the eastern departments, and occupying a far lower place
on the list than might otherwise have been expected. Up to the age of
two years the infants of parents too poor to watch over their offspring
in the daytime are admitted into the _creches_. In these admirable
private institutions--founded some thirty years ago by M. Marbeau--the
infants are washed, fed and tended with maternal solicitude. Between the
ages of two and six years the children are admitted into the _salles
d'asile_, or children's homes, of which there are over a hundred in
Paris. There it is first sought to develop the child's intellectual
faculties, prepare it for school, inculcate habits of cleanliness and
morality, and instruct it in the rudiments of reading and writing.
Between the ages of six and fourteen children are admitted into the
schools, and, nominally at least, go through the plan of study drawn up
by the board of primary education, and which is as follows: Reading,
writing, geography, spelling, arithmetic, compendium of sacred and
French history, linear drawing, singing, the rudiments of physics,
geometry and natural history, and calligraphy. Were this programme
carried out in its integrity, education in France would, it need hardly
be said, be considerably further advanced than it is at present. Even in
Paris, however, the material obstacles are not slight. Most of the
schools are far too cramped for space, especially in those wealthy and
crowded parts of the city between the Rue de Rivoli and the Boulevards,
for instance, where every foot of ground and every breathing-space are
worth large sums of money. In a city where the people are so closely
packed, and where a family is content to live on a flat, how is room to
be found for spacious, airy school-buildings, with a detached seat and
desk for each pupil, a large central hall and a play-ground adjoining?
Such establishments must inevitably cost immense sums of money, but
Paris, if we may judge by the annual increase in the educational
appropriations, seems determined not to let this difficulty stand in the
way of her children obtaining a good education.

A word as to the teachers. The female lay teachers are, it must be
acknowledged, very greatly inferior to the lady teachers in the United
States. It is said that in England when a man has failed at everything
else he becomes a coal-merchant. We should not dream of applying this
remark to French ladies as regards school-teaching. At the