Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/294

310 His idea was an all-sided and harmonious development of the human being, yet with especial regard to each individual's particular disposition or talents. His institution is still in existence, carried on according to his principles, by one of his best pupils.

Madame Neckar de Saussure has written only on the education of women; a great work, universally read and esteemed, as well in Switzerland as France. She seems to me to base her doctrine of education upon a deeper and more general foundation, than any of the other spiritual architects. This is the impulse towards perfection which she finds in every human breast; and this impulse must be guided and satisfied by the means which it furnishes. It is affecting to observe how willingly she would open to women all the means which could satisfy this highest, noblest need, and how she secretly grieves because these cannot be conceded in their present circumscribed social condition. She does not say, nor yet does she see, how this can be otherwise; but she gives beautiful and noble hints to parents and educators, and she is the best and the pleasantest comforter of the life-wearied and aged. The last chapters of her work produce upon me the same effect as “the after-glow,” on the peaks of the Alps. It is evening, and the sun has set, but nevertheless, one enters into “the second light,” and looks for the flush of a new dawn.

They have now all departed into the silent unseen, those light-bearers on the path of the younger generation. But “good heads still talk after death,” says the proverb, and it is true in the highest sense, as regards these genii of education. Publicly or privately,