1827, so well elucidates

Jungfrau, in German, signifies a young woman, or maiden. This mountain is 11,490 feet above the level of the

sea.

CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 343.

his ideas on the establishment of the colony, that I shall translate a considerable part. "In undertaking," he says, "to bring up indigent children, persons have too frequently neglected to weigh the considerations which should bind them, and society in general, to preserve these destitute beings from every species of contamination, and to ensure, in a satisfactory manner, the development both of their moral dispositions and physical powers.

"He that has been so abased by bad example, by his education, or by his habits, that he has not energy to gain, or to set about gaining, for himself, the necessaries of life, is a burthen to others, as he who is wanting in morality and in religious principle will be the pest of society, and will recklessly offend against its common interest, in pursuing his own gratification.

"When labour is well directed, and is of a description altogether suited to the individuals employed, it is the great moralizer of mankind. In agricultural occupations particularly, Divine Providence appears to have supplied us with resources for the education of indigent children. But the end we ought to propose to ourselves, that of true philosophy, will be attained only in proportion as we know how to make our pupils enjoy the satisfaction of contributing to the happiness of their fellows, whilst they work for their own interest. This advantage is secured in the highest degree in the colony that I have formed at Maykirk. Boys (with their master) have been established there, as Robinson Crusoe was on his island, upon a spot, the locality of which was not unfavourable, but which had never been cultivated. Hofwyl is to them, what the vessel cast within the reach of the first Robinson was to him, in providing for the wants which he could not have supplied by dint of his own efforts.

"The practice of a good system of agriculture, and the erection of 3 H

They

a convenient habitation, will, in an efficient manner, have finished our young pupils in a course of education that will habituate them to forethought and industry. have, under the Divine protection, reared for themselves an asylum; and in proportion as their measures may succeed, they reap the satisfaction of extending their advantages to others in their former condition. Their prosperity can only increase by those additions through which their enjoyments are augmented in a more satisfactory manner. The promotion of industry and a Christian education are, by combining these points, put in perfect unison; each illustrating and assisting the other.

My young colonists implore God morning and evening, that he would graciously incline the hearts of men, by the success of their colony, to be agents in conducting, in the same course of temporal and eternal happiness, the innumerable host of children borne away by the torrent of corruption, which destroys all that stamps a value on

human existence.

"No sooner had we made known to our young people the dangers to which the Greek children were exposed of dying from famine, or of being precipitated into slavery, apostasy, and all kinds of ignominious debasement, than they desired to send every possible relief to these sufferers; and they immediately supplicated their heavenly Father to vouchsafe to these young Greeks the blessing of being brought up like themselves.

and so subdue their passions, that there may be elicited what God in his bounty has granted most precious to humanity.

"But instructors arrive at a totally opposite result, in exciting self-love and an avidity of applause which is disquieted as soon as the praises of others cease. Youths should become superior and inattentive to it by that voice of conscience, which education should cherish with the greatest care; and it should ever lead them to have respect to this divine monitor of man, so as to give it every possible sway, and that control which it should exercise during life.

"A school of industry, like that of Hofwyl, can with difficulty be imitated, because its circumstances are peculiar and those which have conspired towards its formation, may never occur again. But the rural school of Maykirk may be reproduced wherever there are lands badly cultivated, yet not too sterile for tillage, the property of a beneficent proprietor, whose enlightened philanthropy will not be lulled into inaction in the delusions of benevolence, nor accomplish things only in part. Those of the school at Hofwyl do not distinguish the fruit of their own labour among that mass of production which arises from the concurrent efforts of its whole population. It is otherwise with the colonists of Maykirk.

"The pupils of the Institute for the rich have gained much, in learning to estimate, by the example of the colony, what the energies of indigent children can produce. through means of a good direction, and with moderate assistance.

"It is ten years since I bought the land on which the colony is established: seven have been necessary to conquer the first diffi

these will not occur elsewhere. Up to this date I have added about 2400 francs to the invested capital, the purchase money of the ground,

in establishing the colony; but there has accrued to it much more than that sum, by the house that has been constructed there, and by the improvement of the lands. It has increased from six to eighteen inhabitants: by next summer there will be between twenty and thirty, which may be considered as the number that this kind of foundation should contain."

