us.

Pleasure trips are getting to be quite common in France, in imitation of
the English, on a majority of the railways. The fares for these pleasure
trips are very much reduced. I noticed the walls one day covered with
advertisements of a pleasure trip to Havre and back for only seven
francs. The second and third class carriages on the French railroads are
quite comfortable, but the first are very luxurious. Trains run from
Paris to all parts of the country, at almost all hours of the day and
night.

PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS.

There is no city in the world so blessed with educational institutions
of the first class as Paris, and no government fosters the arts and
sciences to such an extent as the French government, whether under the
administration of king, president, or emperor. The government constantly
rewards discoveries, holds out prizes to students and men of genius. The
educational colleges are without number, and the lectures are free.
There is one compliment which the stranger is forced to pay the French
government--it encourages a republicanism among men of genius in
learning, the arts and sciences, if it does put its heel upon the
slightest tendency toward political republicanism.

And not Paris, or France alone, reaps the advantage of this
liberality--the whole civilized world does the same. Go into the
university region, and you will always see great numbers of foreigners
who have come to take advantage of the public institutions of Paris. The
English go there to study certain branches of medicine, which are more
skillfully treated in the French medical schools than anywhere else in
the world. Many young Americans are in Paris, at the present time,
studying physic or law.

The difference between the cost of education in England and France is
great. Three hundred dollars a year would carry a French student in good
style through the best French universities. To go through an English
college five times that sum would be necessary.

[Illustration: Palais de l'Institut.]

The _Institut de France_ lies upon the southern branch of the Seine,
just opposite the Louvre, which is north of the river. The _Institute_
is divided into five academies, and the funds which support the
institution are managed by a committee of ten members, two from an
academy, and the minister of public instruction, who presides over the
committee. The academies are--first the _Academie Francaise_; second,
the _Academie Royale de