Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/290

306 pusillanimity which she showed in her youth towards her service of God.”

As regards the bloody sentence of the unfortunate Servetus, Calvin is evidently not free from private malice. But so dark were those times and so much were people accustomed to the heretic perishing in the flames, that very few voices in Protestant Switzerland and Germany were raised in protest against the doom of Servetus. The greater number approved of it; even the mild Melancthon. So little was, even then, understood the sacredness of conscience and the right of honest opinion. Calvin has impressed his stamp on Geneva, both as regards good and evil, and the city which protested against Rome, is still intolerant, stern, and diplomatic, the Rome of Protestantism. But the strict Calvinists are now, however, few and—the age of Calvinism is past. Thank God!

Much dearer than my acquaintance with Calvin, has been the acquaintance which I have made with the great instructors of Switzerland, for the words of the past are true:

And no people has given greater teachers of this class to humanity. Pestalozzi is known throughout Europe. His heart contained a heaven of kindness and love.

That which is peculiar in his method—with which I am too little acquainted—appears to me to consist in his manner of quickening the attention of the scholar, of developing his faculties of observation, and changing lessons learned by heart into lessons of