Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/266

282 with a clear glance at the relationship of all gifts to the highest objects of society. Such a view ought to govern every educational institution,—to hover over it, like its good angel. If this be wanting in the education of young women, then the most essential is wanting.

Write above the cradle of every little girl: “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord!”

And inscribe the words in her heart, during the time of her education, and her life will then become good and noble, whatever her talents may be; and whatever her sphere of action may become, she will not live merely for a narrow and selfish aim.

And here let me say a few words about the man whom the education of young girls in the Canton Vaud, and for the whole of Switzerland, has to thank for its latest and highest development, which has caused young women in Switzerland to be sent for as teachers into all the countries of Europe, the man who has given a new, more inward direction to the life of the Protestant church, and which it is only needful for it to follow out fully, in order to arrive at its fundamental principle,—its original source. My own individual gratitude also admonishes me to the same, because beyond any other living, interesting individuals and good friends in Switzerland, has been, and still is to me, the dead—undying

Already in his earliest youth he was affected by his deep feeling for every thing noble and beautiful. One day he was reading aloud Corneille's Cid, in the family