a better grammatical method than most, and a purer Latin style, but not a word of Greek, nor did he put into their hands the great Roman classics. Not till Luther went to the University, in his eighteenth year, did he meet with Cicero, Virgil and Livy.

On the other hand, we are told, the most zealous desire for learning was enkindled in him, and he began to feel his first inclination to the University, which he now learnt to regard as "the fountain head of all the arts and the center of all science and study."

N

PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN FRANCE.

France on the subject of public education, it is still in a very unsatisfactory condition. Few modern improvements have been introduced, and most of the old abuses are still part of the existing system. Judged by the standard of the government of Louis Phillipe, there has been a marked reaction aud visible decay ever since that reign, when there were energetic efforts made to spread education throughout the working-classes and the peasantry, and when higher education was put on a broad basis. The law of 1833 is one of the most lasting and honorable of Guizot's works, and under it and by his direction, supported by the legislature of that day, the best men were sent throughout Europe to study the systems of education, and to bring home the fruits of their researches in all the leading countries of the continent.

Saint Marc Girardin went to South Germany, and Victor Consin to Holland and North Germany. Coming back, they pointed out with characteristic clearness the reforms which were needed in the universities of France. The school question was again taken bravely in hand by Carnot, as minister of education, in 1848, but after the fatal second of December it was postponed, first under de Falloux's ultramontane ministry, and then under that of Fortoul and the imperial dynasty, only to be revived with greater energy than ever when the Liberal party once more got control of France.

Ernest Renan was one of the first and foremost of Frenchmen to endeavor to unite France and Germany by closer intellectual

alliance, and this he sought to do by pointing out the advantages of German universities over the system or want of it existing in France. Jules Simon, an author and orator of strongly marked democratic impulses, followed, with almost pathetic and sentimental appeals, in favor of free but compulsory education as the one great necessity, and did his best to secure the favorable action of the government in the improvement and increase of elementary schools. This and similar reforms were strongly urged and advocated by the leaders of the liberal press. Nefftzer and Edmond Scherer in the Temps; Ernest Bersot and Edward Laboulaye in the Journal des Debats; Charles Dollfus in the Revue Germanique; Emil de Laveleye in the Revue des Deux Mondes. They all united in waging war on the inactivity of the Government, and in demanding more money and a better use of it for public schools.

The Protestants of France were among the first to take the initiative, and in these reforms, as in so many others, showing their moral and intellectual superiority over the vast majority of Catholic France. Alsace and the Protestant parishes of Danbs showed the smallest number of uneducated inhabitants and the largest number of popular libraries, in proportion to their population.

A Lutheran pastor named Meyer established, in the poorest quarter of Paris, schools for the poor, and worked with such zeal that up to the time of the siege their good effect was plainly marked. The present leaders of liberal protestantism in science and the church, Colani and Coquerel, advocated in every way a better system of education for the people as the best way of securing their moral and material good. At least one of the ministers of the Second Empire, Victor Duruy, did his best to prepare the draughts of good laws on the subject, but he was deficient in ability and energy, so that Rouher and the empress carried their side of the question, opposing successfully compulsory education, and maintaining the ascendency of the clergy in such public schools as existed.

Why was this the result of so much agitation, and why did the plans of 1830 show only the failures of 1872? Guizot and Victor Cousin had been too ambitious to limit their labor to public schools. Duruy was too timid to maintain his own opinion

against that of the other ministers, and even Jules Simon, now that he is a minister, finds it easy to forget what he prescribed, as a deputy, as the remedy for existing evils. The majority in the nation is clearly indifferent to any reform, and yet without popular support, the mere passage of good laws will be ineffective to secure any good effect. Compulsory education, which has produced such good results in Prussia and is now on trial in the United States, is, and is likely to remain, a dead letter in Italy and Spain. The educated classes in France have never done their share in the great task of public education. The Roman Catholic Church looks upon public schools as inimical, and tolerates them only when they are in her own keeping. The democracy is more inclined to hasty and radical measures than to quiet and gradual reforms, as well as more bent on lessening the power of its opponents than on securing a firm footing for its own principles. The school question became at last a mere party question, and the result was a confusion of polemics as to elementary schools and religious instruction in them, as if this were their only purpose, and their whole existence was made to depend on its success or failure. One of the most striking causes of the inferiority of France in its late struggles was the fact of the national ignorance of all other countries and their institutions. Few Frenchmen have learned to look beyond their own borders, to use foreign experience by applying it to their own needs. The newspapers fought a good fight against the Abbé Gaume in his effort to stop the study of the classics, without knowing that the same battle had been won in Germany in 1820. The foolish novelties of Fortoul were almost an exact repetition of the reforms which Joseph the Second tried to introduce in Austria, and were followed by the same intellectual downfall. The same France which has been the victim of more revolutions than any other country in Europe is more disinclined than any of these countries to real reforms, and is afraid to shake off the chains of miserable prejudices. The scholars of the high schools learn the same exercises which Rollin taught their grandfathers, and the elementary schools still use the books written by Bossuet for the Dauphin. Late events have destroyed all illusions and created a well-founded doubt of the old self-satisfaction. The best men see the necessity of a complete revolution, but a peaceable one, and demand changes as thor