Seventeen acres is the extent of the land of this little settlement; eight only of which had been cleared. Wood felled, and potatoes grown by the young colonists, have been sent down to Hofwyl; and in harvest time a band of them lend their assistance there. The diet of these boys is very plain, and meat is seldom tasted by them. They have a loom of a very simple construction, and make their own hempen clothes. A few goats and pigs, and two cows, compose their live stock. Their dwelling has been constructed where the ground is so steep that the erection of a front and sides only were necessary. The roof, after a common manner of building where there are heavy falls of snow, is capacious enough to accommodate beneath it animals, agricultural utensils, and stores. A kitchen on the ground floor, and above it a school-room, before which is a little open gallery that commands a magnificent view, occupy the centre of this cottage. Behind the school-room, and immediately under the roof is a loft, that serves for the dormitory. The economy so needful to the extension of benevolence, so essential for accustoming to good habits, is throughout eminently conspicuous. Their sleeping-loft, for example, is furnished, or rather laid out, as follows :-A sloping stage runs from one end of it to the other, suitably elevated from the floor. This is divided by planks, into compartments of about thirty inches in breadth; and each boy has one of these berths, lies on a coarse mattress, and has a coverlet to throw over him. Their master

reposes with them on a couch of equally small cost; and his wearing apparel also corresponds with theirs. He labours with them, instructs them, and partakes of their simple fare. His example is their pattern. But that all this rigid economy is by no means detrimental to their happiness and to their health, is obvious from their looks. One of them, whose neck had from constitutional weakness, contracted a fixed stiffness previous to his living in this situation, is now, to the great satisfaction of M. Fellenberg, gradually getting stronger. Like the boys at Hofwyl, they do not usually wear hats; and they put on shoes only when it is cold or wet. Their minds are attempted to be elevated by the process of instruction adopted there; but here they can be educated in thrift, better than in the mother seminary, from which some of them have been drawn. Pfyfer, a native of the canton of Glarus, was one of Vehrli's first scholars. M. Fellenberg told me he was a very pious young man, and remarkable for his solicitous vigilance in preventing whatever might be morally prejudicial to his pupils. His filial piety, and the force of his patron's benevolent practice had been recently exemplified. He had commenced his labours at Maykirk, without remuneration; but his father, being poor, urged him strongly to send him relief. The feelings of the son struggled between a repugnance to receive hire for doing good, after he had just obtained his own education gratuitously, and the instances of a parent. But M. Fellenberg, hearing of the circumstance, insisted upon giving him a salary; and as soon as Pfyfer received his first year's pay, he remitted nearly the whole of it to his father.-M. Fellenberg, who told me this, has also since related to me another anecdote, illustrative of the effects of the principles inculcated at Hofwyl. A young man who, on leaving Vehrli's school, had entered M. Fellenberg's service, became attached to a young woman

whom he had also engaged as a servant, after her quitting that for indigent girls. These young persons made known their inclinations to their superiors, who gave them suitable advice; and self-denial had in their case been so happily established, that the lovers have agreed to refrain from the cultivation of a beguiling intimacy till they shall have amassed a sufficient fund for settling in life, and for providing against sickness and calamity. This, says our benevolent philosopher, is the moral constraint which European nations should give to their offspring by education; and truly, political economists have not to dread a su perabundance of people where religion and prudence exist. It is only under circumstances of vice and improvidence than the rapid increase of population is to be feared.

One report I am glad to be able to make to the praise of the colonists of Maykirk. The rector had been so much pleased with their behaviour and singing at his church, which they attend, that he lately brought some friends up the mountain to visit the settlement. After inspecting it, he remarked, as Pfy fer informed M. Fellenberg, that "the way to dispense money profitably was not in giving to beggars, but in supporting such excellent undertakings as this;" and all must allow that by such means to aim at the diminution of misery, is better than merely bestowing alms on mendi

cants.

