se views they are supported by the Republican party, while the clergy
have on their side the majority of the Senate. Whether the absence of
clerical competition would be likely to prove advantageous or not to the
secular educational establishments, we shall not attempt to say, but
certain it is that the long continuance of this bitter feud between the
two parties has been anything but conducive to the educational progress
of France.

At the age of fourteen the Parisian youth not intended for one of the
learned professions leaves school to learn a trade. Should he desire to
increase his stock of knowledge and have a taste for study, he can,
after passing an examination, enter the excellent Ecole Turgot, wherein
the programme of the primary schools is somewhat extended, without,
however, embracing the study of Latin and Greek. At the Turgot the
course comprises mathematics, linear and ornamental drawing, physics and
mechanics, chemistry, natural history, calligraphy, bookkeeping, French
language and literature, history, geography, English and German. All the
pupils are day scholars. There could probably be no better devised
programme for developing and exercising the intellectual faculties of
those who have gone through the primary schools, and it may
unhesitatingly be affirmed that for most of the pupils the training
received at the Ecole Turgot is of lifelong value.

If a youth aim yet higher, he can apply for admittance at the College
Chaptal, where he may eventually obtain gratuitously a classical
education, and at its close a university degree. From the Chaptal
school--the new building devoted to which forms a conspicuous feature on
the Boulevard des Batignolles--the pupil may, on passing an examination,
enter either of the two higher colleges, the Central or the Polytechnic.
Then, too, the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers may be looked on in the
light of a magnificent annex to the schools of primary instruction. The
idea of such an institution originated with the celebrated mechanician
of the last century, Vaucanson, who bequeathed to the government his
splendid collection of models, drawings, tools, machines and automatons.
The Convention decreed the establishment of the Conservatoire, which now
contains some 12,000 models in its industrial museum. Among them may be
mentioned Pascal's arithmetical machine, Lavoisier's instruments, the
first highway locomotive constructed by Cugniot in 1770, a lock forged
by Louis