ough as those made by Prussia after the battle of Jena. One of the most learned philologists and professors of the College of France, Michel Bréal, has written a striking and manly book on the question of popular education, proposing thoroughgoing reform to cure existing evils. He speaks as one who knows both other countries and his own. He was one of Bopp's best pupils in Berlin. He knows the university, but he also knows the elementary and high schools, their organization, their methods, their aims and the books they use. A Jew by birth, he is free from any of the current church influences, and he is bold enough to speak his mind and to be unmoved by the present popular abuse of Germany. The title of his work is, "Quelques mots sur l'instruction publique en France," and the contents of it will be summarized in the following pages. Elementary instruction is of very recent introduction in France; accepted as a principle of both the republic and the empire, it became a living fact only under the law passed by Guizot in 1833, and since then it has lived as best it could.

While Holland, Sweeden, Denmark have had numerous schools for two centuries, while Frederic the First introduced public schools, and Frederic the Second made attendance in them compulsory in Prussia, France exhibited the painful contrast of an excess of culture in the higher classes, and an utter indifference to instruction in the lower. This was largely due to the prejudices of the Roman Catholic Church; the extinction of "heresy" in the sixteenth century, was also fatal to the efforts of the Huguenots to spread popular education; their aim was well shown in the address of the Parliament of Orleans, in 1500, where the Huguenots were in the majority: Levéé d'une contribution sur les bénéfices ecclesiastiques, pour raisonnablement stipendier des pedagogues et gens lettres en toutes villes et villages pour l'instruction de la pauvre jeunesse du plat pays et soient tenus les peres et meres à peine d'amende à envoyer les dits enfants à l'ecole et à ce faire soient contraints par les seigneurs et les juges ordinaires. Protestantism was the true leader of compulsory education, for every church member was bidden to read his Bible, and from simple citizens to highest magistrate, made responsible for the eternal welfare of the souls of those entrusted to his care. The Catholic clergy never forgot that public schools had their birth in 1789,

while the advocates of popular education looked on the priest as inimical, and the teacher as the representative of liberal principles.

The church established its own schools, and by attracting to them nearly a third of the pupils widened the breach, and helped to keep down the standard of public instruction by making its own far from satisfactory. In spite of many good schools in the cities and many good pupils everywhere, the schools on the average are very bad, and bad as they are, very few, or we should not find three fourths of the population of France altogether illiterate. The first remedy for existing evils is to improve the condition of the teachers. Now they are unconditionally subject to the town councils and mayors. These look on that teacher as best, who manages to keep friends with mayor, priests and fathers of families, and this can only be done by yielding to old prejudices and being ready for every political change. Under the second empire, the teachers were active electioneering agents, and they were rewarded for their success or punished for their failure in this field of duty. Gambetta sought to make them apostles of the radical republic, and as such preferred that they should teach the fathers the principles of 1789, rather than instruct the children in their A B Cs. Their material condition was bad under all circumstances, and in spite of plentiful laws on the subject. Jules Simon reported in 1870 that there were 19,423 teachers with a yearly salary of less than 700 francs, say $125, and that after five years of service, so that their daily average pay of one franc eighty centimes, say thirty cents, was less than that of custom house and police officers. Their pensions were only on an average of one in twenty, and after fifteen years' service. The lucky ones got only a maximum of 900 francs, say $180. Their own means of education were insufficient too; the normal schools were bad enough, when, in 1854, under the pretense that the pay was insufficient for well educated men, the standard was lowered still more. The instructors were taken from the gymnasia or high schools, where their main duties still lay, and from the public school teachers, who had little leisure and less zeal for these extra duties. It was even looked upon as a loss of dignity for a teacher or professor to be taken from a high school to be put in charge of a normal school. No assistance was given to the pupils to go abroad