SECONDARY INSTRUCTION IN FRANCE.

IT is not only through the nomination of professors that the government exerts a great influence upon public instruction; it is also by its power to regulate the course of study. The course of study is divided into eight or nine classes, each one of which demands a year's work. Accordingly, a child who begins his studies at eight years of age ought, at the age of seventeen (supposing he neither loses nor gains time), to be able to obtain his degree of bachelor. In the second or third class Latin grammar is begun, translations and themes are required, and sacred history is studied. During the fourth, fifth, and sixth, Greek is added; then Greek and Roman history. At the end of the sixth year the student is in condition to translate Cicero and Virgil, Xenophon and Plutarch. Then follow the classes of Rhetoric and Philosophy, without doubt the two most interesting and profitable. In view of their importance, I beg leave to acquaint you with some details of the course of study in these last years, - details all the more necessary to be understood, inasmuch as the examination for the baccalaureat deals principally with the matter taught during this period.

Once in the Rhetoric class one is qualified to read with profit the best French authors; but nothing is read except what has particular reference to rhetoric or style; as, for example, the Pensees de Pascal, the Oraisons Funebres of Bossuet, the works of Fenelon upon Eloquence, La Bruyere, the Fables de la Fontaine, the classical productions of Racine, Corneille, and Moliere, etc. At the same time they study, in Latin, Cicero's treatises on Rhetoric, Tacitus, Virgil, Horace, and extracts from Lucretius; in Greek, Thucydides, the orations of Demosthenes, Sophocles, and parts of Aristophanes. Besides, students are required to make literary analyses of the works I have cited, and to prepare French and Latin theses. So much for the study of letters.

In history they are then at the beginning of the nineteenth century, having previously gone over a complete course of universal history. The finishing touches are now given to one's knowledge of geography, while in science - arithmetic, elements of algebra, and geometry having been studied in previous years - the study of round bodies and cosmography is now entered upon.

But it is the so-called year of philosophy that is especially reserved to the study of science. All previous work is then reviewed, and physics and chemistry added. A course of contemporaneous history is now taken, - a somewhat unfortunate innovation, which obliges the professor to pass judgment on events in which sometimes he has himself played a part, or at least taken sides, and that, too, in a country so often shaken and its government overturned by successive revolutions. In this year philosophy is begun. Certain of the Greek, Latin, and French philosophers are read, - Seneca, Cicero, Plato, Xenophon, Descartes, Pascal, Fenelon, Bossuet. These authors are analyzed and philosophical dissertations made thereon.

Such is the course of study. At the end of each year, in the vacation, there is a meeting among the pupils of each class, and among the classes of the different lyceums of Paris. A similar assembly is held among the pupils of all the colleges and lyceums of France, during which a formal distribution of prizes is made to the leading scholars. When one has ended this course of study, he is ready to undergo the examinations for the degree of Bachelier-es-Lettres. Perhaps you would not be unwilling to learn what a bachelier is supposed to know. You will thus gain an idea of what the baccalaureat is. The examination is divided into two parts, the oral and the written. The written part consists of a translation of a passage, taken at random, from some Latin poet or author, to the performance of which two hours are allotted. Candidates are allowed only Latin lexicons for reference. After this is a Latin theme on a given subject, and finally a philosophical dissertation. Three hours are given for the dissertation, four for the Latin theme. If this part of the examination is successfully passed, there comes next the oral trial, which consists of the explication at sight of a passage from a French, Latin, and Greek author; a question in history, geography, and philosophy, together with several upon the sciences, - physics, chemistry, arithmetic, geometry, etc. There is also a degree conferred called the Baccalaureat-es-Sciences, in which the sciences are the principal element. In order to attain the Baccalaureat-es-Sciences, it is necessary, at the end of the seventh class, instead of entering upon the eighth, to follow a scientific course. A year is passed in the class of preparatory mathematics, then another in a course of so-called elementary mathematics, at the end of which time the Baccalaureat-es-Sciences can be applied for. Inasmuch as the examinations have almost wholly to do with the sciences, and consequently but little time has been devoted to Latin or Greek, a very good knowledge of some one of the modern languages is demanded of all candidates. You are now familiar with the plan of the studies pursued in the colleges and lyceums. In my next I shall speak of the life led in these institutions, of their interior organization, and the regime to which the students are subjected.

V. J. R.