din, members of the Council of Instruction; the rest by the inspecteur des études, M. Bourdon; M. Cousin announcing the philosophy prize, M. Poinsot that for mathematics, M. St. M. Girardin for rhetoric. The prizemen, as their names were called over, descended from their places and approached M. Villemain, who placed a green wreath of ivy on their heads and kissed them on the temples. The prizes consisted of sets of handsomely bound books, the music playing at the announcement of each prize.

The distribution at the Institution Mourice above described, was, it will be seen, a miniature of this great academic anniversary, but there were some points of difference. At the former there were many of the clergy, and the prizes were distributed by them: at the concours neither the Archbishop nor any one of the eighty Bishops of France were present, and only very few of the clergy scattered here and there among the spectators. Again, in the former, there were prizes for religious knowledge; here, at the University, there was no notice of any thing of the kind in the long list of honours which were conferred.' -Pp. 57-63.

Here, then, we have the State University of France in her full holiday attire, displaying herself to advantage,-holding out her prizes, dressing up what she deems the true incentives to exertion, laying down what she conceives to be the highest praise, and what the highest blame. And what is that highest human praise? To advance the glory of France, to be, in one word, a good member of la jeune France. France is the beginning of the show, and France is the end of it. The tricolor is its emblem, and its arch-priest the Minister of State with his portfolio. Is this, then, the end or aim of human learning? What do we find, here, of promoting the glory of God, and present and future welfare of mankind?' Simply nothing. What do we find here of the dignity, the reality, the very identity, of learning itself, in itself and by itself? Nothing. All is France. The whole system is subservient to the prevailing idea, the popular idol of the day. With us, perhaps, Englandism is not just now so outrageous as France-worship is with our neighbours; and, therefore, an education subjected to, and dependent upon, the vicissitudes and tides of the social system,-an education under the popular minister of the day, would not, perhaps, take precisely the same form with us as with them; but it would as surely embody the leading popular notion, the uppermost delusion of the time, as French State education now embodies French State lunacy.

But

But there are worse features behind. It is a little out of order, perhaps, to trespass here on the point of the religious or irreligious character of this or that education, as an argument in its favour or against it, and we may possibly, in so doing, anticipate a little what we shall have to say further on. in this place we would merely, in pointing to the horrible atheism and sickening wickedness that pollutes the educational fountain in France, observe, not, of course, that every State education must needs be like it, but that while infidelity, as in

France, or latitudinarianism, or fanaticism, or any other ism, is uppermost in society at large, so surely will that same form of evil, whatever it may be, appear in a system of education which has no root or dependence on itself, but is entirely a reflective emanation of the government of the day,-a creature of that which, both in England and France, is now more or less the creature of the people.

Let the following extracts from Dr. Wordsworth's book, and particularly the notes by which they are supported, show the 'religious' character of French State education:

'Since the time of this visit to the college of Louis le Grand, I have made inquiries in various quarters concerning the moral character of these Parisian schools, and I regret to say that in no case has the report been a favourable one. I cannot but feel some hesitation in making the statement which I have done with respect to the morality of these great establishments, the Colleges of Paris, as what affects them not only concerns their own most important social and moral interests and duties, but also affects the University (of which they are constituent parts) and the Government, and indeed the nation at large. But in giving utterance to this judgment I am not only recording the result of private inquiries, but am echoing, and that very faintly, the language of the official report of nine Chaplains of these Colleges themselves, to their ecclesiastical superior, in the year 1830, the terms of which are so serious and fearful, that it may well be considered a matter of surprise that these Colleges should now be overflowing with the vast number of students who resort to them, indeed that they should be the accredited places of education for the youth of this great country. This fact, which one can hardly call other than a symptom of parental infatuation, can, I apprehend, be only explained from the circumstance that education in one of the Colleges is the avenue through which a young man must necessarily pass (unless he is brought up entirely under the roof of parent or guardian,) to enter upon a career of professional life. The Report of these Aumôniers will be found in the "Histoire de l'Instruction publique de M. H. de Riancey, tom. ii. p. 378;"1 to which may be added the testimony of a

1 The following are extracts from this Report:

"MY LORD,

"The Chaplains of the nine Royal Colleges have the honour to transmit to you the Report which your Lordship has desired them to furnish of the moral and religious condition of the above Colleges.

