I will not deny that a boy from eleven to fifteen years readily overlooks in those who occupy an almost paternal relation to him faults which would be immediately noted by the unclouded eyes of a critical observer; but I consider myself justified in describing what I saw in my youth exactly as it impressed itself on my memory.  I have never perceived the smallest flaw or even a trait or act worthy of censure in either Barop, Middendorf, or Langethal.  Finally, I may say that, after having learned in later years from abundant data willingly placed at my disposal by Johannes Barop, our teacher’s son and the present master of the institute, the most minute details concerning their character and work, none of these images have sustained any material injury.

In Friedrich Froebel, the real founder of the institute, who repeatedly lived among us for months, I have learned to know from his own works and the comprehensive amount of literature devoted to him, a really talented idealist, who on the one hand cannot be absolved from an amazing contempt for or indifference to the material demands of life, and on the other possessed a certain artless selfishness which gave him courage, whenever he wished to promote objects undoubtedly pure and noble, to deal arbitrarily with other lives, even where it could hardly redound to their advantage.  I shall have more to say of him later.

The source of Middendorf’s greatness in the sphere where life and his own choice had placed him may even be imputed to him as a fault.  He, the most enthusiastic of all Froebel’s disciples, remained to his life’s end a lovable child, in whom the powers of a rich poetic soul surpassed those of the thoughtful, well-trained mind.  He would have been ill-adapted for any practical position, but no one could be better suited to enter into the soul-life of young human beings, cherish and ennoble them.

A deeper insight into the lives of Barop and Langethal taught me to prize these men more and more.

They have all rested under the sod for decades, and though their institute, to which I owe so much, has remained dear and precious, and the years I spent in the pleasant Thuringian mountain valley are numbered among the fairest in my life, I must renounce making proselytes for the Keilhau Institute, because, when I saw its present head for the last time, as a very young man, I heard from him, to my sincere regret, that, since the introduction of the law of military service, he found himself compelled to make the course of study at Rudolstadt conform to the system of teaching in a Realschule.—­[School in which the arts and sciences as well as the languages are taught.-TR.]—­He was forced to do so in order to give his graduates the certificate for the one year’s military service.

The classics, formerly held in such high esteem beneath its roof, must now rank below the sciences and modern languages, which are regarded as most important.  But love for Germany and the development of German character, which Froebel made the foundation of his method of education, are too deeply rooted there ever to be extirpated.  Both are as zealously fostered in Keilhau now as in former years.