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Read "schools" for "institutions," and no impartial jury could give us a verdict. Our own test fails us, for schools do not always produce "Englishmen in the best sense of the word. Ubi qui post vota perierunt ? How many have been retarded by their school training, and how many have only made progress in spite of it? A nation like ours that has no national system of secondary schools to stand between its board schools and its universities is making the best blessings of civilization a matter of privilege. The word "national" does not apply either to Eton School or to Oxford University, in the same sense in which it applies to the Board and Church Schools of our primary system of education. Philanthropists may induce all School Boards to copy London, and found scholarships to carry the best boys from the lower schools to the secondary. But these are a favoured few; and the middle-class schools into which they are drafted are good or bad, according to the luck of the locality. For the masses, there is practically an infinite distance to

divide an Oxford College, or even a "public school," with its multitudinous fees and strait exclusiveness, from a city board school, with its nominal charges and indiscriminate admission of all comers. The Scotch College, which is too often a public school and a university in one unhappy combination, is by no means at an infinite distance from the Scotch peasant. It is still sufficiently democratic to be national, and simply needs to be "differentiated" in order to serve its purpose properly in the educational system. But in England, if we put ourselves in the position of a peasant's son leaving school and aspiring to higher things, we must feel that there are few facilities for him. His guidance ends in the board school; and, if he stands and sees and looks for the old paths to guide him farther, he finds their traces so indistinct that he can hardly guess whither they ever tended-was it to South Kensington or only to Dotheboys' Hall?

There is no such doubt about the public schools of the minority. They have strongly-marked features, unmistakably English, which give a sharp point to the contrast with their nearest French counterpart. The contrast applies to letter as well as to spirit. Dryasdust might discern the different genius of the French and English nations by their different ways of marking their school time. The Eton or Harrow boy goes as "the bell invites" him; the pupils of Lycée St. Louis or Charlemagne obey the tuck of drum. If this does not mean a different genius, it means at least a different history. The English public school rings the ecclesiastical bell in unconscious gratitude to its pious founders and benefactors, who were nothing if not churchmen. The French

lycée is the handiwork of a soldier, and fitly beats the martial drum. There is much crystallized history in the lycée. Napoleon's drum is by no means the only contribution which the past has made to the present in the making of it. The Revolution, the First Empire, and the irrepressible Jesuits have all left their mark here. It was Bonaparte who turned the Catholic colleges into "lyceums" in 1804, and plaited them into the network of his "University of France," in 1808. That grandiose body, which for half a century "monopolized education, in the same sense as the law courts monopolize justice, and the army monopolizes public force," was certainly of Napoleon's creating; but the general plan of his educational institutions had little originality in it. He paid a tacit compliment to the Jesuits by modelling his new lycées on their colleges, which had survived not only the exodus of their founders in 1764, but the Great Revolution of a generation later, and were little the worse for wear in the interval.

But besides the impress of priests and emperors, the lycée shows the footprints of democracy. By a kind of political irony, conservatism has guarded the results of that Revolution, which seemed to destroy all conservatism. The very Bourbons learned to preserve the substance of its changes, and forgot to restore the old landlords and the old privileges. If we wish, however, to see the influence of the Revolution on society, as well as on politics, we find it nowhere more conspicuous than at school. If an English public school is very apt to become a junior Conservative club, an average lycée will have the opposite tendency. Of course we do not need to go to France to find schoolboys who scoff at titles. The new-comer at Eton who boasted of his birth was rewarded with "one kick for your father the marquis, and another for your uncle the duke." French equality could not go farther. But there is more in a French lycée than a disregard

of titles, which seldom after all outlives school-life, either in England or elsewhere. There is a disregard of fortune. The instinctive English disrespect for a man who is as poor as a church-mouse is not entirely absent at English schools. The same boy who kicked the aristocratic newcomer would probably prefer his society to that of a plebeian new-comer out at elbows, even if he were the son of a Faraday or a Coleridge. It is indeed too probable that the threadbare person would be spared humiliation by being denied admission. But let a stranger visit a large Parisian school like Lycée Fontanes or Charlemagne, when the afternoon drum has released the boys and they are crowding to the entrance; he cannot shut his eyes to the fusion of ranks there. The most casual glance shows him the rich and the poor meeting together; and the masters will tell him there is a fusion of sects as well as of fortunes. There is perhaps only one single case in which a man's religion is known by his face; and the English spectator would soon pick out the boys of this recognisable "persuasion.' But in addition he would find Protestant, Catholic, and nondescript, armin-arm. Charlemagne and Fontanes happen to be the only two day-schools among the lycées of Paris; they have no full boarders. Pupils come to them from families in the neighbourhood, and from the boarding-houses, clerical or otherwise, which send their boys during the day for secular teaching, and withdraw them at night, to provide for their other wants. The lycée of the commoner type is itself a boarding-house; and the religious needs of the boys are supplied by Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish chaplains (aumôniers catholiques, ministres protestants et israélites), who come for the purpose at stated hours. But, so long at least as they are in the class-room, the scholars are not reminded of their religious differences. They learn no lesson of religious animosity at school, however quickly they pick it up out of

