Visits to various institutions of learning interested me much, among these a second visit to the Agricultural College at Grignon and the wonderful Conservatoire des Arts et M<e'>tiers, which gave me new ideas for the similar departments at Cornell, and a morning at the <E'>cole Normale, where I saw altogether the best teaching of a Latin classic that I have ever known. As I heard Professor Desjardins discussing with his class one of Cicero's letters in the light of modern monuments in the Louvre and of recent archaeological discoveries, I longed to be a boy again.
Among the statesmen whom I met at that time in France, a strong impression was made upon me by one who had played a leading part in the early days of Napoleon III, but who was at this time living in retirement, M. Drouyn de Lhuys. He had won distinction as minister of foreign affairs, but, having retired from politics, had given himself up in his old age to various good enterprises, among these, to the great Reform School at Mettray. This he urged me to visit, and, although it was at a considerable distance from Paris, I took his advice, and was much interested in it. The school seemed to me well deserving thorough study by all especially interested in the problem of crime in our own country.
There is in France a system under which, when any young man is evidently going all wrong,—squandering his patrimony and bringing his family into disgrace,—a family council can be called, with power to place the wayward youth under restraint; and here, in one part of the Mettray establishment, were rooms in which such youths were detained in accordance with the requests of family councils. It appeared that some had derived benefit from these detentions, for there were shown me one or two letters from them: one, indeed, written by a young man on the bottom of a drawer, and intended for the eye of his successor in the apartment, which was the most contrite yet manly appeal I have ever read.
Another man of great eminence whom I met in those days was Thiers. I was taken by an old admirer of his to his famous house in the Place St. Georges, and there found him, in the midst of his devotees, receiving homage.
He said but little, and that little was commonplace; but I was not especially disappointed: my opinion of him was made up long before, and time has but confirmed it. The more I have considered his doings as minister or parliamentarian, and the more I have read his works, whether his political pamphlet known as the ``History of the French Revolution,'' which did so much to arouse sterile civil struggles, or his ``History of the Consulate and of the Empire,'' which did so much to revive the Napoleonic legend, or his speeches under the constitutional monarchy of Louis Philippe, under the Republic, and under the Second Empire, which did so much to promote confusion and anarchy, the less I admire him. He seems to me eminently an architect of ruin.
It is true that when France was wallowing in the misery into which he and men like him had done so much to plunge her, he exerted himself wonderfully to accomplish her rescue; but when the history of that country during the last century shall be fairly written, his career, brilliant as it once appeared, will be admired by no thinking patriot.
I came to have far more respect for another statesman whom I then met—Duruy, the eminent historian of France and of Rome, who had labored so earnestly under the Second Empire, both as a historian and a minister of state, to develop a basis for rational liberty.
Seated next me at dinner, he made a remark which threw much light on one of the most serious faults of the French Republic. Said he, ``Monsieur, I was minister of public instruction under the Empire for seven years; since my leaving that post six years have elapsed, and in that time I have had seven successors.''
On another occasion he discoursed with me about the special difficulties of France; and as I mentioned to him that I remembered his controversy with Cardinal de Bonnechose, in which the latter tried to drive him out of office because he did not fetter scientific teaching in the University of Paris, he spoke quite freely with me. Although not at all a radical, and evidently willing to act in concert with the church as far as possible, he gave me to understand that the demands made by ecclesiastics upon every French ministry were absolutely unendurable; that France never could yield to these demands; and that, sooner or later, a great break must come between the church and modern society. His prophecy now seems nearing fulfilment.
Among the various meetings which were held in connection with the exposition was a convention of literary men for the purpose of securing better international arrangements regarding copyright. Having been elected a member of this, I had the satisfaction of hearing most interesting speeches from Victor Hugo, Tourgueneff, and Edmond About. The latter made the best speech of all, and by his exquisite wit and pleasing humor fully showed his right to the name which his enemies had given him— ``the Voltaire of the nineteenth century.''