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It is, my Lord, in our collective capacity that we submit this Report to your Lordship, in compliance with your Lordship's request. Beside, we have a community of duty and of anxiety, and the opinions which we have now to express do not refer to one College more than another, nor are they of mere local or special concern. We have, then, my Lord, the honour to lay before you a picture, faintly drawn, of the deplorable state of religion in the above Colleges. We are filled with sentiments of despondency and horror which no words can express, when we reflect on the almost utter futility of our office, although we have spared neither pains nor study to render it effective.

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The youths who are committed to our charge are scarcely admitted into the Colleges before the good principles which they may have imbibed in their childhood begin to evaporate; if any of them remain faithful to their first impressions, they seek to conceal them, and when they have reached the age of fourteen or fifteen years, our efforts become wholly abortive; we lose our religious influence over them so completely, that in each College, among the united classes of mathematics,

liberal deputy and a member of the council of instruction itself, M. St. Marc Girardin: We do not make citizens any more than saints in our colleges: what do we make then? We instruct, we do not elevate: we cultivate and develop the mind, but not the heart.' After writing the above, I received to-day (Aug. 21,) a most unreserved confirmation of this unhappy character of these schools of Paris from an ecclesiastic whom I met at the house of one of the professors of the University.' '-Pp. 74–76.

And again:

Among other marks of Antichristianism in France, none perhaps are publicly more apparent than those which are presented by a view of National

philosophy, and rhetoric, out of ninety or one hundred students there are scarcely seven or eight who are communicants at Easter.

"Nor is it indifference or the force of passion which leads them to a general forgetfulness of God; it is positive infidelity. In fact, how can we expect that they should be believers in God when they see such contempt for religion, and when they listen every day of their lives to lectures of so contradictory a character, and when they find Christianity no where but at chapel, and there too an empty Christianity of bare form and technical routine?

They arrive, then, at fifteen years of age without any rule for their thoughts, and without any rein for their actions, except an exterior discipline which they abhor, and masters whom they treat as mercenaries; and at length, when the course of their studies is complete, of those who issue from the Colleges the average number of the students who have preserved their religion to the end of their career does not amount to more than one student from every college in each year. Such is the calculation which expresses our hopes of the future in the University, such the final result of our own professional labours!

"Some of us have passed our youth in these colleges, and we have seen as students there that which we now behold as functionaries; and we have never thought on our education without extreme disgust, (qu'avec une ingratitude sans bornes) and we shall never reflect on our present office without sorrow.

"We are, my Lord,

"With respect, &c.

"(Signed by the nine Chaplains of the Government Colleges.)"'

1 'I transcribe the following passage from Histoire de l'Instruction publique, par M. Riancey, ii. p. 206. Paris, 1844:

"It is difficult to represent the state of moral depravity to which the youth of France was reduced in ten years after the foundation of the University. One fact will suffice several students committed suicide in the Parisian Colleges! The most recent of these suicides has thrown great light on these awful mysteries; and notwithstanding the attempts taken to conceal it from the public, the whole of Paris resounded with the fact for several days. A government student, of fifteen years of age, quitted his college without leave; on his return he was condemned to solitary confinement for three hours. On entering the place of confinement he attempted to hang himself, but without success; after several attempts he tied his cravat to a chair and strangled himself by straining against it. The same day his comrades produced his will, written by his own hand. The following is a copy of it. I bequeath my body to pedants, and my soul to the Manes of Voltaire and J. J. Rousseau, who have taught me to despise the vain superstitions of this world. I have always acknowledged a Supreme Being, and my religion has ever been the Religion of Nature.' This will was immediately circulated among the Colleges of Paris. Copies were eagerly made of it and circulated; and the students joined in admiration of this appalling crime, as if it were an act of the most heroic devotion. Un pareil récit,' adds M. H. de Riancey, en dit plus que toutes les réflexions. Il fallait arriver au dix-neuvième siècle et l'Université Impériale pour voir ce forfait inoui jusque-là, le suicide de l'enfance.'

* Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de l'Instruction publique,' iii. p.109. 1818.

Education. M. Gaume cites particularly those demonstrations which have recently taken place in one of the first, if not the very first, Academical Institution of the country, the Collège de France at Paris. There, Professors appointed and salaried by the State have had the blasphemous temerity to announce publicly ex cathedrâ to their hearers, that the Christian dispensation is but one link in the chain of Divine revelations to man! that it has now served its purpose, AND IS SOON TO BE SUPERSEDED by a new publication of the Divine will, of which every man may be the recipient by his own independent act.

