[2] The proposal to print and publish the Calendars had been approved by authority of the new Record Commissioners as early as January 1840. See preface to Mr. Lemons' 'Calendar' (Domestic, 1547-1580), p. viii.
[3] In Luard's sixth volume there are two facsimiles of certain coloured drawings of the more precious gems at St. Alban's, with careful descriptions of them, these and the illustrations being most probably executed by Mathew Paris himself.
Art. II. 1.—The Christian Brothers, their Origin and Work, with a sketch of the Life of their Founder, The Venerable Jean Baptiste de la Salle. By Mrs. R. F. Wilson, London, 1883.
2. La Première Année d'Instruction Morale et Civique: notions de droit et d'économie politique (Textes et Récits) pour répondre à la loi du 28 Mars 1882 sur l'enseignement primaire obligatoire: ouvrage accompagné de Résumé, de Questionnaires, de Devoirs, et d'un Lexique des mots difficiles. Par Pierre Laloi. Quatorzième Edition. Paris, 1885.
3. Report of the Committee of Council on Education (England and Wales). 1884-85.
4. Seventy-fourth Annual Report of the Incorporated National Society. 1885.
Most travellers in France will have met occasionally in Paris and in the provincial towns a school of boys walking two and two, and followed by a serious-looking superintendent of very solemn deportment. The boys are in no marked respect different from other boys, but they are orderly and well conducted. They are probably on their way to a church; and if you watch them, you will see them march in with much propriety. The superintendent is evidently not an ordinary schoolmaster; you would suppose that he is an ecclesiastic of some kind. He wears a loose black cloak, a hat with a low crown and a portentous brim, and bands such as were much worn by English clergymen till late years, and which, when strongly developed, were supposed to indicate a sympathy with Calvanistic theology. Nevertheless, the solemn-featured young man is not an ecclesiastic, neither is he a Protestant minister. He is one of the Frères Chrétiens, or Christian Brothers; and the boys whom he has under his charge are pupils in one of the Écoles Chrétiennes, or Christian Schools.
We will venture to assume, that some of our readers are not well acquainted with the story and the principles of the remarkable institution known as the Schools of the Christian Brothers, or with the life of their remarkable founder. We propose in this article to supply some information upon the subject, not only because we think that such information will be interesting in itself, but also because we believe that from the story of the work and principles of the French schools of the Christian Brothers, we may proceed without difficulty, and almost by necessary consequence, to some useful considerations with respect to English schools as now established and conducted amongst ourselves.