PROGRESS IN FRANCE.
France has taken a very important step in emancipating education from the power of the church—completely secularizing education. Under the present law religious associations are no longer allowed, as such, to give instruction in public schools, and all schools taught by priests are to be superseded by public schools. The Ultramontanes are bitterly hostile to this law, and call it religious oppression, but it is firmly maintained. The Minister of Instruction says that in public instruction there cannot be two authorities, church and state, with equal sovereignty. There is but one sovereignty, that of the State.
Clerical studies do not now attract young men as formerly, either in America or France. The University of Paris last year had 11,000 alumni, but only thirty-five theological students. 3,786 studied for the legal profession, 3,696 for the medical, 1,767 attended to pharmacy, 928 to letters and 467 to science. There were 167 female students, 108 of them preparing for medicine, fifty-one in literary studies, seven in science and one preparing as a lawyer.
When France shall be sufficiently civilized to abolish duels and dismiss her standing army, she may have an opportunity of reaching the front rank in civilization and progress. Even at present France has many elements of the highest civilization in courtesy and refinement of manners, artistic skill, scientific progress and advancing wealth. The French might give some valuable lessons to Americans, especially in journalism. Mrs. J. C. Croly (Jennie June) in her recent address to the Women’s Press Association in Boston, gave a pungent criticism on American journalism which, in justice it must be said, is not applicable to the press generally, although the immense space given to baseball, pugilism, races, and all species of crime, by our leading journals, is disgraceful. “If the tail were large enough,” said Dundreary, “the tail would waggle the dog!” certainly the tail end of society wags its journals. Mrs. Croly said:—
“What the newspaper seems to be principally valued for, just now, is for doing individual gossiping, scolding and backbiting on a large scale, and in a way that relieves the individual from responsibility. The old women of the past have been royally revenged for all the sneers and slights put upon their spectacled talks, and tea parties; for back-door tittle-tattle of the meanest, most reckless sort, has been made a business, has become the staple of some journals. That people read such stuff does not seem to me reason enough for printing it. Shall we not have a daily paper some time, that is at once bright, clear, pure, honest and strong; one that works upward, instead of downward; that has its hold upon the best things, and inspires us with new faith in them, and in their power to work out race redemption.”
Such criticisms do not apply to the Parisian press, which employs and pays liberally the ablest writers.
The French have at last begun the publication of cheap literature for the people. A firm in Paris “have begun the issue of what is termed the Nouvelle Bibliotheque Populaire (the New Popular Library), at ten centimes, or two cents, an issue, this to be a collection of the most remarkable works of all literature, histories voyages, romances, plays, religious and philosophical treatises, and poetry, etc. Each volume is to be complete, and is to have thirty-two pages, printed in clear text, the equivalent in its entirety to one hundred pages of an ordinary French book. These volumes are to be published one each week, at a subscription price of seven francs, or a little less than $1.40 per year.”
They propose “to give a résumé of those parts of secondary interest, and to publish in their entirety those salient passages which cannot be ignored, the works thus presented having the appearance and the interest of the originals. The reader who cannot spare the time to carefully read the original may thus in a few hours acquire a fair idea of its purpose and value. The second class will be a large number of works that are now out of print, or which can only be procured at a very high price. The third, and perhaps more popular class, will be the works of authors of all ages, of all countries, and of all schools, such as Shakespeare, Corneille, Pascal, Chateaubriand, Sophocles, Racine, Lord Byron, etc. Ten of these volumes have already been published.”
In this country, John B. Alden of New York has taken the lead in publishing valuable literature at the lowest possible prices.