derstood significance in the higher
circles of government and society were all to be readjusted in
accordance with the ideas of the motley crowd and given new
conventional currency. In such a disorderly transition vice does not
require the mask of hypocrisy, virtue is helpless because unorganized,
and something like riot characterizes conduct. The sound and rugged
goodness of many newcomers, the habitual respectability of the
veterans, were for the moment alike inactive because not yet kneaded
into the lump they had to leaven.

There was, nevertheless, a marvelous exhibition of social power in
this heterogeneous mass; nothing of course proportionate in extent to
what had been brought forth for national defense, but still, of almost
if not entirely equal significance. Throughout the revolutionary epoch
there had been much discussion concerning reforms in education. It was
in 1794 that Monge finally succeeded in founding the great Polytechnic
School, an institution which clearly corresponded to a national
characteristic, since from that day it has strengthened the natural
bias of the French toward applied science, and tempted them to the
undue and unfortunate neglect of many important humanizing
disciplines. The Conservatory of Music and the Institute were
permanently reorganized soon after. The great collections of the
Museum of Arts and Crafts (Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers) were
begun, and permanent lecture courses were founded in connection with
the National Library, the Botanical Garden, the Medical School, and
other learned institutions. Almost immediately a philosophical
literature began to appear; pictures were painted, and the theaters
reopened with new and tolerable pieces written for the day and place.
In the very midst of war, moreover, an attempt was made to emancipate
the press. The effort was ill advised, and the results were so
deplorable for the conduct of affairs that the newspapers were in the
event more firmly muzzled than ever.

When Buonaparte had made his living arrangements, and began to look
about, he must have been stupefied by the hatred for the Convention so
generally and openly manifested on every side. The provinces had
looked upon the Revolution as accomplished. Paris was evidently in
such ill humor with the body which represented it that the republic
was to all appearance virtually undone. "Reelect two thirds of the
Convention members to the new legislature!" said the angry demagogues