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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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yj 30 Mr . Brougham ' s Description of Hofwyl .
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the Prince and " Princess of Wurtemberg ( the present king and queen ) . were expected in a few days to visit the place , with the design of prevailing on Mr . Fellenberg to make room for another young prince under their care . All these pupils go through the same discipline ; eat at the table with Mr . Fellenberg and his family , and
pay about £ 60 . sterling a-year for all expenses , exclusive of clothes . I ought to add , that when the troubles tiffan the Continent had reduced so many families to great distress , Mr . Fellenberg kept above a dozen of the young men for nothing during two j'eatrs . This part of the
establishment creates the principal expense , as about twenty eminent professors belong to it , whose salaries amount to between £ 2000 . and £ 3000 . a-year . On the other hand , they form a very interesting society , and render a residence in the neighbourhood alike instructive and agreeable .
The Agricultural Institution is peculiarly under Mr , Fellenberg ' s own care , and consists of about twenty pupils , more advanced in years than the former class . They are taught practically in the farm , and have likewise hours of scholastic instruction ,
and of meetings for discussion with Mr . Fellenberg . They are separately lodged and boarded at Buchsee , a chateau about a mile distant from Mr . Fellenberg ' s house . The manufactory of agricultural implements is extremely beautiful , from the neatness
and excellence of the workmanship , bilt especially from the valuable improvements in mechanism which Mr . Fellenberg has introduced . Among these may be mentioned his horsehoe , his scarifier or extirpator , his root
and straw-cutters ; and , above all , his drill , which has been highly admired by all competent judges , and , I believe , been honoured with the approbation of the Board of Agriculture in this country .
The branch of the establishment , however , which is more particularly deserving of attention , and with which all the others arc more or less connected , is the seminary for the poor .
Mr . Fellenberg having long remarked the extreme profligacy of the lowest orders in the Swiss towns , and the habits of ignorance and vice in which their children were brought up , formed
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many years ago the design of attempting their reformation , upon princi ples equally sound and benevolent . His leading doctrine was , that to make those poor people better , it was ne ^ cessary to make them move comfortable ; and that this end would be best
attained by forming in their earliest years habits of industry , which might contribute to their subsistence , and hy joining with them a greater degree of intellectual cultivation than has ever
yet been extended to the labouring classes of the community ,, or been imagined to be compatible with their humble pursuits . He began his experiments upbn a small number of children , which he has now increased
to between thirty and forty : and this may be reckoned the utmost limit upon a farm of so moderate an extent . Those children were taken from the very worst description of society ; the most degraded of the mendicant poor in Berne and other Swiss towns .
With hardly any exception , they were sunk in the vicious and idle habits of their parents , a class of dissolute vagrants , resembling the worst kind of gypsies . The complete change that has been effected in them all , is one
of the most extraordinary and affecting sights that can be imagiaed . When I saw them , there were some who had been there for several years , and had grown up towards manhoody but the reformation in almost all took
place during from one to two years , or a very little more , according as they were taken at an earlier or a more advanced age . The remark which I made is that which immediately strikes all who visit Hofwyl ;
the appearance of the children alone , their countenance and manner , impress you with a conviction of their excellent dispositions . To describe all the steps of the process by which this reformation has been effected
would be impossible , as much depends on minute circumstances * and upon the great skill and judgment of Vehril , a young man who has devoted his Fife , under Mr . Fellenberg , to the superintendence of this part of the
establishment , and to whose extraordinary virtue and ability its success is principally owing . But 1 shall endeavour to give the committee some idea of the mode of treatment parsued .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1818, page 730, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2483/page/2/
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