XVI., clocks and watches of historic interest, and those
patents which have run out by lapse of time. The machinery is set in
motion at certain hours of the day, during which the public is admitted
free. The library, rich in works of science, art and industry, is always
open. In the evening there are gratuitous lectures delivered by men of
science on such subjects as geometry, mechanics and chemistry applied to
the arts, industrial and agricultural chemistry, agriculture,
spinning-looms, dyeing, etc. The Conservatoire turns out the best
foremen and heads of workshops to be found in Paris. It occupies the
fine old building once used as the abbey of St. Martin des Champs, which
has been tastefully restored in the original style, and takes up one of
the sides of a handsome square laid out with flowers and fountains.

Nor must we pass over entirely unnoticed the admirable gratuitous
lectures given by the Polytechnic Association--_not_ the Polytechnic
School--on such subjects as hygiene, linear drawing, French grammar,
bookkeeping and geometry. These lectures are held in some twenty
different buildings, so as to be within the reach of the
working-classes, no matter what part of Paris they may reside in. Among
the lecturers in recent years are to be found such names as those of
Ferdinand de Lesseps, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Barral and Batbie.

We have thus rapidly seen what Paris does for her poor youth. The city
has often been called the focus of light and the centre of intelligence.
Without going quite so far as this, it must nevertheless be acknowledged
that with her public schools, her splendid libraries, her museums, her
natural history and art collections, and her very numerous and valuable
institutions open free to all, Paris affords unusual facilities for
boys, taken even from the lowest strata of society, to rise by dint of
hard study, a firm will and exemplary conduct to the very highest
positions.

SECONDARY EDUCATION.

In France, children of parents in easy circumstances do not go to the
primary schools at all. Every man occupying a higher social position
than that of a mechanic does his utmost to procure for his children an
education which shall place them above what the French call "the common
people." Even a small farmer, with but a few thousand dollars at his
command, strives to place his son in an institution where the higher
cultivation of the intellectual faculties, the dress worn, and the very