ng
got over, another remained, not less liable to dispute--which was, the
choice of what they were to learn. Almost every member had a favourite
article---music, physic, prophylactics, geography, geometry, astronomy,
arithmetic, natural history, and botany, were all pronounced to be
requisites in an eleemosynary system of education, specified to be
chiefly intended for the country people; but as this debate regarded only
the primary schools for children in their earliest years, and as one man
for a stipend of twelve hundred livres a year, was to do it all, a
compromise became necessary, and it has been agreed for the present, that
infants of six years shall be taught only reading, writing, gymnastics,
geometry, geography, natural philosophy, and history of all free nations,
and that of all the tyrants, the rights of man, and the patriotic songs.
--Yet, after these years of consideration, and days of debate, the
Assembly has done no more than a parish-clerk, or an old woman with a
primer, and "a twig whilom of small regard to see," would do better
without its interference.

The students of a more advanced age are still to be disposed of, and the
task of devising an institution will not be easy; because, perhaps a
Collot d'Herbois or a Duhem is not satisfied with the system which
perfectioned the genius of Montesquieu or Descartes. Change, not
improvement, is the object--whatever bears a resemblance to the past must
be proscribed; and while other people study to simplify modes of
instruction, the French legislature is intent on rendering them as
difficult and complex as possible; and at the moment they decree that the
whole country shall become learned, they make it an unfathomable science
to teach urchins of half a dozen years old their letters.

Foreigners, indeed, who judge only from the public prints, may suppose
the French far advanced towards becoming the most erudite nation in
Europe: unfortunately, all these schools, primary, and secondary, and
centrical, and divergent, and normal,* exist as yet but in the
repertories of the Convention, and perhaps may not add "a local
habitation" to their names, till the present race** shall be unfit to
reap the benefit of them.

* _Les Ecoles Normales_ were schools where masters were to be
instructed in the art of teaching. Certain deputies objected to
them, as being of feudal institution, supposing that Normale had
some reference to Normandy.

*