The school of the Immaculate Conception, at Vaugirard, is perhaps as perfect a specimen of its kind as can be found in Europe.
At the present moment, there are upwards of six hundred and forty boys, representing the flower of the French beau monde, receiving at this institution a sound high-class education.
On his entrance, the scholar is at first put through an elementary course, out of which he is drafted into the sixth form, from which he rises to the third, and then completes his education by successive courses of classics, rhetoric, and philosophy.
Thus, to an outsider and to a passer-by in Paris, appears the work of that grand order whose aim we believe to be no less than the motto they have adopted:
Ad majorem Dei gloriam!
[SAN MARCO: A REMINISCENCE.]
In all the great cities of the Old World, the cathedral is the nucleus round which gathers the social life of the community. It is a national monument, a historical representative; it keeps in its tombs records more precious to the nation than those treasured in archives and libraries; it is identified with the city’s success or failure, and often bears visible marks of this sympathetic life in its trophies or in its ruins. Of old, the principal church of a city became the mirror of the people’s individuality; it took on the form that best expressed the people’s genius; it was an index to the national character. If this is so with other churches, it is perhaps even more strikingly true of S. Mark’s in Venice.
This unique church, the S. Sophia of the West, and the inheritrix par excellence of Byzantine treasures, is one that, to our fancy, makes a deeper impression on the stranger than S. Peter’s at Rome. To describe it technically; to speak of its uneven floor and crowded, heavy pilasters; to enumerate its columns, and analyze the color of its mosaics, is simply a desecration, besides inevitably implying an untruth. Criticism cannot be anything but an afterthought, even though genuine admiration should not be the first impression of the visitor. A spell is laid upon you at the very outset, and an indescribable feeling of reverence steals over your every sense as you tread the dusky aisles. We have always found it most satisfactory, in visiting either churches or cities, to slowly drink in the spirit of the place, rather than rush into a dissection of its detailed sights; and we are persuaded that this slow, receptive method is the only way in which to enjoy travel of any sort.