ened many away from me, as though I were smitten with plague-spots. My beard became an object of wit; my friendly salutation, without ceremoniously taking off the hat in the streets, was called rudeness. I did not suffer myself to be put out. At some time or other the ice must be broken. I wished to see, whether one would be allowed in the nineteenth century, in a European city, to live, throwing away all humbugs, and all the prescribed notions of honor, manners, justice and respectability. So far from offending any one by an ill-habit, or from making their prejudices, or whims, or moral peculiarities a reproach, I was more complaisant towards them; I sought out men, from whom I differed as much externally as I did already in my inmost being, in order to conciliate them by goodness and kind

ness.

"I betook myself to my estate here in Flyeln; I found delight on it, in becoming known and served by my dependants. They were then half wild; they were slaves. They cringed in the most slavish manner before their master. None of them could read or write; they were lazy and indecent. To be idle, to guzzle, to fight, seemed to be their heaven. Superstition was their religion, a deadly, godless sanctimony their observance of it, and deceit and falsehood their prudence. I determined to make men out of these brutes. I caused the prisons to be improved, and a great school-house to be built; I and Amelia visited every hut; they were mere mud stalls. I commanded, under heavy punishments, the strictest purity. Whoever did not obey, was put into gaol; on the other hand, to the obedient I gave, by way of encouragement, tables, glasses, chairs, and other household furniture. Soon everything in the houses was well arranged and neat. I forbade card-playing, brandy, coffee, wrestling, cursing, and swearing,. &c., &c. Whoever failed was chastised, and those that obeyed, and for one month gave no cause for censure, I suffered to become bondservants. I gave the old pastor an annuity; chose a young, learned, and excellent clergyman, who soon entered into my plans, in place of the former: appointed a person skilled in various knowledge, and educated in Switzerland by Pestalozzi, as schoolmaster,

VOL. XI.NO. LII.

50

with a good salary; and with the help of both these perfected the reformation. I myself kept a school twice a week, composed of the larger boys and young men; Amelia took the girls; and the wife of the pastor the matrons. caused all the children to be clothed at my expense, as thou seest them now. At our expense also, Amelia changed the ill-shaped dresses of the maidens.

The school and prison worked well. The young men, at my solicitation, suffered their beards to grow. I forbade it to the slaves-only the free being allowed to wear beards; slaves must go shorn. I opened the door to freedom. Whoever, after my directions, cultivated his field the best, received it at the end of the year for a small but easily redeemed ground-rent, as his own, and therewith certain privileges. Whoever for two years was the most frugal, diligent, and skilful, obtained his freedom, his own house, an outfit in money, an honorable dress, modelled after my own, and might suffer his beard to grow. Before the end of the first year, I had occasion, nay was under obligation, to free a great many families; these had begun to improve before my arrival. They awakened the envy of some, but the strife of emulation among others, the more so, when on judgment-day I placed the freemen beside me to decide the cases of those who had erred. The assessor of the judgment was chosen by the freemen themselves from out of their own number.

I

"Whilst I was here troubling myself very little about the outward world, the world troubled itself the more about me. Quite unexpectedly there appeared one day, by ministerial command, brought about by my relations, an extraordinary commission, to inquire into the state of my health and property. They had reported me to be crazy, and that I squandered my property in the most frantic methods. The gentlemen of the commission behaved very well for several months. What report they rendered I don't know, but probably, as I forgot to put money into their hands, not the most favorable. For, without regard to my trouble or my threats of vengeance, they treated me as a lunatic, and deprived me of my possessions. An administrator of my estate was sent down, who was at the same time to

watch my conduct, and to prevent the intrusions of visitors. Fortunately, the administrator was an honest, well informed man, so that we speedily became friends. When he had looked through my accounts, the good man was astonished at my rigid economy, and was of opinion, that by means of this, and the redemption money paid by the bond-servants and slaves, I should gain more than I lost. For a long while, he assisted me in the attempt to humanize my slaves. It suggested one good thing to him, viz.: that the emancipated for the space of five years should render an account of their receipts and expenditures, in order to assure themselves that they were not growing worse or becoming more indolent. The good man, in the end, was quite enamored with our Flyeln household, since he saw that, under well-directed management, nothing was done in vain. Since the two years of my being there, the peasants of our community had distinguished themselves above the whole neighborhood, for thrift, knowledge, and respectabiliThey called us, in other places, the Moravian brethren, and even to this day, in the neighboring villages, they believe that we have adopted a new religion.

ty.