Other professors of the College de France have as publicly declared to their young scholars, that they have seen with their own eyes a new Prophet, whom God has sent into the world to regenerate it! And these professors have appealed to their hearers whether they, too, have not seen this prophet; and above sixty of them at a time have replied, in a public lecture-room," Oui, nous le jurons, Yes, we swear that we have seen him!" and this dreadful blasphemy has been allowed by the Minister of Instruction and his Council to be broached by national teachers, in the great College of the capital, without any interference or remonstrance!'

And the general result of Dr. Wordsworth's experience is summed up by him, in a manner that must rather shock the admirers (if he has any) of Mr. Joseph Kay, as follows:

It is not the object of this journal to refer by any direct application or parallel to the warnings which this state of things reads to us in England, but they are too striking and too numerous not to excite the most profound sentiments of gratitude and apprehension in the mind of every Englishman who contemplates with seriousness the condition of public affairs with respect to Education and the Church, first in this country, and then in his own. One of the greatest blessings which it seems to have pleased Divine Providence to confer upon England is, that it has placed before her for her warning the example of France.'

So much, then, for State education in France; of the religious character and effects of which let it here, once for all, be observed-1. That it does not profess to omit religious education, on the contrary, it expressly provides for it. 2. That' the provision which it does make for religious instruction is precisely that which Mr. Joseph Kay would recommend for adoption herc. 3. That what Mr. Kay so recommends is precisely the great 'plan' of Dr. Hook. 4. That the result of this provision is the awful state of things above described. But we are anticipating. The point for which we are now referring to French education is its State character; the evils arising from the identification of the professor and schoolmaster with the Government.

This provision, as we have already quoted from Mr. Kay, is as follows-The 'Normal Schools admit members of all religions. All dogmatical instruction is ' avoided in the great lessons; and the pupils receive this instruction, at times set apart for it, from ministers of their own Church.' The primary schools, it may be observed, are, in the religious point, upon a different footing. There are Roman Catholic Schools under Roman Catholic masters, and Protestant under Protestant. But it is the upper schools where the mixture prevails, and it is to the upper schools also that Dr. Wordsworth's descriptions apply.

It is not simply that the Minister has a system of machinery in his hands which no Englishman would wish to see entrusted to any minister whatever; but that the whole spirit of the national education becomes infected with a political pestilence. Boys get up revolutions ;-a barring out of an obnoxious usher, or a glorification of an acceptable one, becomes a rebellion, a state offence, -into which Secretaries of State think it necessary, and not without reason, to inquire. All the turbid tide of the political world, with its ebbs and its flows, its pollutions and its violences, is let loose, in a greater or less degree, throughout the whole educational system of the country.

Nor is Germany at all a more hopeful precedent. We have not space to go into such full details of the educational system in Prussia and Austria, as we have done in that of France; but a few extracts from Mr. Kay's book, and from the ephemeral publication placed last on our list, will suffice to show that here also the education is strictly in the hands of the government, and with pretty much the same results.

Each of the ten provinces of Prussia,' says Mr. Kay, 'is subdivided into departments, each of the departments into cantons, and each of the cantons into communes. Each department in Prussia, as in France, has a council, presided over by a préfet, which direct many of the internal affairs of the department. In the country communes, where there are several schools and institutions of primary instruction, the magistrates form above the particular committees of each school, a higher committee, which has the surveillance of all the communal schools. Every commune is obliged by law to support at least one primary school, and the priest or clergyman of the commune is ex-officio inspector of this school, and is member of a communal committee of administration,which is composed of some of the principal inhabitants of the commune.

....

'Besides this communal inspection, there is another inspector, who resides at the chief town of the canton, who inspects all the schools of the canton, and corresponds with the communal committees and inspectors. This cantonal inspector also is generally an ecclesiastic.

The education of the department is presided over by a special councillor, who is appointed by the Minister of Public Instruction, and is an ex-officio member of the council which directs the internal affairs of the department. This officer also inspects the schools of the department, directs and encourages the efforts of the local inspectors, and of the schoolmasters, receives reports of the progress of education from the local inspectors, and reports to the provincial consistories and to the Minister of Public Instruction.

'In Prussia, therefore, as in France and Switzerland, the system is one of centralization, aided by local efforts.'-Kay's Education of the Poor in England and Europe, pp. 79, 80.

This education is strictly compulsory. Parents and schoolmasters are required to see that the children attend the schools regularly.'

Now, the whole of this system, as in France, is in connexion with the Universities, and both the superior and the 'primary'