and mischief, in others the mere gratification of a restless vanity, and diseased yearning for distinction, with the sacred names of liberty and patriotism-who, weary of wasting their energies in coxcombical inventions in dress or manners, actually fancy themselves entitled to lead a great nation, and to plunge millions into the miseries of political convulsion, that their names may blaze for a day in a newspaper.

The French capital is at once the earthly paradise and the earthly hell of men of enterprise and adventure. To those who can find the narrow way, and force an entrance through the strait gate, it has the fulness of worldly joy-the wealth of millionnaires, banquets of the most refined luxury, the highest honours in the state-the ministerial palace, the adulation of one part at least of the press, the hosts of servile followers, whether to the benches of opposition or the Treasury-the higher and more intellectual enjoyments of the sciences, arts, and letters, which welcome the powerful patron-all that can gratify an honourable as well as less fastidious ambition. But for the multitude who throng the broad and beaten path, and are driven through the wide gate into the realm of disappointment, of wretchedness, of blighted ambition and ungratified passion, of penury which flees to the gambling-table to relieve or utterly to beggar, and so drive the wretch to the last act of desperation-in that abyss where there is indeed weeping and gnashing of teeth, what a mass of human misery, remorse, and despair, is every year, and almost every day, accumulated! How many spirits, noble perhaps before their fall, are surrendered up to the fiercest passions! Men of letters who have wrought out a fine vein of invention and eloquence in wild ephemeral novels; journalists who, with great powers, have been crushed in the collision, and, after sacrificing all their talents and all their principles for a party, have been thrown off as no longer profitable; men in still loftier paths, who by one success, by creating one sensation, have fancied themselves a power in the state, and find themselves nothing;-when we recount all these, with the numberless victims of vanity and self-conceit, can we wonder that there should be con-stantly among these multitudes, in that realm of darkness and woe, men whose voice is still for war?'-for war with whom or in what cause they care not-war against order, against the existing state of things, war of insurrection, or foreign war, with any pretext or without it, either seizing the old reverenced name of liberty or of national dignity as the watchword of battle-pretending to be, or fancying themselves, jealous, nobly jealous, of the national honour, when they are actuated entirely by the uneasiness of their own condition-mistaking, and choosing to mistake, the discontent of political failure for the generous aspirations of patriotism. It is

this semi-barbarism of a large class which is so dangerous to the peace of France and of Europe. For the present it has been put down by the cautious good sense of the king, the weight of property, the better feeling of the more enlightened, we may perhaps add the extravagance of the war party; but who shall presume to say, where there is such a mass, a constantly accumulating mass, of inflammable substance, how soon, how dangerously, how fatally the conflagration may break out, and defy the strength of the government, and the active as well as inert resistance of the better and wiser classes of the community-of those who have all to lose, and nothing to gain in civil or foreign conflict?

The great remedy proposed by M. E. Girardin for this unparalleled condensation of presumptuous half-learning, more dangerous perhaps than ignorance, in the large cities and the capital, and the general ignorance which broods over the whole surface of the country, is Education ;-but education-we hasten to forewarn our readers (lest they should think they are but to be put off again with the practical bathos, the lamentable last page, the suckling fools and chronicling small beer' of our friend Mr. Carlyle's very eloquent Chartism')-education with a peculiar end, and one, in his opinion, singularly suited to the circumstances and advantages of the French people. M. Girardin's work comprehends, as we have said, not merely popular education, strictly so called, or as it is generally described, primary instruction, but likewise the higher and professional education which is intended for all the upper classes of society. In the case of both the upper and the lower orders, M. Girardin hopes, by his scheme of education, to give an impulse towards a better destiny-to divert now wasted or misdirected energies into the safer channels of honourable and profitable employment-to change reckless and adventurous habits for those leading to peace, respectability, and happiness-he would show, in short, that there is a vast yet unbroken field of public usefulness and private welfare which will reward its cultivators with the best and purest of all recompence, moral and social improvement, and consequently the safest and best happiness; and which indeed, if carried out to its utmost extent, might (if we could entertain any unworthy jealousy) almost alarm us with the gigantic scope of wealth and strength into which it might develop the internal resources of France. We must first, however, examine the actual state of things, and its bearing on the formation of the national mind, habits, and opinions.