"The administrator and guardian found my notions of the world, in the main, uncommonly correct. He even went so far as to wish that people generally would return to greater simplicity and truthfulness in manners, conduct and life. But he could not stand the beard; he stuck for life and death to the cue in the neck and the powder on the hair; the Thou was quite of fensive to him, and he could not, to Amelia and me, in spite of all his efforts, bring it over his lips. Meanwhile, his report about me,-after the administration of one year, and after he had made to the government the most favorable disclosures as to my sound management of my property,-had the happy effect of restoring me to the control of my own affairs, under a condition, however, that I should render a yearly account of them. This was the doing of my relatives. They would not be persuaded that I had not lost a good deal of sound human understanding, although my former guardian at the worst had made me out only a wonderfully queer fellow. So,

on that account, and that I might give offence to no one by means of my new error, namely, my free utterance of whatever nature and reason sanctioned, I was forbidden, without special permission, from going out of the boundaries of my estate, i. e. from visiting the great European lunatic asylum, and allowed to know of it only from the newspapers. That could profit me little. "It is now five years I have dwelt here in my blessed solitude. Go out, consider my fields, and the fields of our farmers, our forests, our flocks, and our dwelling places! Thou shalt see a blooming, though before unknown, prosperity. All my slaves are free. Only a single drunkard, and another lazy rough churl, seemed to be unimproved. The drunkard starved. The other could not be corrected either by rewards or punishments. But as all Flyeln wore beards, and he and the pastor alone were clear-chinned, it wrought a most wonderful effect upon the fellow; for the pastor was moved to let his beard grow, so that the slave became the only shorn one of the lot. He couldn't endure that, and so improved himself, that he might be respected among respectable people.

"The beard of the good pastor gave great offence to the consistory. Although he proved that beard was not against the true faith; although he called to mind the holy men of both the Old and New Testament; although he showed that he, by making himself like his equals, could do more good, and that he by means of it had changed one deemed utterly irreclaimable, the beard gave offence to the consistorial body. After my pastor adduced the evidence of a physician, that the toothache, under which he had always suffered, was put a stop to by means of the beard, he was allowed to provide for his own health, and that only within bounds.

"I not only instituted courts among my free people, but gave them the right to choose an overseer or governor immediately from themselves, as they pleased. From time to time the more noted among them ate at my table, with their wives. I was their equal. Similarity of dress begat confidence, without diminishing respect. Children were required to stand up before older people, and uncover their heads, but not to uncover before their equals.

Every manifestation of deceit was ranked as a crime, no less than theft. The people judged themselves more strictly than I had formerly done. I had often to moderate their decisions. Our schools are flourishing. The apter boys learn the history of the world, a knowledge of the earth, with its countries and people, geometry, and something of architecture. In the churches we have already choral hymning and worship.

"But, dear Norbert, better that thou stayest one week with us, and see for thyself; canst thou while away a week?"

the space of the half of ten years, would have been a veritable wonder, if we did not know how prudently and surely Olivier went to work; how gradually he passed from the character of an imperious master to that of, first, a teacher, and then a father; how his peasants, moved only by the fear of the lash, had been allured and subdued by means of their rude self-respect; how he counted neither upon their thankfulness nor their understanding, nor their moral or religious feeling, but from the outset, disciplined rather than instructed them, relying chiefly upon their old established customs, and the rising generation. Thence, he and the baroness, the pastor and the school

FLYELN.

Such was the narration of Olivier. I do not conceal it, that all that he had said to me, and all I had seen in Flyeln, made a great impression upon me. I wondered at his perseverance, and his benevolent invention, but regretted that his lot was such as it

was.

But neither the persuasions of my friend, nor the seductive flattery of the requests of the baroness, were necessary to induce me to prolong my stay in this lordly oasis. Yes, I must call Flyeln an oasis, a blooming island in the waste of the surrounding country. For here, as soon as you reach the spot, if you have travelled through the sometimes sandy, and sometimes boggy lands of the vicinity, or through the pine forests, and the poor, muddy, or dinary villages, with their barracks and neglected inhabitants,—the ground seems suddenly greener, and the people more humane. Here, too, there were once barracks, but they have become neat cottages, which I visited, with Amelia, with pleasure. Here also there had been morasses, as might be learned from the long ditches and excavations, filled up with stones and covered with earth, made to draw off the water; here, too, had been slaves, who had been accustomed to tremble before the overseers and officers, but to cheat them behind their backs. Now they had the upright and bold bearing of freemen, who looked upon the Baron as an equal, but with what childlike reverence and love they clung to him and his! This transformation, within

all; thence, also, it came that the assessors of the judgment, that the overseers of the community were mostly young persons from five-and-twenty to thirty years of age; at least I saw none of the older peasants among them.

