Infant Schools Author:David Salmon Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SAMUEL WILDERSPIN. WlLDERSPlN traversed every part of the United Kingdom again and again, delivering lee- Bio- tures on the utility of Infant Schools and help... more »ing to establish and organise such few schools where his eloquence had carried conviction ; his services to education brought him a Civil List pension ; he lived in the full blaze of publicity for more than thirty years ; he left behind him some half-dozen works in which he frequently describes his own movements and advances his own claims ; and he has been dead less than forty years; yet singularly little is known of his personal history. Even the date of his birth is not known. The year was probably 1792; the place was Horn- Youth sey, though the boy was brought up in London.1 His education could not have been extensive; when it was completed he became a clerk in a merchant's office. In religion Wilderspin was a Swedenborgian,2 andwhile still a youth he became an office-bearer in the New Jerusalem Church, Waterloo Road. By the minister, Mr. Goyder, he was introduced to James Buchanan. 1 " As I have had much experience from being brought up in London I am perfectly aware of the snares and dangers that the children of the poor are liable to fall into."—On the Importance of Educating the Infant Children of the Poor, 1823, p. 112. 2 He did not remain a Swedenborgian to the end of his life. He writes in 1845 : " I am a member of the Established Church, worship within her walls, communicate at her table, and am instructed by her ministers ".—Preface to A Manual for the Religious and Moral Instruction of Young Children. Wilderspin says : " Every reflecting mind, perhaps, has some favourite topic of thought; and mine was directed at an early period of life to the instruction of the young. Naturally fond of children, ...« less