bearing, shall distinguish him from one of "the people." It need hardly
be said that such a system as this, so diametrically opposed to that
which prevails in the United States, tends to foster somewhat of
jealousy and bitterness among the lower classes. As for those who have
received this higher education, they would, as a general rule, consider
it derogatory to their dignity ever in after life to perform any manual
labor: this they leave to the illiterate and to those who have only
attended the primary schools. The result may be imagined in the case of
those whose parents, having paid their eight or nine years' schooling,
are unable to do anything more for their offspring when they leave
college. They cannot all earn their living in a professional capacity,
or in the literary field, or as government employes, or, to be brief, in
one of those situations which a graduate _can_ accept; and those who
fail, insensibly and by degrees fall into the ranks of the _declasses_.
The common workman may occasionally and for a short period suffer
privation and want, but that becomes the chronic condition of the poor
graduate. He becomes a misanthrope, hates his fellow-beings and resorts
to petty shifts in order to live. Gradually his sense of honor and his
moral feelings get weaker and weaker, and finally disappear altogether.
Then he becomes one of those men who, like the conspirators denounced by
Corneille,

Si tout n'est renverse ne sauraient subsister.

These men take a prominent part in every _emeute_, haranguing the
populace, propagating socialistic theories, and gaining a baneful
influence over the uneducated and the discontented among the workingmen,
thus causing that bloodshed and destruction of which Paris has so often
been the scene. Probably no more vivid picture of the life of these
unfortunate persons has ever been drawn than that which Jules Valles has
given us in his _Refractaires_. Most eloquently does he describe the
vain hopes and reveries by which these men are elated, and the poignant
misery they suffer. Valles, it will be recollected, was a Communist, a
member of that revolutionary government which contained so many of these
_declasses_.

Far be it from us to desire to limit the higher education to the
children of the rich. By all means let every man in a position to do so
give his sons the benefit of the secondary education. The fittest will
always survive, the weakest inevitably go to the wall. At the