prestige of her rank, and even her personal services, to the diffusion of Kindergarten culture on the continent of Europe.

The so-called Kindergarten which I had established, was gladly given up to make room for this genuine one; and I have the highest expectations from the Normal training. Already several teachers, who had made experiments of their own, which had taught them the need of this special instruction, have engaged themselves as Madame Kriege's pupils; and the spread of the demand for Kindergartners will, I think, keep her Normal class always full. I cannot but hope that the time may come when the Normal schools of all our States may be endowed with a professorship of Kindergarten culture adequately filled.

Omitting my own preface to my first edition, I retain as explanation of the origin of the letters on moral culture, which make the last part of the "Guide," and give it its greatest value to mothers, Mrs. Mann's

"I have been urged to publish these letters, written twenty years ago, as an appendix to a Kindergarten Guide, because the school herein described was a groping attempt at something of the same kind, and had left very pleasant memories in the hearts of the children referred to—now no longer children, but some of them men and women nobly and beautifully acting their parts on earth as parents; and others,—having died martyrs' deaths for human freedom in the desolating war that now ravages our beloved country,—angels in heaven.

"If an inborn love of children and of school-keeping are qualifications for judging of the best means of educating them, I may claim to have known something of the theory and practice best adapted to that end. My object was to put them in possession of all their faculties. Many improvements in methods, and many facilities in means, have been added to the resources of teachers since these letters were written. Physical training is felt to be of the greatest importance, in preference to the ancient mode of shutting children up many hours in close rooms, and repressing all natural and joyous life. The principle is discovered of educating by directing the activities. Hence the Kindergarten.

"Concord, Mass., 1863."

CONTENTS.

AMERICAN KINDERGARTEN.

CHAPTER I.

What is a Kindergarten? I will reply by negatives. It is not the old-fashioned infant-school. That was a narrow institution, comparatively; the object being (I do not speak of Pestalozzi's own, but that which we have had in this country and in England) to take the children of poor laborers, and keep them out of the fire and the streets, while their mothers went to their necessary labor. Very good things, indeed, in their way. Their principle of discipline was to circumvent the wills of children, in every way that would enable their teachers to keep them within bounds, and quiet. It was certainly better that they should learn to sing by rote the Creed and the "definitions" of scientific terms, and such like, than to learn the profanity and obscenity of the streets, which was the alternative. But no mother who