When the children grew to the years of discretion, she relented in her harder studies to devote herself with no less assiduity to their early instruction. Everything was made subservient to that end. Even the recreations requisite for herself, and the amusements necessary for them, the pleasure excursions away from home, all were designed to open and mature their young minds.
But in these respects Holland had but poor resources. One quickly wearies of its changeless lowlands. It can boast of no wild scenery which grows new at every gaze and invites repeated visits, and it has few places of any peculiarly instructive interest. It was this consideration that determined the princess to remove to the more picturesque and favored land of Switzerland, where her husband owned a country-house near Geneva.
Her preparations for this change of residence were nearly completed, when news reached her of the projects of the Abbé de Furstenberg for a reform in the method of public instruction.
This Abbé de Furstenberg was one of the most remarkable men of that day in Germany.
Of noble birth, he received a thorough civil and ecclesiastical education, and at the age of thirty-five found himself chief administrator, spiritual and temporal, of the principality of Münster, under the prince-bishop. His administration was attended with most marked success, and had brought the little state to an unequalled degree of prosperity, not only religious and political, but even commercial and military. His latest labor was his educational reform regarding the method of teaching. To mature this scheme, he had studied, consulted, and travelled much during seven years. When, at length, he published the result of his researches, it was received far and near with much applause, whose echoes had now reached the Princess Amelia in Holland on the eve of her departure for Switzerland. She at once indefinitely deferred this journey, and resolved to lose no time in making the acquaintance of this accomplished ecclesiastic, in order to master under his own guidance the details of this new method of instruction. For this purpose, in the May of the year 1779, she set out for Münster, intending to pay only a short visit. She remained nineteen days, and, though the greater part of the time was spent in the company of the learned abbé, she found it impossible in so short a space to take in the result of his experience. This, and probably a certain charm which his great conversational powers exercised over her, made her determine to return again, and, with the permission of her husband, remain a whole year in Münster before setting out for Switzerland. Consequently, in the same year, she took leave of her husband and her old preceptor Hemsterhuys, purposing not to return to the Hague, but to pursue her Swiss project after her year's sojourn at Münster. But this programme was never to be carried out. Any one who has ever felt the influence of our affections on our plans and schemes—how plastic they are beneath them, how readily they yield in their direction—will easily divine the cause of this. In fact, so strong had grown this intellectual friendship between the princess and the Abbé de Furstenberg that every idea of going to Switzerland yielded before it; so much so that, before the end of the year, she had purchased a house in Münster, and engaged a country-château for the summer months of every year.
All this time she had kept up a frequent correspondence with her husband and her old professor, and she had made them promise to come and spend as long a time as they could spare every summer at her country-seat.
She was yet in the unchristian portion of her life. In her conversation and communications with Hemsterhuys, she had worked out a complete scheme of natural virtue and happiness, which she embodied in a work entitled Simon; or, The Faculties of the Soul. While we must admit that this is a curious specimen of a mere human, religionless view of a virtuous and happy life, yet we cannot allow that it could have been drawn up had not some faint remembrances of early Christian teaching still lingered in the mind of the authoress; much less can we grant that it could have been realized in any life without the sustaining aid of divine grace. Even if it were practicable, its practicability would, from its very character, be necessarily limited to a few rarely gifted minds; consequently, lacking the generalizing principles of the truly Christian code, which makes a life of Christian virtue accessible to all, the lowly and the great, the rude and the wise alike, it is assuredly a failure.
She now applied herself with great assiduity to her children's education. Not content with imparting the mere rudimentary portion, she aimed at giving them a higher and more thorough course of instruction than most of our graduating colleges can boast. It was a bold task for a woman, but the order of her day at Münster shows us how little its difficulty could bend the will or weary the mind of one who could unswervingly follow the regulations it contained.
The household rose early every morning. Some hours were devoted to study before breakfast, and soon after the lessons of the day began. To these she gave six hours daily. With the exception of classic literature and German history, for which she engaged the services of the two distinguished professors, Kistermaker and Speiskman, she gave unaided all the other lessons.