If a youth aim yet higher, he can apply for admittance at the Collége Chaptal, where he may eventually obtain gratuitously a classical education, and at its close a university degree. From the Chaptal school—the new building devoted to which forms a conspicuous feature on the Boulevard des Batignolles—the pupil may, on passing an examination, enter either of the two higher colleges, the Central or the Polytechnic. Then, too, the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers may be looked on in the light of a magnificent annex to the schools of primary instruction. The idea of such an institution originated with the celebrated mechanician of the last century, Vaucanson, who bequeathed to the government his splendid collection of models, drawings, tools, machines and automatons. The Convention decreed the establishment of the Conservatoire, which now contains some 12,000 models in its industrial museum. Among them may be mentioned Pascal's arithmetical machine, Lavoisier's instruments, the first highway locomotive constructed by Cugniot in 1770, a lock forged by Louis XVI., clocks and watches of historic interest, and those patents which have run out by lapse of time. The machinery is set in motion at certain hours of the day, during which the public is admitted free. The library, rich in works of science, art and industry, is always open. In the evening there are gratuitous lectures delivered by men of science on such subjects as geometry, mechanics and chemistry applied to the arts, industrial and agricultural chemistry, agriculture, spinning-looms, dyeing, etc. The Conservatoire turns out the best foremen and heads of workshops to be found in Paris. It occupies the fine old building once used as the abbey of St. Martin des Champs, which has been tastefully restored in the original style, and takes up one of the sides of a handsome square laid out with flowers and fountains.
Nor must we pass over entirely unnoticed the admirable gratuitous lectures given by the Polytechnic Association—not the Polytechnic School—on such subjects as hygiene, linear drawing, French grammar, bookkeeping and geometry. These lectures are held in some twenty different buildings, so as to be within the reach of the working-classes, no matter what part of Paris they may reside in. Among the lecturers in recent years are to be found such names as those of Ferdinand de Lesseps, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Barral and Batbie.
We have thus rapidly seen what Paris does for her poor youth. The city has often been called the focus of light and the centre of intelligence. Without going quite so far as this, it must nevertheless be acknowledged that with her public schools, her splendid libraries, her museums, her natural history and art collections, and her very numerous and valuable institutions open free to all, Paris affords unusual facilities for boys, taken even from the lowest strata of society, to rise by dint of hard study, a firm will and exemplary conduct to the very highest positions.
SECONDARY EDUCATION.
In France, children of parents in easy circumstances do not go to the primary schools at all. Every man occupying a higher social position than that of a mechanic does his utmost to procure for his children an education which shall place them above what the French call "the common people." Even a small farmer, with but a few thousand dollars at his command, strives to place his son in an institution where the higher cultivation of the intellectual faculties, the dress worn, and the very bearing, shall distinguish him from one of "the people." It need hardly be said that such a system as this, so diametrically opposed to that which prevails in the United States, tends to foster somewhat of jealousy and bitterness among the lower classes. As for those who have received this higher education, they would, as a general rule, consider it derogatory to their dignity ever in after life to perform any manual labor: this they leave to the illiterate and to those who have only attended the primary schools. The result may be imagined in the case of those whose parents, having paid their eight or nine years' schooling, are unable to do anything more for their offspring when they leave college. They cannot all earn their living in a professional capacity, or in the literary field, or as government employés, or, to be brief, in one of those situations which a graduate can accept; and those who fail, insensibly and by degrees fall into the ranks of the déclassés. The common workman may occasionally and for a short period suffer privation and want, but that becomes the chronic condition of the poor graduate. He becomes a misanthrope, hates his fellow-beings and resorts to petty shifts in order to live. Gradually his sense of honor and his moral feelings get weaker and weaker, and finally disappear altogether. Then he becomes one of those men who, like the conspirators denounced by Corneille,
Si tout n'est renversé ne sauraient subsister.
These men take a prominent part in every émeute, haranguing the populace, propagating socialistic theories, and gaining a baneful influence over the uneducated and the discontented among the workingmen, thus causing that bloodshed and destruction of which Paris has so often been the scene. Probably no more vivid picture of the life of these unfortunate persons has ever been drawn than that which Jules Vallès has given us in his Réfractaires. Most eloquently does he describe the vain hopes and reveries by which these men are elated, and the poignant misery they suffer. Vallès, it will be recollected, was a Communist, a member of that revolutionary government which contained so many of these déclassés.
Far be it from us to desire to limit the higher education to the children of the rich. By all means let every man in a position to do so give his sons the benefit of the secondary education. The fittest will always survive, the weakest inevitably go to the wall. At the same time, there are certain modifications which all will admit may be introduced with advantage into the present system, and these will become apparent as we proceed.
Secondary education is imparted in the national lyceums, which are established and governed by the state, and which now exist in eighty out of the eighty-six departments; in the municipal colleges, which are established and governed by the towns; and in the private colleges, the majority of which are kept by religious fraternities.
The most celebrated of the private colleges are Arcueil and Sorèze, both of which belong to the Dominicans. The principal professors at Arcueil were, it will be recollected, taken to La Roquette in 1871, and there shot with Archbishop Darboy and the other hostages. Sorèze will not be forgotten so long as the memory of Lacordaire lives. The Fathers of the Oratory own the college of Juilly, where Berryer and Montalembert were educated. It was to this order that belonged the illustrious Massillon a century and a half ago, and Father Gratry in our own time. As for the Jesuits, their colleges are distributed over the whole of France, and are distinguished for their comfort and elegance, their spacious halls, their fine grounds and the excellent gymnasia attached thereto. Their superiority over the national lyceums leads to the fact of their being as well attended as the latter, although pupils at the Jesuits' colleges pay three times as much as at the government schools. The large college of the Jesuits in the Rue des Postes at Paris furnishes a heavy contingent to St. Cyr and the polytechnic schools. The Stanislas College, although a private institution, has its corps of professors appointed by the Minister of Public Instruction, and its pupils are privileged to take part in the general examinations of the lyceum pupils. M. John Lemoinne, the eminent writer for the Journal des Débats, was educated at the Stanislas College, all the pupils of which, it may be mentioned, are day scholars. At the Rollin College only boarders are admitted.