And first as to the primary or strictly popular education.

The difficulties which the primary instruction in France has to encounter are of two kinds-material and moral. Some of those enumerated under the former head, we acknowledge, rather sur

prise us, if they operate to the extent asserted by M. Girardin. They illustrate, very forcibly, the want of internal communication and improvement. They arise, from the isolation of the hamlets-their distance from the commune where the school is placed; the bad condition of the old roads, which for half the year do not allow the children to go to school, particularly at the time when the inclemency of the season and the suspension of labour make their parents better able to spare them; the snows, which cover a large part (une assez grande étendue) of France for several months. To these are added the payments exacted from the parents, which are more than they can well provide; the want of expeditious methods of instruction, of schools, and schoolmasters. The actual state of France is illustrated by one or two very curious extracts from a Tableau de l'Instruction primaire,' by M. Lorain.

'Two-thirds of the communes are without regularly-established schools; a building specially set apart for holding the classes is, we may say, an exception; the master opens a room for the children, which is in general his whole house-livrant ainsi à des regards indiscrets des scènes de ménage burlesques et inconvenans. We have found masters

who gave their lessons in the open air, and these were the most pru dent; others crowded their scholars in damp barns, in stables (where the warm exhalations from the cattle étaient utilisées, au besoin, comme calorifères), in hovels with scarcely any light, in cellars or lofts.'

The moral obstacles are the apathy of the parents, who are unwilling that their children should be wiser than themselves; the opposition of the clergy in many communes, who do not see that, by assisting the cause of education, they might increase their own influence, and enforce the respect even of the irreligious; that their sacred ministry (these are the words of M. Girardin) summons them to take the lead in the intellectual emancipation of the masses, and the amelioration of their condition; that to walk with a firm step in the path of advancement (du progrès) is to follow the steps of Christ, who overthrew idolatry, abolished slavery, and on their ruins established the religion which proclaims all men to be brethren.' There is besides the indifference and parsimony of the mayors and municipal councils, and the selfishness of the landed proprietors, who think that the progress of education will diminish the number and so raise the wages of labourers; above all, the miserable and dependent position of the teachers, who ought, according to M. Girardin, to take a kind of intermediate rank between the mayor and the clergyman (curé) —but whose present character and condition confirm the opinion that it will never be a respectable profession, and must always be abandoned to the least capable-to those who embrace it in de

spair of success in any other. On the actual condition and attainments of a considerable number of schoolmasters in the provinces, we subjoin the following passage (including an extract from M. Lorain's Tableau), which is so clever and graphic that we must leave it in the original language; indeed, from its very cleverness, we must admit that it is liable to some suspicion of high colouring:

Il faut consulter les témoignages enregistrés par M. Lorain, pour se faire une idée de la misère, de l'ignorance et de l'abjection de ceux qui jusqu'ici ont été employés à répandre l'instruction parmi le peuple. Dans le Cantal et la Haute-Loire, ce sont de pauvres dévotes, saluées par les paysans du nom de béates, qui, pour faire œuvre pieuse, transmettent aux enfans le peu qu'elles savent. Les premiers souffles de l'hiver, qui nous envoient les ramoneurs, font en même temps déserter les montagnes à des instituteurs ambulans, Béarnais, Piémontais, Auvergnats d'ordinaire, qui battent la plaine à l'aventure, jusqu'à ce qu'un hameau les ait loués pour la mauvaise saison, au prix de quinze à vingt écus. Ceux qui exercent dans le lieu natal sont ordinairement des infirmes, impropres à toute autre fonction. Une revue générale de cette triste milice mettrait en ligne des légions de sourds, de boiteux, de manchots, de rachitiques. On y verrait des épileptiques et des nains. Un de ces maîtres, signalé par les rapports comme l'un des plus capables, est sans bras et écrit avec le pied.-" Le cœur se soulève, dit M. Lorain, à la lecture de ce chaos de tous les métiers, de ce répertoire de tous les vices, de ce catalogue de toutes les infirmités humaines."Ces malheureux sont si faiblement rétribués, qu'il faut les excuser de joindre souvent un métier à leurs nobles fonctions. Quelquefois la leçon est récitée au bruit du marteau, ou bien la main calleuse d'un forgeron trace une exemple d'écriture; ou bien encore, le pédagogue s'interrompt pour faire une barbe, peser du tabac, ou partager une chopine en deux verres. Quelques communes, considérant la somme de deux cents francs, demandée par la nouvelle loi, comme un impôt vexatoire, se récupèrent en imposant à l'instituteur un service public, comme de balayer l'église, chanter au lutrin, sonner les cloches, particulièrement pendant les orages, suivant une coutume dont les dangers ont été souvent signalés. D'autres clauses assez ordinairement inscrites au contrat sont d'exercer, au besoin, le métier de fossoyeur et de battre le tambour pour les annonces et les convocations. Quels sont donc ceux qui se résignent à un esclavage aussi avilissant? Des gens affamés pour la plupart, et d'une ignorance telle, qu'ils sont rarement en état d'ortographier, que les inspecteurs en out signalé plusieurs qui ne savent pas écrire, et que certains, vers les frontières, n'entendent pas même un mot de la langue nationale.'-Revue des Deux-Mondes, 15 Septembre,

1838.

This is a very curious passage. We have had much argument, both in and out of parliament, on the statistics of education; on the comparative extent to which it is carried in different countries, particularly in France and England; and some important

conclusions

conclusions have been drawn on the results of education as compared with crime in France. Now what we would wish to know, is this, whether the pupils of this worshipful company of schoolmasters, the halt, the maimed, the deaf, and the blind, are set down to the educated or uneducated score of the account?

Among the remedies proposed by M. Girardin for this acknowledged deficiency both in the amount and quality of instruction are: 1. To make the elementary instruction a state affair, as the church is at present in France-to assimilate the schoolmaster to the minister of religion; 2 and 3. To determine the objects, and to improve the present imperfect and tardy methods, of instruction; 4. To deprive, from a fixed period, every voter of his suffrage who is unable to prove that he can read and write; from the same period to give the first numbers in drawing for recruits to those who are able to read and write; 7. To establish in every commune a school for girls,-if not a school, a separate class; 8. The encouragement of the publication of useful books and elementary journals at low prices.

As to the first of these divisions-the least sum, according to M. Girardin, which a schoolmaster should receive is 750 francs (377. 10s.) per annum, which is scarcely sufficient for a priest who lives by himself, without domestic establishment, and therefore is not more than sufficient for the maintenance of the family, often large, of a schoolmaster. His other advantages (casuel) may be the occasional instruction of pupils of a higher class, which will induce him to extend the range of his own studies.' This, however, we would suggest, may possibly induce him to neglect his state charge for his wealthier class. The whole expense of this system of education throughout France is calculated at about thirtytwo millions of francs, towards a million and a half sterling, which it is proposed to include in the budget. Secondly-as to the objects of instruction. The law presented to the Chambers in 1833 divided the primary instruction into two degrees: 1st. Primary elementary instruction, moral and religious instruction, reading, writing, the elements of the French language, arithmetic, the legal system of weights and measures; 2nd. Superior primary instruction, as in the first degree, linear drawing, measuring, practical geometry, principles of the physical sciences, and natural history, singing, elements of national and foreign history and geography. M. Girardin proposes the following additions and transpositions: 1st degree. Moral and religious instruction, the art of reading and writing correctly, singing, arithmetic, and legal system of weights and measures; 2nd degree-Writing from dictation, analysis, the art of expressing with facility, book-keeping, linear drawing, principles of mensuration and practical geometry, first

principles