When Friedrich Froebel came back from Berlin, the idea of an institution for the education of little children had fully taken shape in his mind.  I took rooms for him in the neighbouring Blankenburg.[142] Long did he rack his brains for a suitable name for his new scheme.  Middendorff and I were one day walking to Blankenburg with him over the Steiger Pass.  He kept on repeating, “Oh, if I could only think of a suitable name for my youngest born!” Blankenburg lay at our feet, and he walked moodily towards it.  Suddenly he stood still as if fettered fast to the spot, and his eyes assumed a wonderful, almost refulgent, brilliancy.  Then he shouted to the mountains so that it echoed to the four winds of heaven, “Eureka! I have it!  KINDERGARTEN shall be the name of the new Institution!”

Thus wrote Barop in or about the year 1862, after he had seen all his friends pass away, and had himself become prosperous and the recipient of many honours.  The University of Jena made him a doctor, and the Prince of Rudolstadt created him his Minister of Education.  Froebel slept in Liebenstein, and Middendorff at the foot of the Kirschberg in Keilhau.  They sowed and reaped not; and yet to possess the privilege of sowing, was it not equivalent in itself to reaping a very great reward?  In any event, it is delightful to remember that Froebel, in the April of 1852, the year in which he died (June 21st), received public honours at the hands of the general congress of teachers held in Gotha.  When he appeared that large assembly rose to greet him as one man; and Middendorff, too, who was inseparable from Froebel, so that when one appeared the other was not far off, had before his death (in 1853) the joy of hearing a similar congress at Salzungen declare the system of Froebel to be of world-wide importance, and to merit on that account their especial consideration and their most earnest examination.

A few words on Middendorff, culled from Lange’s account, may be serviceable.  Middendorff was to Froebel as Aaron was to Moses.  Froebel, in truth, was “slow of speech and of a slow tongue” (Exod. iv. 10), and Middendorff was “his spokesman unto the people” (v. 16).  It was the latter’s clearness and readiness of speech which won adherents for Froebel amongst people who neither knew him nor could understand him.  In 1849 Middendorff had immense success in Hamburg; but when Froebel came, later on, to occupy the ground thus conquered beforehand, he had to contend against much opposition, for every one missed the easy eloquence of Middendorff, which had been so convincing.  Dr. Wichard Lange came to know Froebel when the latter visited Hamburg in the winter of 1849-50.  At this time he spent almost every afternoon and evening with him, and held the post of editor of Froebel’s Weekly Journal.  Even after this close association with Froebel, he found himself unable thoroughly to go with the schemes for the education of little children, the Kindergarten,