FRANCE.

BEFORE 1789, religious zeal, the spirit of association, the desire of living honorably in the recollection of mankind as the founder of pious or learned institutions, individual enterprise, and to some extent government endowment, had covered France with establishments of higher education, and with men consecrated to their service. This was particularly true with regard to schools for classical education, and the instruction generally of all but the poorer classes of society. In grammar schools and colleges, France was as well provided in 1789, as in 1849. In the upbreak and overthrow of government and society, which took place between 1789 and 1794, and which was, in no small measure, the result of the neglected education of the great mass of the people, these public endowments, many of which had existed for centuries, were destroyed, and these religious and lay congregations, such as the Benedictines, Jesuits, Oratorians, Doctrinaires, Lazaristes, and Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, were abolished, their property confiscated, and most of them were never again re-established. From 1791 to 1794, by various ordinances of the Convention, a system of public schools was projected, in which primary education was to be free to all at the expense of the State. Out of these ordinances sprung the first Normal School in France, and the Polytechnic School in 1794. But the promise of good primary schools was not realized, and the Normal School was abolished in the following year. In 1802 the promise was renewed in a new ordinance, but amid the din of arms, the peculiar fruits of peace could not ripen. In 1808 Napoleon organized the Imperial University, embracing under that designation the governmental control of all the educational institutions of France, primary, secondary, and superior. In one of his decrees, primary instruction (intended for the masses of society) was limited to reading, writing and arithmetic, and the legal authorities were enjoined "to watch that the teachers did not carry their instructions beyond these limits." Under the organization established by Napoleon, and with views of primary education but little expanded beyond the imperial ordinance referred to, and with even these limited views unrealized, the government continued to administer the system of public education till the Revolution of 1830. In the mean time the wants of a more generous and complete system of primary schools had been felt

throughout France, and one of the first steps of the new government was to supply this want, and most considerately and thoroughly was the work accomplished. Not only were steps taken to increase the number and efficiency of the schools already established, by additional appropriations for their support, but the Department of Public Instruction was re-organized. Normal Schools for the education of Teachers were multiplied, and made effective, and the experience of the best educated states in Europe was consulted in reference to the reconstruction of the whole system.

There is nothing in the history of modern civilization more truly sublime than the establishment of the present Law of Primary Instruction in France. As has been justly remarked by an English writer, "Few nations ever suffered more bitter humiliation than the Prussians and French mutually inflicted during the earlier years of the present century; and it was supposed that feelings of exasperation and national antipathy thus engendered by the force of circumstances, were ready, on the match being applied, to burst forth in terrible explosion. At the very time, however, when the elements of mischief were believed to be most active in the breasts of a people jealous of their honor, and peculiarly sensitive to insult, the French ministry, with the consent of the King and Chambers, send one of their ablest and wisest citizens, not to hurl defiance or demand restitution, but to take lessons in the art of training youth to knowledge and virtue, and that too in the capital of the very nation whose troops, sixteen years before, had, on a less peaceful mission, bivouacked in the streets of Paris, and planted their victorious cannon at the passages of her bridges. There are not many facts in the past history of mankind more cheering than this; not many traits of national character more magnanimous, or indicating more strikingly the progress of reason, and the coming of that time when the intercourse between nations will consist not in wars and angry protocols, but in a mutual interchange of good offices." M. Victor Cousin, one of the most profound and popular writers of the age, in one department of literature, who was sent on this peaceful mission in the summer of 1831, submitted in the course of the year to his government, a "Report on the condition of Public Instruction in Germany, and particularly in Prussia." This able document was published, and in defiance of national self-love, and the strongest national antipathies, it carried conviction throughout France. It demonstrated to the government and the people the immense superiority of all the German States, even the most insignificant duchy, over any and every department of France, in all that concerned institutions of primary and secondary education. The following extracts will indicate the conclusions to which Cousin arrives in reference to the educational wants of his own country. After pronouncing the school law of Prussia "the most comprehensive and perfect legislative measure regarding primary instruction" with which he was acquainted, he thus addresses himself to the minister:

"Without question, in the present state of things, a law concerning primary

instruction is indispensable in France; the question is, how to produce a good one, in a country where there is a total absence of all precedent and all experience in so grave a matter. The education of the people has hitherto been so neglected, so few trials have been made, or those trials have succeeded so ill, that we are entirely without those universally received notions, those predilections rooted in the habits and the mind of a nation, which are the conditions and the bases of all good legislation. I wish, then, for a law; and at the same time I dread it; for I tremble lest we should plunge into visionary and impracticable projects again, without attending to whai actually exists.

The idea of compelling parents to send their children to school is perhaps not sufficiently diffused through the nation to justify the experiment of making it law; but everybody agrees in egarding the establishment of a school in every commune as necessary. It is also willingly conceded that the maintenance of this school must rest with the commune; always provided that, in case of inabil ity through poverty, the commune shall apply to the department, and the depart ment to the state. This point may be assumed as universally admitted, and may therefore become law.

You are likewise aware that many of the councils of departments have felt the necessity of securing a supply of schoolmasters, and a inore complete education for them and have, with this view, established primary Normal Schools in their departments. Indeed, they have often shown rather prodigality than parsimony on this head. This, too is a most valuable and encouraging indication; and a law ordaining the establishment of a primary Normal School in each department, as well as a primary school in each commune, would do little more than confirm and generalize what is now actually doing in almost all parts of the country. Of course this primary Normal School must be more or less considerable according to the resources of each department.

Here we have already two most important points on which the country is almost unanimously agreed. You have also, without doubt been struck by the petitions of a number of towns, great and small, for the establishment of schools of a class rather higher than the common primary schools; such as though still inferior in classical and scientific studies to our royal and communal alleges might be more particularly adapted to give that kind of generally useful knowledge indispensable to the large portion of the population which is not intended for the learned professions, but which yet needs more extended and varied acquirements than the class of day-laborers and artisans. Such petitions are almost universal. Several municipal councils have voted considerable funds for the purpose, and have applied to us for the necessary authority, for advice and assistance. It is impossible not to regard this as the symptom of a real want, the indication of a serious deficiency in our system of public instruction. You are sufficiently acquainted with my zeal for classical and scientific studies; not only do I think that we must keep up to the plan of study prescribed in our colleg s, and particularly the philological part of that plan, but I think we ought to raise and extend it, and thus. while we maintain our incontestable superiority in the physical and mathematical sciences, endeavor to rival Germany in the solidity of our classical learning.

Let our royal colleges then, and even a great proportion of our communal colleges continue to lead the youth of France into this sanctuary; they will merit the thanks of their country. But can the whole population enter learned schools? or, indeed, is it to be wished that it should? Primary instruction with us, however, is but meager; between that and the colleges there is nothing; so that a tradesman, even in the lower ranks of the middle classes, who has the honorable wish of giving his sons a good education. has no resource but to send them to the college. Two great evils are the consequence. In general, these boys, who know that they are not destined to any very distinguished career, go through their studies in a negligent inanner; they never get beyond mediocrity; and when, at about eighteen, they go back to the habits and the business of their fathers, as there is nothing in their ordinary life to recall or to keep up their studies, a few years obliterate every trace of the little classical learning they acquired. On the other hand, these young men often contract tastes and acquaintances at college which render it difficult, nay, almost impossible, for them to return to the humble way of life to which they were born: hence a race of men restless, discontented with their position, with others, and with themselves; enemies of a state of society in which they feel themselves out of their