comparatively small; the professors generally persons of slender ability, and altogether devoid of zeal in the discharge of their functions. This last evil arose partly from the scantiness of the salaries allowed, and the nature of the supervision exercised by the government. A post, from which the incumbent derived but a meagre subsistence, and which rendered him, at the same time, a mere automaton, was not of a nature to be sought by men of talents, or to be filled with much conscientious activity and honest zeal.

The four lycées of Paris were certainly in a more flourishing state than those of the provinces. I can assert, however, from my own observation, that even the former were not exempt from the defects which I have enumerated above. The Lycée Buonaparte and the Lycée Charlemagne, the two inferior colleges, wore a most gloomy aspect, and were in all respects miserably organized. The pupils of the Lycées were not privileged from the conscription, at the period of which I am speaking. I know not whether any dispensation has been since proclaimed in their favour. occasion to remark some cases of extreme hardship, connected with the exercise of this law, over those of the Lycée Imperiale, the chief of the Parisian colleges. Several youths, the children of very respectable parents, resident in the departments of the Rhine, were dragged without mercy, from the college ranks, into those of the army. They had just accomplished their eighteenth year, and were about terminating their academical studies. One instance of exemption alone, came within my knowledge. The claims of the individual, a young gentleman of a distinguished family and whose education was not then completed,-were of a peculiar nature. It was not, however, until after much delay, and only by the intercession of the highest authority, that he was rescued from the fangs of the recruiting officer.

The most important and politic branch of the system of which I am speaking, is the gratuitous education afforded to so many thousand pupils. It may be asserted with confidence, that exclusive of the twenty-five in each of the secondary schools, more than one half of the number belonging to all the lycées, are educated at the expense of the treasury, and, therefore, entirely at the disposal of the government. By the original law, the government was authorized to educate in the lycées, six thousand four hundred pupils, at the public expense. Of these, two thousand four hundred were to be selected, during the space of ten years, from the foreign territories annexed to France. The remainder was to consist of such of the pupils of the secondary schools as rendered themselves, by their proficiency, most worthy of the distinction, in the judgment of a board of examiners appointed by the government.

The view taken by M. Fourcroy, of this particular branch of the

plan, is somewhat curious, and will afford you a clear insight into the spirit with which it was framed. I shall quote his own language, commencing with the preliminary observations: "The government, enlightened by the experience of the past, has rejected the old forms of the universities, which, half a century ago, were no longer compatible with the progress of reason, and which philosophy then called upon us to amend or repudiate. We have selected from them what was good, and avoided the abuses with which they were infected. Without overlooking the success which should naturally attend good teachers and able professors, we have made it a principal object, to insure a sufficient number of pupils to the new schools we are about to establish. The government has been of opinion, that in order to fix literary and scientific institutions upon a solid basis, it should begin by providing pupils for them, to avoid the risk of seeing the classes consist of professors alone. Such is the end which we have meant to accomplish, in extending the bounty of the government to so large a number of pensionaries. We have had in view the maintenance of the ly cées, by means of the funds allotted for these pensioners. The whole foundation of the new system rests upon this idea. The defenders of the country will receive the recompense of their labours in the education of their children. Parents will fill the secondary schools with their sons, and watch over their first advances in knowledge, in order to render them worthy of the ulterior advantages which are prepared for them. The inhabitants of the territories annexed to France, who, speaking a language, and accustomed to institutions, different from our own, must, nevertheless, abandon their old usages, and adopt those of their new country, have not, at home, the necessary means of giving their children the education, the manners and the character, which are to identify them with the French. What more advantageous destiny could be prepared for them, than that which the new system offers, and at the same time, what more efficacious resource could be given to the government, which has nothing more at heart than to bind these new citizens to France?'

The views of the government are developed with sufficient clearness in the passage I have quoted, and the execution of the plan has been strictly conformable. The schools of the empire are rendered subservient to the important purposes of assimilating the inhabitants of the foreign territories to their masters, and of attaching them to the dominion of France by the strongest sympathies. In the new departments, all domestic education is industriously discouraged, in order that no other resource may be left to the inhabitants but the institutions of France, where their children may be imbued with the interests and passions desirable for the conqueror.

In

In order to perpetuate the French dominion, and to strengthen the military despotism, the rising generation of these departments must be reared in French nurseries, and cast in the French mould.

By the system of gratuitous education, the flower of the French youth, also, are made the mere creatures of the ruler, to be fashioned and employed in the manner most conducive to his interests and views. They are at the same time, in his hands, sure and valuable pledges of the personal allegiance of their numerous connexions, upon whose loyalty and zeal, the imperial throne obtains, in this way, the strongest hold. Every possible extension has, therefore, been given to this part of the plan. The special military academies, which contain about fifteen hundred pupils, are all supported by the state. In the chief of them, the term of instruction is two years, and two hundred and fifty youths are admitted each year. These are selected from among the boys of the lycées, and a preference is given to such as are maintained in the latter, at their own expense. The ostensible reason assigned for this distinction is, that the parents, who defray the charges of the lycées, may be compensated, in a degree, for the sacrifice which they make.' The real motive is the desire of increasing the number of pensioners subject to the immediate and absolute controul of the government. The boys educated in the lycées, at the expense of the treasury, are inextricably entangled in the trammels of the imperial despot. After they have finished the scholastic career of six years, they are either transferred to the military academies, drafted for the conscription, or enlisted in the service of their tyrant as public functionaries in the departments for which their attainments and dispositions seem best fitted.