But all this does not concern us here. I will describe the success of my friend, and not the art and method by which he tamed his dependants, and made a sterile place blooming.

As Olivier exhibited his accountbooks, and showed irrefutably that, so far from having lost by the reformation, he had gained more than his deceased uncle or any of his ancestors, he said to me laughingly, "Now thou seest, Norbert, where folly is at home, whether at Flyeln or in the royal residence! While I was actually gaining I was treated as a spendthrift, and compelled every year to suffer strangers, whom they sent here to investigate my accounts, to look into the intimacies of my household."

"Wherefore hast thou not complained of this? It is an injustice—it is an outrage.'

"My complaint would be in vain. No justice, but the mere command of the cabinet, sent forth by the ministry, condemned me to this position. The matter is not easily remedied; for the ministry will take no back step by which to declare themselves to have been in fault. The annual committee of investigation would not advise it, because they would lose the delights of their annual pleasure-visit and the profit of their daily pay. That I have been confined here, in the estate of my forefathers, is the most endurable thing

about it. Now, Norbert, what thinkest thou of all this?"

"I confess, Olivier, I came with prejudice and sorrow to thee; I shall quit thee with the most pleasurable remembrances. They have everywhere given thee out as a lunatic. I do not think thou art, but I concur with thy former guardian, that thou art a wonderfully queer fellow."

Queer fellow! truly, that is the proper name for all those who do not succumb to the common-place and confusion of the age. Diogenes of Sinope was regarded as a fool; Cato the Censor was considered by the Romans a pedant; Columbus was pointed at as a crazy man in the streets of Madrid; Olavides was condemned to the Inquisition; Rousseau driven from his asylum among the Bernese; and Pestalozzi held by his countrymen as more than half a fool, because he associated with beggars and dirty children rather than with the be-powdered and be-queued world. And that I should be called a queer fellow-I, that presume only to speak, to think, and to act, naturally and intelligently-according to my right derived from Godis it not rather a reproach to you yourselves ?"

"No, Olivier, neither a reproach against the world nor against you. No one prevents thee from acting or thinking naturally or reasonably; but thou must also respect the right of others to think, to speak, and to act, according to their opinions, customs, and even prejudices, until they or their children grow wiser. All men can't be philosophers."

"Have I not paid them proper respect? Have I trespassed upon them?"

Certainly, friend, if you will allow me to say so. While thou opposest thy own customs to the general customs of the world, thou breakest the peace with those among whom thou livest, and accomplishest only half the good that thou mightest do, if indeed the half. Christ received the customs of Judea, let himself down even to Judea's prejudices, in order to work the more powerfully. What is the object of thy ludicrous address? What matters it whether we wear a stiff cue or shorn pate, a beard or a smooth chin? Thou knowest the meaning of sie in German, and of vous in French; well, I grant, it is silly to speak of a single person in

the plural number, but what harm is it, after all? Did not the old Greeks and Romans address each other in the plural number? Thou knowest the meaning of you and thou. Dost thou not, then, take the offensive part, when rejecting common innocent customs, and, without regard to former notions of civility, force Thou upon every body? Whoever fights with the world must have the world fighting with him. Canst thou wonder at it then?"

"I do by no means wonder at what I expect. But do not adduce the example of Christ, after the manner of those who conceal deceit and villainy, with a pious countenance, behind some distorted version of the Bible. The God-like One had a higher mission among his contemporaries than I have, and forbore speaking of smaller follies; but I have to do with these alone; and I will not suffer myself to be constrained to praise, excuse, or practise barbarisms. There is reason enough still among the inhabitants of earth, to permit one to make use of his own poor understanding."

66

Friend, as it appears to me, they have not even made that right questionable; but that right, by the indiscreet communication of your sentiments, especially if they are at war with existing arrangements, is likely to occasion confusion. Thou thyself, at the outset in Flyeln, played the part of a severe task-master to thy slaves, and gradually not suddenly enfranchised them, after they were prepared for freedom. Thou knowest how dangerous it is to put in the unpractised hands of children, a knife, which yet in skilful hands is a useful instrument. What wouldst thou have said, if one of thy slaves had suddenly spoken the truth to his companions concerning the fundamental principles of human nature, the barbarism and profligacy of the feudal relation, and the natural equality of men? Would not the reformer have broken up all thy projects?"

66

Certainly, Norbert; but the example does not go against me for whạt I have done. I have never spoken against the existing order, even when it was bad, though I have rendered unto God the things which were God's, and unto Cæsar the things which were Cæsar's. I have spoken only against