To obtain the degree of doctor of medicine (M. D.), the candidate must be both bachelor and master of arts (bachelier ès lettres et ès sciences), and must have taken out sixteen inscriptions*, for a period of four years. Each inscription costs 50 francs, and gives admission, during three months, to all the lectures of the faculty.

There are five examinations in all the branches of medicine; and the student, after having passed through these, writes a thesis in Latin or French on any medical subject he pleases, which he defends publicly before three professors, and two fellows. If the candidate wishes to practise surgery, he is obliged, in order to obtain his degree, to go through the same forms as the doctors of medicine.

POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL.

This school owes its foundation to a decree of the Convention of the 11th March, 1794, in which it is called the Central School. It was not till the 1st of September, 1795, that it received its present name of the Polytechnic school.

This institution was designed to diffuse the knowledge of mathematical, physical, and chemical science through France, and to train up artillery men and engineers for the bridge, road, mining, navy, and other departments.

Students are admitted from the age of sixteen to twenty, after having passed the examinations which take place yearly at Paris, and in the departments. The expense is 1000 francs per annum; the scholar, on entering, provides himself with the uniform, and with the books, and other things which his studies may require.

The period of study is commonly two years, or three at the most. The students are then placed at the disposal of the Minister of the Interior, of War, or Marine, according to their wishes.

The government of this institution is entrusted to a council of improvement, a council of instruction, and a council of administration. For some time the Polytechnic School has belonged to the department of the Minister of War.

COLLEGE DE FRANCE.

The general arrangements of this institution, which was founded by Francis the First in 1529, are exactly the same as those of the Sorbonne, but the studies are more varied. The courses are public and gratuitous, and are given by twentyone professors as follows: 1. astronomy; 2. mathematics;

Entrance money.

+ Conseil de perfectionnement.

3. mathematical philosophy; 4. experimental philosophy; 5. medicine; 6. anatomy; 7. chemistry; 8. natural history; 9. law of nature and nations; 10. history and moral philosophy; 11. Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac languages; 12. the Arabic language; 13. the Turkish; 14. the Persian; 15. the Chinese and Tartar Mantchou languages and literature; 16. the Sanscrit language and literature; 17. the Greek language and literature; 18. Greek language and philosophy; 19. Latin oratory; 20. Latin poetry; 21. French literature. It is unquestionably the only establishment of the kind on so extended and liberal a scale.

The state of the secondary schools or royal colleges in France is very unsatisfactory, and the errors of injudicious management in these establishments are of a most serious nature, because they have a very extensive influence on the character and opinions of the rising generation. The first objection to the royal colleges is the aristocratic regulations of these establishments, which effectually exclude the children of the poorer, and even those of the lower and middle class; and this is especially the case since the operation of the ministerial ordonnance which withdraws the allowances (bourses entières) formerly granted by the state to indigent families of good character. It is evident to those who know the circumstances of the industrious classes in France, that a father cannot give even to one of his children a college education without very considerable sacrifices, not only as regards the positive expenses, but also the loss of time which is sustained by one individual of the family doing nothing for his subsistence till he is about eighteen years of age. This state of things, which prevents the children of the middle and lower classes from receiving the benefits of the secondary education, is doubtless a very great evil. But it is a still more serious evil, that, in the actual condition of the colleges the true friends of the poorer classes have reason to congratulate them on the exclusion of their children from these establishments. It is a fact, confirmed by general experience, that the course of study pursued at the colleges diverts the minds of young people from solid and useful knowledge, and merely gives them certain external and superficial accomplishments; it inspires the least wealthy among them with desires incompatible with their rank in society when they quit college; and thus leads, through a long series of illusive hopes, generous minds to despair, the base to degrading resources, and the vulgar to intrigue and solicitation for place. The few who are endowed with a stronger cast of mind, and who do not fall into

these errors and difficulties, nevertheless pay dearly by a sad and long experience of the world, for all the delusive anticipations which a college education had created. Indeed, it may be affirmed without exaggeration, that it costs a young man many years of experience, after leaving college, to unlearn the false notions, to shake off the prejudices, and to abandon the ridiculous pretensions which he there imbibed from his college preceptors.