doors. The Catholics are the large majority; but the toleration is said to be nearly perfect. The Revolution seems in this case to have made a very near approach in practice to that religious equality which it has always taught in theory. It is the greater pity that when the boys become men they unlearn this school lesson. It ought to be added that the occasional complaints made about the intolerance of teachers apply chiefly to the primary teachers in the country districts, where the temptations to abuse authority are stronger than in a Parisian lycée, the teachers being inferior men, and not equally under the eye of public opinion. After every excuse is made, it will still be very singular, and not altogether satisfactory, if equality, the prime gain of 1789, should be more honoured in the lycées of Napoleon than in Guizot's grammar schools.

Look again at the boys before they have left school. How much can physiognomy and "ocular inspection " tell us of their character? Not a great deal;-perhaps nothing more than the commonplace, "Boys will be boys." But it is refreshing to verify that ancient maxim in a country where all the boys are doomed to be soldiers, and where we might therefore expect them to pass all their school days subject to bondage, from fear of the drill sergeant. On the contrary, their games are hearty without being Spartan; and neither schoolmaster nor drill sergeant may test their endurance by the lash. The Revolution venerates the human person even in the "untamed animalism" of the boy, and strictly forbids birching. Reward and not punishment is the inducement to learn. Philosophers have long debated which is the stronger motive, the fear of punishment or the hope of reward. The English as a general rule adopt the first alternative, the French the second. "Courage," said the firemen to their dying comrade, pulled too late from the ruins of the Magasin du Printemps,, "you will be

decorated," where the English consolation would have been, "You will escape dishonour." In the case of schoolboys in particular, we have good means of comparing French rewards with English punishments. There are several able teachers in Paris and all over France, who have had experience of both systems; and they declare for the French. They profess to find the French boy more willing to work, more attentive in the class-room and more subject to discipline. There is certainly no lack of keenness in competition. Boy competes with boy in the same class, and the picked pupils of one lycée compete with the picked pupils of another. Quis virtutem amplectitur ipsam Præmia si tollas? Cambridge itself does not apply this motto more confidently to education; and the doubtfully good result of ardent rivalry is said to go along with the undoubtedly good one of perfect discipline. We must accept the statement on faith; and our faith is apt to become scepticism when we look at the matter critically. We are puzzled, for example, by the unwillingness of the authorities of a school to admit strangers into the class-rooms during lesson. Every stranger who asks for this privilege in Paris must wonder at the difficulties put in his way, even when he is fortified with the all-important "autorisation " from the Rector of the Academy or the Prefect of the Seine. If he is so persevering as to gain his point, he may after all see no reason for the reluctance. But let him press the teachers to explain it, and they will in most cases confess that it was a question of discipline. If they can barely control the boys when they are alone with them, how can they do it when a stranger's presence lays the last straw? Fortunately the classes are never disturbed through any childish "taking of places" by physical locomotion; the superintendent of a lycée is not likely to allow a stranger to visit any class that is not under the tight control of its

teacher; and in Paris we may expect to find the best of teachers, and therefore the best of discipline.

Paris no doubt is not France; but in everything except morals it has probably the best of everything French. In schools as in dainties it has the first choice. Public opinion means something more powerful in Paris than it does in the provinces; it is more critical of public servants; and the eye of watchful boards and councils can scrutinize them with greater ease. It is the centre of the system of rewards as well as of all other machinery. To be called to London may not always be the highest possible promotion to the English teacher; but to be called to Paris is certainly so to the Frenchman. The Professor in a Parisian lycée has probably served many years in a provincial lycée, say at Lyons, Orleans, or Boulogne. He has the stamp of government upon him. He has suffered many things of many examiners. If he is teacher of Latin and Greek, it is probable that he became Bachelor of Letters when he was sixteen, this degree forming not the end but the beginning of a French University course, and perhaps most nearly corresponding to the matriculation of London University. Then he probably heard lectures for a year; and proceeded to pass the more difficult examination for the "licentiate-ship" in his special subject, thereby becoming qualified to serve his apprenticeship as a teacher. After three years of this apprenticeship he surmounted one more examination, the greatest trial of all, and became "Associate in Letters." All his examinations were thorough, so far as they went; and they would undoubtedly have kept him out had he been an incapable man, which is perhaps all the good that any examination can ever do. The last of his trials differed from the first chiefly in being far more minute and special; and it tried his nerves as well as his brains more severely than the rest. One part of it consisted in teaching

an imaginary class, in presence of his examiners. It was, moreover, a competitive examination; and our professor was perhaps one out of half-a-dozen "selected candidates," sifted out of a score or more. But this trial past,

