Friday and Saturday are invariably observed as jours maigres, i. e. no meat is then allowed. The breakfast is limited to bread and water, which is taken at eight o'clock, the students having risen at five. The dinner is at twelve, supper at eight. Bed-time half-past eight o'clock. The expense of education is 1000 francs per annum, with a few extras, such as instruction in English and German, lessons in music, fencing, dancing, and riding, which vary from twelve to twenty francs per month.

I have said that the controul under which the students are kept, the confinement to which they are subject, and the superintendence which is exercised over them, are very strict and almost without intermission; yet, as we shall hereafter have occasion to observe, this mechanical discipline has entirely failed to produce any moral effect; and it is also true that these same students, as soon as they quit college and begin to follow the faculties, as they are called, at the University that is, to study law, medicine, literature, or science-find themselves all at once placed in a condition of absolute freedom, for which they are wholly unprepared by any previous moral and religious training. It is no wonder, therefore, that their spirit and passions, having been so long compressed by external force, and being counteracted by no principle of self-government, should suddenly explode when the pressure is removed, and that the students of the Parisian colleges, when let loose upon the capi

tal, should be ready at any moment to place themselves at the head of a Revolution".

Since the time of this visit to the college of Louis le Grand, I have made enquiries in various quarters concerning the moral character of these Parisian schools, and I regret to say, that in no case has the

The following are the observations of one of the ablest of the Bishops of France on this subject-Liberté d'Enseignement-Examen par Mgr. Parisis, Evêque de Langres, Paris, 1843, p. 52.-"The heads of the University feel their need of religion, of its morals and its doctrines: and they call it to their aid. But, in answer to this appeal, Judaism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, &c., present themselves together with Catholicism. What course then is to be followed? One, you say, and one only ; viz., to lop off all that is peculiar in each of these creeds, &c., and to adopt a formula of natural religion; that is, to surrender all their doctrines up to indifference and scepticism. Yes-But what is this eclectic process but the ruin of all religion? Disguise as you will this false position, adopt as you like, in detail, certain formulas ready made for the use of various religionists; yet it will always be undeniable, that all the members of our University, as Academics, are condemned to a practical and material indifference to all religion. And can you imagine that such a practical habit of mind does not re-act on their own convictions? And can you suppose that their pupils do not perceive their contradictions, and are not affected by their indifference? What! is it in the power of an instructor to exercise no influence over his pupil or is the scholar capable of being blind to the acts of his instructor? No: and therefore, even against your will, you propagate indifference to all religion. Your system, by its nature, is destructive of every faith: and can you then hope to make good citizens? You paralyze virtue, and you hope for self-sacrifice! But let me remind you that, without conscience, action can have no other basis but selfishness. The government of the Bourbons at the Restoration favoured the University: and yet the students and other members of the University did more than any other individuals to destroy their Throne! What a lesson is this!"

report been a favourable one. I cannot but feel some hesitation in the statement which I am making with respect to the morality of these great establishments, the colleges of Paris, as what affects them not only concerns their own most important social and moral interests and duties, but also affects the University (of which they are constituent parts) and the government, and indeed the nation at large. But in giving utterance to this judgment I am not only recording the result of private enquiries, but am echoing, and that very faintly, the language of the official report of nine chaplains of these colleges themselves, to their ecclesiastical superior in the year 1830, the terms of which are so serious and fearful (and which I am assured are as applicable to the state of these schools, at the present time, as they were when they were first written), that it may well be considered a matter of surprise that these colleges should now be overflowing with the vast number of students who resort to them, indeed that they should be the accredited places of education for the youth of this great country. This fact, which one can hardly call other than a symptom of parental infatuation, can, I apprehend, be only explained from the circumstance that education in one of the colleges is the avenue through which a young man must necessarily pass (unless he is brought up entirely under the roof of parent or guardian), to enter upon a career of professional life. The report of these Aumôniers will be

found in the "Histoire de l'Instruction publique de M. H. de Riancey," tom. ii. p. 3789; to which may

• The following are extracts from this Report :

"MY LORD,

"The Chaplains of the nine Royal Colleges have the honour to transmit to you the Report which your Lordship has desired them to furnish of the moral and religious condition of the above colleges.

"It is, my Lord, in our collective capacity that we submit this Report to your Lordship, in compliance with your Lordship's request. Besides, we have a community of duty and of anxiety, and the opinions which we have now to express do not refer to one college more than another, nor are they of mere local or special concern. We have, then, my Lord, the honour to lay before you a picture, faintly drawn, of the deplorable state of religion in the above colleges. We are filled with sentiments of despondency and horror which no words can express, when we reflect on the almost utter futility of our office, although we have spared neither pains nor study to render it effective.

"The youths who are committed to our charge are scarcely admitted into the colleges before the good principles which they may have imbibed in their childhood begin to evaporate; if any of them remain faithful to their first impressions, they seek to conceal them, and when they have reached the age of fourteen or fifteen years, our efforts become wholly abortive; we lose our religious influence over them so completely, that in each college, among the united classes of mathematics, philosophy, and rhetoric, out of ninety or one hundred students there are scarcely seven or eight who are communicants at Easter.

"Nor is it indifference or the force of passion which leads them to a general forgetfulness of God; it is positive INFIDelity. In fact, how can we expect that they should be believers in God when they see such contempt for religion, and when they listen every day of their lives to lectures of so contradictory a character, and when they find Christianity no where but at chapel, and there too an empty Christianity of bare form and technical routine?

"They arrive, then, at fifteen years of age without any rule for

be added the testimony of a liberal deputy and a member of the council of instruction itself, M. St. Marc Girardin; "We do not make citizens any more than saints in our colleges: what do we make then? We instruct, we do not elevate: we cultivate and develope the mind, but not the heart." After writing the above, I received to-day (Aug. 21) a most unreserved confirmation of this unhappy character of these schools of Paris from an ecclesiastic whom I met at the house of one of the professors of the University'.

Wednesday, Aug. 14.-Walked to the grande Im

their thoughts, and without any rein for their actions, except an exterior discipline which they abhor, and masters whom they treat as mercenaries; and at length, when the course of their studies is complete, of those who issue from the colleges the average number of the students who have preserved their religion to the end of their career does not amount to more than one student from every college in each year. Such is the calculation which expresses our hopes of the future in the University, such the final result of our own professional labours!

"Some of us have passed our youth in these colleges, and we have seen as students there that which we now behold as functionaries; and we have never thought on our education without extreme disgust (qu'avec une ingratitude sans bornes), and we shall never reflect on our present office without sorrow.

"We are, my Lord,

"With respect, &c."

(Signed by the nine Chaplains of the Government Colleges.) 1 I transcribe the following passage from "Histoire de l'Instruction publique, par M. Riancey," ii. p. 206, Paris, 1844 :

"It is difficult to represent the state of moral depravity to which the youth of France was reduced in ten years after the foundation of