; but those who were so
unanimous in rejecting, were extremely discordant in adopting, and their
own disputes and indecision might have convinced them of their
presumption in condemning what they now found it so difficult to excel.
Some decided in favour of public schools, after the example of Sparta--
this was objected to by others, because, said they, if you have public
schools you must have edifices, and governors, and professors, who will,
to a certainty, be aristocrats, or become so; and, in short, this will
only be a revival of the colleges of the old government--A third party
proposed private seminaries, or that people might be at liberty to
educate their children in the way they thought best; but this, it was
declared, would have a still greater tendency to aristocracy; for the
rich, being better able to pay than the poor, would engross all the
learning to themselves. The Jacobins were of opinion, that there should
be no schools, either public or private, but that the children should
merely be taken to hear the debates of the Clubs, where they would
acquire all the knowledge necessary for republicans; and a few spirits of
a yet sublimer cast were adverse both to schools or clubs, and
recommended, that the rising generation should "study the great book of
Nature alone." It is, however, at length concluded, that there shall be
a certain number of public establishments, and that people shall even be
allowed to have their children instructed at home, under the inspection
of the constituted authorities, who are to prevent the instillation of
aristocratic principles.*

* We may judge of the competency of many of these people to be
official censors of education by the following specimens from a
report of Gregoire's. Since the rage for destruction has a little
subsided, circular letters have been sent to the administrators of
the departments, districts, &c. enquiring what antiquities, or other
objects of curiosity, remain in their neighbourhood.--"From one,
(says Gregoire,) we are informed, that they are possessed of nothing
in this way except four vases, which, as they have been told, are of
porphyry. From a second we learn, that, not having either forge or
manufactory in the neighbourhood, no monument of the arts is to be
found there: and a third announces, that the completion of its
library cataloges has been retarded, because the person employed at