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he had no more to fear. Once Associate, he was assured of an appointment "for life or for fault." He had gained the title and standing of a Professor in a government secondary school. The authoress of Villette has accustomed us to the wide continental use of the word "professor." Indeed, the schoolmasters who bear this name are the stuff out of which the university professors are made; and there are many of them, in Paris and out of it, whose lectures to their school pupils would do no discredit to any university. An Englishman wonders that so able and well-informed a body of men make so little of the nexus of cash payment, and are content with mere schoolmaster's work. But the position of a professor" is independent. He has nothing to do with the boys after leaving the lycée, unless in the way of correcting their exercises. The internal arrangements of the boarding house are managed by the warden, proctor, and bursar, if one may so translate proviseur, censeur, and économe. The professor needs care for none of these things. As soon as the drum beats, at close of the afternoon, he goes on his way home, light of heart. The ushers (répétiteurs) will make the boys prepare their lessons for his class that evening; but he himself, if his pile of exercises be not too high, may be at his ease. He may follow the devices and desires of his own heart, whether they lead him to write a learned book, in order to get a professor's chair of another kind in a university faculty, or whether they lead him to eke out his salary by private lessons, and count the days till his sixtieth birthday, when the drum will dismiss him for the last time, and his salary will become a pension.

It may seem a paradox to add that

ot only French teachers, but most Frenchmen everywhere are content with "that position in life in which Providence has placed them"; but it is a truth. The same feeling that makes Frenchmen so reluctant to emigrate makes them willing to acquiesce in the inevitable, as the Turks in Kismet, murmuring their Job-like, "Que voulezvous ? " "It can't be helped!" There is ambition everywhere; but the friction of competition seems to be less cruel than in England. There is a struggling crowd; but there is less damage to the sides and toes. When men have a good post, they are proud of it, and do not grumble that it is not better.

This feeling is conservatism. It favour of reform.

not a mere listless may even tell in M. Paul Bert, the Forster of French education, was recently asked how he explained the apparent acquiescence of his Catholic countrymen in his sweeping educational reforms, involving, as they did, the establishment of at least two startling novelties, compulsory education and secular education. He replied: "They are accepting compulsory education because they are beginning to understand the blessings of education; and they are allowing us to take the schools out of the hands of the clergy, because they are indifferent on that subject. Fortunately for us, the majority of the people are rather hypocrites than fanatics." But he added (what is more to the present point) that the average Frenchman has such a habitual respect for law that he will quietly submit to a

measure

when it is an Act, even if he had disagreed with it when it was a Bill. Englishmen are wont to thank Heaven that they are not as other men are, who pay no respect to the law of the land; but, if M. Bert's analysis of this feeling is right, it is not wholly a feeling to thank Heaven for. In his own Catholic countrymen he thinks it means partly a dread of gendarmerie, partly a genuine reverence; and the genuine reverence means

that deep regard for authority which has been dyed into the people by centuries of Church training. It is possible that our own first lessons in discipline came in the same way, through the Church. But at least we can understand that our neighbours, from having been longer under the Roman schoolmistress, have more perfectly entered into the spirit of her lessons. The same explanation, on principles of "heredity," may account for the superior tractableness of French schoolboys. The notorious helplessness of French masters in an English schoolroom is not paralleled by any corresponding weakness of English masters in France, if reports are true.

There is abundant proof, however, that the French respect for law is due to a strength and not to a weakness in the national character, namely, to the national talent for organization. It is possible for a man to be singularly skilful in making rules, and reducing all his work to system and method, while at the same time he has ideas too great for execution, and is led from time to time to break the network of his system, in a vain attempt to force these ideas into it. In the same way it is possible for a nation, that possesses great powers of organization, to fall from time to time into political confusion by attempting too much at once. If the French lack anything, it is not at least the readiness to provide machinery, or the will to give it trial; and it is on these points that we may learn from them. Their system of public instruction, with its ramifications of primary, secondary, and superior, represented by parish school, lycée, and university faculties, is a tolerably complete machine, needing, it may be, improvement, but not reconstruction. Educational reformers in France-men like Bert, Gréard, Bréal --may be said to have only one end in view; and that is to make education more democratic. The " open career" must cease to be a figure; the βίος τέλειος must be possible to