or desks, blackboard or
maps, and through the roofs of which the rain poured on teachers and
pupils. On entering one of these schools and seeing the little fellows
in their torn blouses, their feet simply encased in great wooden sabots,
their lunch-baskets with coarse bread and a few nuts by their side, the
stranger can hardly realize that he is in that country where there is a
more even distribution of property, and where the peasantry are more
prosperous and conservative, than anywhere else. Among the efforts made
to improve things may be mentioned the frequent inspections, not only by
government inspectors, but also by gentlemen called _delegues
cantonaux,_ who are usually chosen from among the landed proprietary of
the neighborhood by the prefects.

"Paris is not France," is a remark frequently uttered by French
conservatives, and one which certainly holds good as regards education.
The department of the Seine actually expends some $6,000,000 annually on
education, which is something over 46 per cent. of the total expenditure
for all France under this head. Considering that the population of the
department of the Seine does not exceed 2,400,000, it will be seen that
the expenditure there for educational purposes is not inferior to that
of our own representative States. At the Vienna Exhibition of 1873 it
may be recollected that Paris, conjointly with Saxony and Sweden, was
awarded the diploma of honor for primary instruction. This branch of
education is absolutely gratuitous, and, in view of the experience of
other countries, is likely to remain so, in spite of the outcry that
parents able to contribute toward the education of their offspring
should be compelled to do so. Ink, paper, pens, books, models and maps
are supplied free of charge to each pupil. During 1876 not less than
330,000 books, 1,490,000 copy-books and 1,440,000 steel pens were thus
supplied in the primary schools of the capital. In Paris there are some
260,000 children of both sexes old enough to go to school. Of this
number, 104,000 get some kind of education, either at home or at the
boarding-schools, and 134,000 attend the public schools--either under
secular or clerical management--and the _salles d'asile_, of which we
shall presently speak. The great capital thus contains some 22,000
children who cannot read or write, and this will account for the fact of
the educational status of the department of the Seine being inferior to
that of many of