middle classes, who, undistracted by society, or
amusement, or by any literary or scientific pursuits, except those
immediately bearing on their examinations, beat their better-born
competitors, who will not degrade themselves into the mere slaves of
success in the _concours_. Our other object was to obtain the best public
servants. In that we have failed. We have brought knowledge and ability
to an average; diminished the number of incompetent _employes_, and
reduced, almost to nothing, the number of distinguished ones. Continued
application to a small number of subjects, and those always the same, not
selected by the student, but imposed on him by the inflexible rule of the
establishment, without reference to his tastes or to his powers, is as
bad for the mind as the constant exercise of one set of muscles would be
for the body.

'We have a name for those who have been thus educated. They are called
"polytechnises." If you follow our example, you will increase your
second-rates, and extinguish your first-rates; and what is perhaps a more
important result, whether you consider it a good or an evil, you will
make a large stride in the direction in which you have lately made so
many--the removing the government and the administration of England from
the hands of the higher classes into those of the middle and lower ones.'

CORRESPONDENCE.

Paris, Sunday, May 14, 1854.

My dear Tocqueville,--I write to you _in meditatione fugae_. We start for
England in an hour's time. The last news that I heard of you was the day
before yesterday from Cousin. He read me your letter, which sounded to me
like that of a man in not very bad health or hopes. I trust that the
attack of which Madame de Tocqueville wrote to us has quite passed off.

Thiers, who asked very anxiously after you to-day, is earnest that you
should be present at the election on the 18th. The Academy, he said, is
very jealous. _Vous serez tres-mal vu_, if you do not come.

You are at last going seriously to work in the war. By the end of the
year you will have, military and naval, 700,000 men in arms.

I wish that they were nearer to the enemy.

Pray remember us most kindly to Madame de Tocqueville, and let us know
where you go as soon as you are decided.

Ever yours,

N.W. Senior.

St. Cyr, May 21, 1854.

I followed the advice which you were commissioned to give me, my dear
Senior. I have just been to Paris, but as I stayed there only twenty-f