If we acknowledge as real, the motives by which the French rulers profess to have been actuated, in the formation of the lycées, they imply an extraordinary state of things. It must appear singularly curious to you, that in a country whose population is so vast as that of France, the state should find it necessary to provide pupils for the public colleges, under the apprehension that the professors might be otherwise left in solitude. There is something novel in the language, that parents are to be allured by artificial means, totally independent of the characteristical merits of a college, to avail themselves of the opportunity of obtaining a suitable education for their children; that they are to be partially indemnified for the sacrifice which they make, in so doing, by the prospect or chance opened to them, of seeing their children become pensioners of the government. If it were necessary to employ such expedients, as those here announced, in relation to that class of parents who were supposed capable of defraying the charges of a lycée, a much stronger stimulus must have been required for the poorer orders.

This is an additional argument, why the bounty of the government should have been extended to the common schools, if it had been seriously intended to impart the benefits of education to the common people.

The fact is, however, that the general diffusion of knowledge, or the communication of it to the lower orders, is far from being the object, either of the wishes or labours of the French government. They know it to be incompatible with the nature, and repugnant to the interests, of a military despotism. Instead of striving earnestly to rouse the mass of the nation from the profound apathy in which they are now sunk, with regard to the culture of the mind, their efforts will be directed to multiply impediments to the progress of a contrary spirit. It is with them a necessary policy, to retain the common people in the grossest ignorance, and the most abject depression. It will be sufficient for the purpose of Buonaparte, that such an education should be given to the youth of the lycées, as may qualify them, either for the military career or administrative duties. The nature of the religious or moral instruction which they receive will be deemed of little importance, provided they are trained to such dispositions as may serve to strengthen his power. All the branches of instruction which tend to form the soldier, will be successfully taught, because to them the patronage and the cares of the government will be liberally and unremittingly extended. The conscription has a direct tendency to render parents themselves indifferent about the proficiency of their children, in any other studies than those which may promote their advancement in the army, to which they know them to be irrevocably doomed. Were it not for the certainty of this doom, the lycées would be even much less populous than they now are. Boys are placed in them, not with a view to their general improvement, but in order that they may be the better prepared for their unalterable destiny by a good course of mathematical studies, and because they are not otherwise eligible to the military academies.

These academies are supplied with the ablest professors, and are in every respect admirably organized. Nothing is wanting in them, which can serve to qualify the pupil for the highest excellence in the theory of war. The discipline, moreover, is such as to fit the body for the severest exercises of the field, and to fashion the appetites and habits to the opposite extremes of military obedience and command. The Polytechnic school, the Prytaneum, and the academy at Fontainebleau, are the most perfect establishments of the kind, which have, perhaps, ever existed, and should be eagerly visited by all strangers who can obtain access to them. They send forth annually a host of accomplished officers, engineers, and mechanicians, whose services are of material efficacy in promoting the

vast

vast plan of domestic usurpation and foreign conquest, which their mighty sovereign is now prosecuting with such indefatigable industry and fatal success. I must confess, that when I examined the details of the military schools, over which he watches with a sort of paternal care, I felt apprehensions for the fate of the Continent, not less lively than those which the annunciation of the victory of Friedland or of any other of his great triumphs, had excited.

I fear, my good friend, that I have fatigued you by these dry details. I have said more on the leading topics of this epistle than the plan which I have chalked out for myself will warrant. You cannot, however, but be sensible of the great importance that attaches, under the present circumstances of the world, to whatever is connected with the internal organization of France, or serves to illustrate the character and views of her rulers. The vast accessions now made to their dominion do but prognosticate a still greater enlargement of empire, and strengthen the well-grounded apprehension, that the whole continent of Europe is, to use the language of the poet,

Steep rushing down to that devouring gulf

Where many a mighty people buried lies.

The spirit which now legislates for France will regulate the domestic affairs of the countries which she may call to the honour of bearing her own name. The same code of civil law,-the same military and financial system,-the lycées and the police, will be introduced into all of them, and identify, in all respects, the character and condition of their inhabitants, with those of the population of France. The period is not, perhaps, far distant, when it will be merely necessary to study the institutions of the conqueror, in order to understand the internal policy of three-fourths of the territory and population of Europe. Whoever wishes to reason accurately, on the future destiny of the latter, will attend to the present military, financial, religious, and political, organization of France. The nations of the Continent will be subjected to the same laws, corrupted and debased by the same arts, involved in the same miseries, and, perhaps, be insensibly melted away into the French name and people. Their fate will resemble that which was experienced by the victims of the Roman power, who were gradually blended into one common mass with their conquerors, and, as the historian expresses it, formed, in their manners and internal policy, a perfect representation of their great mistress.'

The distinct kingdoms which Buonaparte has erected, will soon be overturned by the hand which raised them. His policy in this respect will be found to bear as close a similitude to that of Rome, as it does in all the other arts of preserving and enlarging dominion.

GEN. CHRON. VOL. III. NO. XII.

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