gaged in them, without counting 5,000,000 men and women engaged in skilled labour on a smaller scale or in trade, and a steam power of 500,000 horses, which may represent the work of 10,000,000 of men. Its exchanges also rose in 1861 to 5,500,000,000.'

It is on these data that M. Duruy founds the necessity of an education which shall represent and correspond to this source of the national wealth, just as the classical education represented and corresponded with the landed wealth of the country when it stood alone :

The University,' continues M. Duruy, has for a long time recognised this want of modern days; it has understood that as it held in its hands the future of the country, it ought to be like the country itself, and, like good sense, at once conservative and progressive. If it has sometimes resisted, as its glorious founder (viz., the First Consul) advised it, the little fevers of fashion, it has never rejected the additional instruction which the public wish, or the wants of the State recommended to it. Thus the so-called Enseignement Professionnel has not ceased for forty years to be the object of its meditations and its experiments.'

The author then traces the various attempts made by the Government, or by individual Lycées with the Government sanction, to introduce this kind of instruction, mentioning among other establishments the Royal Colleges of La Rochelle, where special attention is paid to teaching hydrography, and the Lycée of Le Puy, where the pupils are taught design in its application to the lace-manufacture, the staple trade of that town. But he considers that the bifurcation of 1852 drew the attention of the University from the natural and wise division of instruction to the artificial and unsound one. Yet so strong, according to him, was the want of this teaching of useful things that sixty-four out of the seventy-four Lycées took up what had been officially abandoned and taught it under various names.

We see here, by the bye, a curious instance of the degree to which subaltern institutions may act independently of the most despotic and exacting central direction, when they are all of one mind, and can practise one common evasion; the Recteurs seem to have been on the side of the Proviseurs, and the Inspecteurs on the side of the Recteurs, for the last write to the Minister, with regard to the increasing number of scholars who wish to bifurcate into this line of study, 'it is a rising tide, for which we must open a large channel.'

After admitting that the results of this movement were hitherto very barren, M. Duruy proceeds to lay down his own plan. It is this that the primary instruction (i. e., that which ends with the 7th class) should be the same for all pupils, and that upon this,

as

as upon a common basis, the two secondary instructions should rise side by side within the same school-the one classical, for the so-called liberal professions, the other special, for the callings of manufacture, trade, and agriculture. His reasons for the two being united in one building, are partly of an economic and partly of a social kind. On this subject he writes :—

'Our France has been so profoundly imbued with the Latin mind that there is a prejudice in it against practical instruction. This prejudice is not a motive for following classical studies better, but an impediment to following ordinary studies well. We ought to combat this by putting the two educations on the same footing; by making boys of different origin and different destinations live under the same discipline in an equal interchange of tastes and feelings.'

'Interchange of tastes and feelings in a Lycée !' some readers will be tempted to exclaim. But we confess we hope much from the good sense and energy of M. Duruy. At all events, let us hear out his plan. The new special education, which will last four years, and which will keep lads from about twelve to sixteen, will comprise the following matters :-Religious instruction; French language and Literature; Modern languages; History and Geography; Elementary notions of Private and Public Morality; Legislation as it concerns those engaged in Farming, Commerce, or Manufacture; Industrial and Rural Economy; Accounts and Book-keeping; Applied Mathematics; Physics, Chemistry, and Natural History, with their applications to Agriculture and to Manufactures; Linear Drawing, and the Drawing of Design and Imitation; Gymnastics and Singing.

The human mind delights in completeness, and so there is something agreeable in this rich enumeration. Mentes (as well as Aures) nostræ immensum aliquid infinitumque desiderant; but perhaps those for whom the list is intended would have been better pleased with a less redundant luxuriance. Nevertheless, we know that common sense is both conservative and progressive; and we are assured by M. Duruy that France and her University are so likewise; so let us hope that, ere long, the future farmer and tradesman of France will not only be taught what he ought to know, but that he will be taught just as much of it as he can carry away with profit. It is the Minister's own wish also; for in one of his instructions he particularly warns the teacher against making the quantity of facts conveyed the standard of this success, and quotes the wise German formula, 'Eine selbständige Verarbeitung des Stoffes,' as the one thing needful for the pupil.

The reader will have observed how much stress is laid upon Latin and Greek, and he will naturally ask whether the result

has

has been to produce great scholars. It is a question very difficult to answer, because a man may be a very great scholar, without caring to let anybody know it. But we may certainly answer, without fear of wounding anybody's sensibilities, that France has contributed very little indeed to the great progress which has been made since Bentley's time, both in the knowledge of the languages and in the knowledge of the Antiquities of Greece and Rome.

.

The best of Didot's series of Greek and Latin Classics are edited by foreigners; some that are conspicuous for great blunders, which we do not care to disinter, are the works of great Dons in the French University. The annotated editions of the Classics seldom rise above the dead pedagogic level. As for their grammars, it is a strange fact, and one very little favourable to the presumption of sound Greek scholarship in France, that although M. Dübner has for many years protested against the gross blunders and absurdities of Burnouf, his Greek grammar continues to be the authorised book for all classes. But it may check the insolence of our triumph to reflect how many schools on this side of the water yet cling to Grammars, in which the evil of a false system and much false information is still further enhanced by the unspeakable absurdity (in the case of Latin Grammars at least) of their being written in Latin. Those, at all events, who look upon Dr. Smith's excellent grammars as bold innovations, and who doubt whether the false system is not, after all, the best adapted for teaching, have no right to laugh at or to pity the conceited adversaries of M. Dübner.

