umber of the well-endowed with this power, is the best
reason for the large use of books in schools; and Pestalozzi's genius
for companionship with inferior minds caused a too exclusive recourse to
oral instruction. Thus, when assistants came upon the scene, there was
diversity, disagreement, disappointment, and no little disorder. We need
not go into the painful story of warring tempers and incompatible
interests. The institution declined for some years, and then was broken
up--the government of the Canton warning the manager of the concern, who
acted in Pestalozzi's name, to leave the country.

[Illustration: Pestalozzi, the children's friend.]

It needs no explanation that Pestalozzi was in some respects weak. The
failure of all his establishments and his inability to keep out of debt
show this. His faculties of imagination and sympathy overpowered the
rest of his mind. He early seized a great truth--that of the claim of
every human being to the full development of his faculties, whatever
they may be; and the concentration of his strongest powers on this great
truth made him a social reformer of a high order. He was not a
philosopher; he was not a man of good sense, or temper, or practical
ability, generally speaking; though sense, temper, and ability appeared
to be all transcendent in the particular direction taken by his
genius. Among his inferiors--and particularly friendless children--he
was a prophet and apostle; among men he was a child, and sometimes a
perverse one.

He died at the age of eighty-one, preserving, in the midst of great
pain, his enthusiasm for justice, his special love for children and the
poor, and his strong religious sentiment. Two days before his death he
spoke long and nobly, while taking leave of his family and his
enterprises. His country, and we hope the world, has remembered his good
offices to society, and forgiven his foibles.

GEORGES CUVIER

By JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D.

(1769-1832)

[Illustration: Cuvier. [TN]]

Georges Chretien Leopold Dagobert Cuvier was born at Montbeliard, a
place of manufacturing industry about forty miles from Besancon, now
within the French dominions, then a little principality pertaining to
the Duke of Wurtemberg. Young Cuvier was remarkable for his intelligence
and precocity; and an incident in his boyish days indicated the bent of
his genius, and the sphere of knowledge and discovery in which as a man
he was destined to excel. He found one da