The system of secondary instruction, which has continued from the eighteenth century to the present day without any essential modifications, was not unsuited to the state of society at the time of its establishment. Designed for the children of noble families, and hardly for those even of the higher class of citizens, it had no other aim than to enable a young marquis, or the son of some wealthy upstart at the age of eighteen, to cut a figure in a saloon, to pronounce a superficial judgment on works of art and literature, and to save himself from ridicule in the eyes of literary and scientific men. A course of French, Latin, and Greek, (of which last the professors often knew but little,) continued during eight years, was well adapted to the end in view; the mode of teaching not being intended to give the pupils a sound knowledge of the three languages, and to initiate them in philological studies of a more elevated kind, but to improve their powers of pleasing and making a display. Consequently, after having passed some years in fagging at what were called Latin elegancies, in making verses in the language of Virgil, and in translating a few lines from each of the great authors of antiquity, the young rhetorician might, without any striking absurdity, easily persuade himself that he had reached the summit of human knowledge, and that henceforth he had nothing to do but to seat himself majestically in his chair, and constitute himself judge without appeal on all the literary productions of his own time, just as his teachers had instructed him to decide on those of antiquity.

Such was the system of collegiate studies before the French revolution. The old political system has passed away, but this deplorable course of education still remains; and the children of the industrious classes, on quitting the primary schools, have no other means of instruction, but to attend schools where every thing appears adapted to inspire them with a contempt for useful occupations, a love of superficial acquirements, and an aversion to the duties of life. Are the rhetorical conceit, the precocious pedantry, and the pretensions to knowledge, which are observable in the generality of the students of the colleges, proper elements for the formaAPRIL-JULY, 1834.

C

tion of energetic minds suited to the demands of the present state of society? The vices of the system are less prejudicial to the children of persons of property, because, on entering the world, they are not under that indispensable necessity of being completely armed at all points against obstacles and adversities; neither do the defects of their education and character entail upon them, during their future life, the same serious consequences.

These considerations, no doubt, influenced the Chamber of Deputies, when for many successive sessions they voted a reduction in the money assigned by the state to defray the expenses of the Royal Colleges. Struck by the numerous examples which came under their immediate cognizance in the colleges of their respective departments, the Deputies believed that they acted for the best interests of poor and respectable families, when they cut off from their children the questionable benefit of the brilliant, but useless, education of the colleges. Their intentions were good and patriotic; and blame can only attach to the means by which they sought to realize them. Being for the most part landholders and merchants, unacquainted with the important question of secondary instruction, and having no information upon that subject but experience of the lamentable results witnessed in their provinces, it never occurred to them that the evil lay in the aristocratic and antiquated system of the colleges, and not in the facility with which the more intelligent children of the poorer classes were admitted into those establishments.

The honesty of their intentions, in order to have produced good results, ought to have been directed by the wisdom of men who had made education a special study. But it was the æra of the Restoration, when the ignorant loyalty of the greater part of the deputies forwarded the aristocratic views of the government, and its secret project of re-establishing in France the dominion of castes.

It was in this condition that the secondary schools were bequeathed by the Restoration to the present period of reforms.

The state in which the Empire and the Restoration left the elementary schools of France was scarcely less deplorable. This carelessness is the more blameable, because the defects of the elementary schools were more generally felt, and the means of improvement were more easy to discover and to put in practice. The Empire with its passion for conquest, and the Restoration with its retrograde tendency, entirely neglected this part of social life. In place of the reforms promised by

the Constituent Assembly and the Convention, both of which bodies had desired to see a school established in each commune, and instructors enjoying an honourable and lucrative situation, the revolution of July found three-fourths of the French communes without schools, and the rest with ignorant teachers. Of these teachers only a small number had been trained in the five or six normal schools then existing, and the whole body was condemned to a low and servile condition, uniting, in order to gain a subsistence, the employments of beadle, public crier, &c., &c., and bringing discredit upon elementary instruction among a country population too much disposed to judge of the work by the workman, and the importance of the function by the person and rank of the functionary.

In the face of this multitude of deep-rooted abuses, the task of the revolution of July was difficult, but it was also great and noble. It was nothing less than to infuse into the three sapless branches of education to which we have alluded, the healthful and invigorating vitality of the principles of the French revolution, enlarged and purified by the sad but useful experience of forty years of misfortune and political vacillation.

Following the example of the Convention and Constituent Assembly, the new Government of France will acknowledge that elementary education is a sacred obligation towards the citizens of every class; that this elementary education ought to be complete; that it should be both moral and intellectual; and that measures ought to be taken to open to the intelligent poor the schools of secondary and superior instruction. But differently from the Constituent Assembly, their successors must make no promises without being assured that they have the means of realizing them; they must proceed step by step towards the accomplishment of their full design, and, before hazarding a new experiment, they must be assured that previous measures have been fully tried, and either approved or found insufficient.

In what way has the revolution of July considered its duty with respect to public instruction, and what has it done towards fulfilling it?

The solution of this question divides itself into two periods. The first and longest dates from the commencement of the new order of things, and extends to the 11th of October, 1832. A few words will suffice to characterize it. The second, which includes but a short time, merits a serious examination in consideration of the useful reforms, already commenced by the introduction of the law on public instruction, which was discussed and adopted in the last session.