We would fain hope that M. Duruy will carry his reforming zeal yet further; that he will lessen the hours of study, allow much longer and more healthy recreations, and introduce internal professors to supersede the miscalled masters of studies. There is yet one further reform to which we hope that his attention will be called, and upon which we wish to dwell more particularly, because the evil is by no means confined to France, but must necessarily exist wherever competitive examinations are unduly valued, and held as not only good where the abuses of private patronage have to be corrected, where they are, perhaps, of some occasional use, but also in their stimulating action upon schools, which is about as mischievous as can well be conceived.

Once a year there is a fierce competition between all the lycées of Paris and Versailles, and a recent regulation has made it possible for the Government schools at a distance from Paris to enter the same lists. The champions are the picked boys from each of the upper classes, the scene of the encounter is the Sorbonne, and the prizes to be competed for are in Greek prose,

Latin

Latin verse, Latin prose, French composition, history, &c. There is no viva voce examination, and each subject is decided separately and independently of the others. A large proportion of the world of Paris takes a great interest in the results, while the chiefs and the professors of the several lycées are almost more anxious than the champions whom they have sent up, that the premier prix in one or more of the subjects may fall to the lot of their establishment. Of so much importance are successes of this kind, and so powerfully are they supposed to tell upon public opinion, that the master of a private school does not forget to remind the public if any externe, or day scholar of a lycée, who boards with him, and prepares his lessons at his house, gains distinction in these trials. We remember complaining somewhat severely of the demoralising effect which this species of ambition must almost inevitably have upon the teachers, inducing them, for at least six months beforehand, to bestow an undue portion of their time and care upon the very pupils in whose case no inducement is needed (for it must be certainly much pleasanter at any time to teach a clever boy than a dull one), and, while helping those who do not absolutely want help, to neglect that far larger number who can only move if they have some one continually at hand to induce and encourage them. An intelligent Frenchman replied that this was but a part, and not the worst part, of the evil. He observed that not only were the clever pupils thus severed from the class, but that a similar operation went on in the minds of the picked boys themselves. For that when any one was selected to compete in that particular line for which he had most aptitude, his special gift, indeed, was submitted to all the appliances of forced cultivation, but the rest of his faculties and tasks were allowed to drag behind in utter neglect. This observation seems worthy of the attention of more persons than the French Council of Public Instruction; but the injury done to the average boys (who are, of course, by far the most numerous) by this exclusive training of a few, is so direct and so immediate an effect of all competitive trials, as at present conducted, that not even the warmest friend of these contrivances can shut his eyes to it. Nothing could be more unpractical and absurd than to recommend in the present day that they should be abandoned. But then, it will be said, 'as long as they continue, how can you help the public being attracted by success? If they choose to believe that the number of scholarships gained at the University is a proof that a public school is doing its duty, or that among schools of a different type, that one is most entitled to confidence which figures most conspicuously in the Middle Class Examination

lists, how are you to remove the impression?' In the simplest possible manner, by creating a sounder test, that is to say, by the establishment of examinations in which all the members of a school appear before disinterested judges. In short, by a certain kind of inspection.* Many persons will be up in arms at the bare notion of anything like interference with the independent action of our schools, whether great or small. Though they can recognise the propriety of the State defending the public from quacks in medicine, they would resent its interference with the quacks in education; not because they are ignorant that the lower part of the middle classes are being yearly robbed and cheated to an incredible extent by educational adventurers or blockheads, but they perceive the extreme difficulty of marking any limit to State interference if it once begins. But, at all events, there can be no objection to the extension of the practice which has been set on foot by the College of Preceptors with regard to commercial schools. Any such on applying to that body may obtain inspectors, who will examine all their classes, and furnish them with a certificate in accordance with the result of the examination. Now, if what this unpretending and useful body has done for the ludi minorum gentium, were done on a large scale by the universities (or why not by the Education Committee), for schools of a higher description, those who submitted to this ordeal would show that they were honestly endeavouring to educate all their pupils; and the proportion of boys above a certain standard in each class appearing in their report, would mark how far they had been successful, and would teach them to look for renown in the careful preparation of the many, and not in the speculative training of a few.

The vast increase in the numbers of the gentry, or, at all

* An inspection of this kind, under the name of conférences, exists in the French schools, but the reader will judge whether it is sufficient to check the evil tendency of the concours, by the following extract from a very recent private letter of an able and distinguished French Professor:-'Etabli jadis de la 6e inclusivement à la Philosophie pour les lettres et pour les sciences, ce concours, qui actuellement est restreint à la 4e, 3e, 2e, Rhétorique et Philosophie, a fait des prodiges en sens divers. Les premiers, poussés par le professeur (qui en cela suit soit l'intérêt de certains élèves, soit plutôt celui de son propre avancement), sont vraiment instruits et dressés au dur travail; les derniers s'annihilent. Le règlement veut que le professeur s'occupe également de tous; la gloire et l'intérêt intervenant, le règlement n'est ou ne peut être observé que dans les classes privées de concours général. J'ajouterai seulement que certains professeurs, que n'a pas encore dégoûtés l'étroitesse du règlement, la multitude de passe-droits, la pression politicoclérico-administrative, l'ingratitude des élèves et des familles, ou qui sont doués d'un tempérament de fer, d'une volonté d'acier, et d'une morale de diamant (un fort petit nombre assurément), s'occupent de tous leurs bambini ou bambinetti, mais alors la marmite cuit plus de potatoes que de chicken, et s'ils sont mariés ils risquent d'avoir plus d'enfants que d'élèves particuliers.'

events,