592 DILECTA

rode to Hofwyl Farm, Mr. Fellenberg’s Institution,¹ combining a large fine boarding-house for eighty to ninety young gentlemen of fortune, where all branches of education are taught, and agriculture added if they choose; and a school for poor boys and girls, and for masters of country schools to learn.

“Some Russian princes have attended the boarding school. The expense, about three thousand francs yearly. Everything is made on the farm-bread, butter, clothes, shoes, etc. There are from two hundred and eighty to three hundred acres of land in cultivation, lying in a sort of basin sloping gently away from house towards a piece of water. It is impossible to conceive anything so beautiful for a farm as this. There being four hundred people about it there is no want of labour; and added to the usual Swiss neatness, there is the completeness of an amateur farmer possessing ample means. There were fifty-four milk cows kept on hay and potatoes under cover. (The want of cattle in the field is always a drawback to a foreign landscape.) The oxen very handsome. The system of farming same as Scotch, only one new product seen by a Scotch amateur whom we met. Italian rye grass, very fine. The poorer young men cutting hay, all very happy. The workshops, the washing-houses, the outhouses all very perfect, but in implements or machinery nothing new. It was the beauty of the situation on a fine day, and the fulness and apparent comfort, that struck the observer particularly.”

¹ [Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg (1771-1844), Swiss educationist, friend of Pestalozzi. In 1799 he purchased the estate of Hofwyl, near Berne, and founded a school there in which agriculture was made the basis of his system of education. The buildings are now used as a Training College for Teachers.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]