Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class; and Moral Culture of Infancy.

BY Elizabeth P. Peabody; AND
BY Mary Mann. REVISED EDITION. NEW YORK: E. STEIGER. 1877.

The present volume is a revised edition of the book which under the title
Moral Culture of Infancy and Kindergarten Guide
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by J. W. Schermerhorn & Co., in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. Copyright, 1877, by E. Steiger.

Cambridge, Mass., March 1, 1869.
Since publishing the first edition of what I meant to be a Guide to those who undertake to give Kindergarten culture, I have been in Europe, and made a special study of the Kindergartens established in Hamburgh, Berlin, and Dresden, by Froebel himself, and his most distinguished scholars.
This study has more and more confirmed the conviction I derived from reading Froebel's Essay on the Education of the Human Race; viz., that no greater benefit could be conferred on our country, than the far and wide spread of Kindergartens, as an underpinning , so to say, of our noble public-school system, giving adequate moral foundation, thoroughness, and practicality to the national education.
But I also learned that no book could be written that would make an expert Kindergartner. It was the careful observations and earnest experiments of half a century, that gave to Froebel himself that profound knowledge of childhood which enabled him to formulate the principles, deduce the rules, and call forth the spirit of a genuine art of education. But though no genius and industry less than his own could have originated this art, any soundly cultured, intelligent, genial-tempered young woman, who loves children, can appreciate and practise it, if—and only if—she is trained by a living teacher engaged in the work at the moment.