may have stood us in good stead. We would, however, add that a faithful
translation is not a verbal translation. The translator should rather
strive to write each sentence as the author would have written it in
English.

Froebel's opinions, character, and work grow so directly out of his
life, that we feel the best of his writing that a student of the
Kindergarten system could begin with is the important autobiographical
"Letter to the Duke of Meiningen," written in the year 1827, but never
completed, and in all probability never sent to the sovereign whose name
it bears. That this is the course Froebel would himself have preferred
will, we think, become quickly apparent to the reader. Besides, in the
boyhood and the earliest experiences of Froebel's life, we find the
sources of his whole educational system. That other children might be
better understood than he was, that other children might have the means
to live the true child-life that was denied to himself, and that by
their powers being directed into the right channels, these children
might become a blessing to themselves and to others, was undoubtedly in
great part the motive which induced Froebel to describe so fully all the
circumstances of his peculiar childhood. We should undoubtedly have a
clearer comprehension of many a great reformer if he had taken the
trouble to write out at length the impressions of his life's dawn, as
Froebel has done. In Froebel's particular case, moreover, it is evident
that although his account of himself is unfinished, we fortunately
possess all that is most important for the understanding of the origin
of the Kindergarten system. After the "Letter to the Duke of Meiningen,"
we have placed the shorter account of his life which Froebel included in
a letter to the philosopher Krause. A sketch of Barop's, which varies
the point of view by regarding the whole movement more in its outer
aspect than even Froebel himself is able to do, seemed to us also