thing similar, as far as the difference in the circumstances of the two nations will admit, instead of engaging in new experiments? The authors of our mechanic institutions may assure themselves that their project never will answer the end proposed, so well as if the public had access, without expense or trouble, as in this country, to sources of instruction provided steadily by the State. So long as we have a succession of enthusiasts to stimulate the thing, it may continue for a time to deceive a certain part of the people with signs of vigour; but in reality the patient is only kept from a state of asphyxia by their bellows, and brandy, and fomentations. In the department of the Seine alone there are some hundreds of public schools for the poor of both sexes, where reading, writing, and accounts, with the elements of drawing, are taught either gratuitously, or for the merest trifle. The greater number are on the same plan as our Bell and Lancaster schools. Two hundred and ninety-four are for very young children. The following is the gross amount of each of the principal of these seminaries. Schools under maitres de pension, about Ditto d'instruction mutuelle pour les garçons Ditto, maitresses de pension Ditto, d'instruction mutuelle pour les jeunes filles Ditto, primaires d'instruction mutuelle de garçons et de filles Ditto, Chrétiennes (which receive about 1,500 children) Ditto, de tout autre enseignment qui donnent la première education aux enfans des deux sexes Besides these, there are professors of languages, writing-masters, professors of mathematics, and of every science connected with the arts, &c. &c. without number. N. B. No vacations are allowed but for a few weeks during the season of the vintage. There is no country in the world where the principle of stimulating genius by reward is made so much use of as in France. It pervades all their national establishments, down to the very humblest schools for the education of the poor; in some of which, if a boy happens to distinguish himself particularly, for his progress in learning and good conduct, he is appointed a teacher, with a fixed salary; and this, if it is not the boy's own fault, is the sure foundation of a provision for life. In the more advanced branches of learning, information is had at a rate accommodated to the most moderate means, if not gratis. To the better, and even to the highest classes, it is presented in alluring forms, Minerva relaxing of her sternness and winning you with her smiles. For instance, at the Athenée de Paris, it is a lounge for both sexes, who may, for a very moderate subscription, step in and take refreshment in chemistry, natural history, geography, anatomy, geology, Italian, English, and French literature, poetry, or in almost any other department of knowledge, or the fine arts; and besides, have the free use of an excellent library. Here, too, a conversazione may be enjoyed during the whole day in the company of some of the most eminent gens de lettres, to which strangers are as freely admissible as natives, by making merely an application to the proper authority: there is, in short, no age, sex, or condition, overlooked in the general intellectual provision. Beside a variety of gratuitous schools of drawing, where merit, as usual, is encouraged by reward, there are what are called écoles spéciales of dessin and sculpture, which embrace even the humble branches of masonry and carpentry, teaching them on mathematical principles; and so with the other mechanical arts. It would be wearisome to pursue the detail of a subject already so familiar to every body. I shall merely add, that the interests of the other sex are not less an anxious object of care and provision. Females of the lower order have academies open to them, where they are taught, gratis, every kind of handy work to fit them for earning their livelihood, and which, to the shame of our country, are too often filled by men; while women are left to starve, or are driven to the most wretched expedients to exist. At the different museums models are to be found in every useful branch of art and science, equally free of access to the whole community; and at the Jardin des Plantes, which is an university in itself, the latest improvements in gardening and farming may be had without money and without price, where there are likewise regular courses delivered in every department of natural science and rural economy. Nor should I pass over the facility of obtaining books. In the streets and outlets about Paris you are presented at every turning with a tier of book stalls, groaning under the learned load, and at extremely low prices, where the meanest sort of people are to be seen turning over title-pages, nocturnâ et diurnâ manu. These stalls I found supplied with abridgments of the most useful authors cut down to the purse, and simplified to the understanding of the most illiterate; and in general, new books can be purchased for less than one third what we pay in England, which is itself of no trifling moment towards the diffusion of knowledge, while very old books may be had for next to nothing. Not only are the most untoward defects of nature made to give way before the wisdom of national provisions for turning otherwise helpless objects into useful members of society; but by the fruits of their industry, they are soon |