The colonists' garden was in good order. They had recently erected a shed for bee-hives, and M. Fellenberg talked of shortly having their own abode enlarged. He has assured me, that if he sold their house, and the ground belonging to it now, he would be more than remunerated for the purchase money of the land, and his subsequent disbursements, amounting to one hundred and fifty pounds, for provisions, tools, and other necessaries. He feels persuaded that in future the expenses will be covered by further

improvements of the property; and the value of the wood cut and po tatoes grown at the colony, and sent to Hofwyl, must already have gone towards his repayment. The State then may gain both in cultivated land and hopeful citizens, whilst he who has been instramental in causing so valuable an accession, will lose nothing by his experiment. But the cheering truth that has on this spot been clearly demonstrated is, at how small a cost good may be effected through an economy which is truly charitable in its operation. M. Fellenberg is maintaining and educating, receiving in return the labour which is a part of the education, nearly one hundred and forty human beings born in the sphere of poverty. The number he originally intended to feed and instruct was thirty.

After spending half an hour at the colony, for it would not have been prudent to have remained longer in our wet clothes, we returned, completely drenched, to Hofwyl.

(To be continued.)

SERMON HEARING.

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer.

ONE of your correspondents has lately given us various reasons for going to church late, and another for not going at all: permit me to add the following illustration of what we ought to do, or rather not to do, when we are there. I copy the paper from an American episcopalian publication; and shall be happy to learn that it does not apply to any of my friends in Great Britain.

AN EARLY CHURCH-GOer.

A casual indisposition last Sunday prevented my attendance at church. The family, with the exception of one domestic, had all

gone; and after the last straggling worshipper had hurried on to the house of God, the street was in a state of comparative quietness, and exhibited a stillness which bespoke the return of the day of rest. I was left to spend the hours of service in uninterrupted tranquillity, and to make the best provision that I could for passing them profitably. I hope the endeavour was not altogether unsuccessful, till a drowsiness, partly constitutional and partly induced by indisposition, overcame me, while pondering over a volume of sermons. The subject I had been pursuing, unconsciously mingled itself with my reveries. I imagined myself suddenly transported to my accustomed seat in church, surrounded by the well-known faces with which I had long been familiar. By some unaccountable inspiration, I was gifted with the power of reading the secret thoughts of every person in the assembly. For a moment I stood in bewildered surprise at the new faculty with which I was endowed, till curiosity stimulated me to try my skill.

The first person to whom I turned was a lady of pleasing aspect and serious demeanour, who was listening with apparent earnestness to the preacher. Just, however, as I began to examine her more closely, some untraceable association of ideas, recalled her to inferior considerations. She began to calculate whether her dinner would bear the addition of two unexpected guests, which Mr. had invited on their way to church. Before she recollected how little such meditations accorded with the avowed objects of her attendance in that place, she had settled to her own satisfaction, that with adding something to the dessert, she could do very well. A young practitioner of the law, was carefully going over the circumstances of a case he expected to open on the following morning. A merchant, who sat in the next seat, was painfully weighing the chances of the safe arrival of a valuable

shipment, and considering whether it would not be prudent to effect an insurance on some part of it. Many had assumed an attitude which they contended was most favourable to attention, but which at least seemed quite as friendly to repose. As I reviewed hastily these half recumbent hearers, I grieved to remark, that for one who really attended to the sermon, at least six were actually sleeping, or dreaming with their eyes open, of matters equally foreign to the duties of the place and the day. Are these hearers of the word? I internally exclaimed: they indeed come and go from the place of the holy; they present their bodies in the sanctuary, but their hearts are far from its services.

A young collegian was silently challenging the correctness of a classical allusion, at the very moment that, forgetting the scholar and the critic, in the superior soli. citudes of a Christian minister, the good divine was addressing a most feeling expostulation to the very class of amiable but inconsiderate beings to which the student belonged. With less excuse than the collegian could plead, a young lady more voluble than wise, and more skilled in exacting applause than in deserving it, was watching with critical earnestness to detect the slightest inaccuracy in language or emphasis, which might serve as a subject for ridicule, when she had left the hallowed precincts. Another, with more self-confidence, and greater criminality, (since she at least professed better things,) had summoned all her powers of observation, for the purpose of discovering in this veteran servant of his Divine Master any incorrectness of doctrine, or defective exhibition of scriptural truth, which she fancied her superior theological attainments or her extensive reading might enable her to expose. The preacher had numbered twice her years, and borne the labour and burden of many a dark and discouraging day. Is this, thought I, the humble and