Chapter V: Letter XV

The Schools.--State of Literature.--Minister of Public
Instruction.--Education in France.--Prussian System.--Parochial
Schools.--Normal Schools.--Institutions of Paris.--Public
Libraries.--Machinery of French Justice.--The Judges.--Eloquence of
the Bar.--Medicine.--Corporations of Learning.--Their Evils.--The
French Institute.--Pretended New System of Instruction.--Professors
of Paris.

Paris, November 20th, 1835.

One of the eminent merits of the French character is the distinction they bestow upon letters. A literary reputation is, at once, a passport to the first respect in private life, and to the first honours in the state. In Paris it gives the tone, which it does nowhere else, to fashionable society. It is not that Paris loves money less than other cities, but she loves learning more; and that titled rank being curtailed of its natural influence, learning has taken the advance, and now travels on in the highway to distinction and preferment, without a patron, and without a rival. At the side of him, whose blood has circulated through fifty generations, or has stood in the van of as many battles, is the author of a French History, born without a father or mother.

Who is Guizot, and who Villemain, Cousin, Collard, Arago, Lamartine, that they should be set up at the head of one of the first nations in Europe? Newspaper editors, schoolmasters, astronomers, and poets, who have thrust the purpled nobles, and time-honoured patricians from the market of public honours, and have sat down quietly in their seats. The same marks of literary supremacy are seen through every feature of the community. Who was at Madame Recamier’s last night? Chateaubriand; and at the Duchesse d’Abrantes? Chateaubriand.--At the Pantheon, the whole nave of the Temple is assigned to two literary men; and the Prince of Eckmuhl, and such like, are crammed into the cellar. At Père la Chaise, David wears the cross of St. Louis, by the side of Massena. Molière is the only author in the world since the Greeks, whose birth-day is a national festival. His statue is crowned on that day at the Theatre Français, and his plays are represented, by order of government, upon all the national theatres. We ought then to presume that the literary and scientific institutions of the French should correspond with this sentiment in favour of learning; and so they do.

Here are two sheets of large post, which I must try to fill with this subject. I say _try_, because I write in obedience to your orders, and in total defiance of inclination. This will be the only letter I have written since I came here, to any of your bearded sex, and I feel already very grave and dull. Not that I think ladies more frivolous than men, or men more stupid than ladies, but it is my humour. I can write to my lady acquaintance without thinking, which I esteem a special favour, during my residence in Paris.--They do not expect me to be wise, and what extravagant notions you may have on this subject I don’t know.--If I write you nothing but what you know already, it will not be my fault, for I am unacquainted with the extent of your information, and you have not been specific in your inquiries.

The authority which presides over the Public Instruction in France, is personified under the term “University,” at the head of which is a minister, who has a salary of twenty thousand dollars, and a rank with the other ministers. A “Central Board” of nine members, has a general superintendence of the studies, and expense of the establishments. The divisions of the kingdom for the “Royal Courts,” are the school districts, which are called Academies; these have each a “Governor,” representing the minister, and an “Academical Board,” the Central Board at Paris; and each has its establishments, which are the Faculties, the Royal and Communal Colleges, Primary Schools, and Private Institutions. The Instruction is Superior, Secondary, and Primary.

The “Faculties” teach theology, law, medicine, science, and letters. They confer degrees of Bachelor, Licentiate, and Doctor; and are thirty-five in number. Three are Medical Faculties, at Paris, Montpelier and Strasburg; eight are Theological; of the Catholic Religion, six; of the Protestant, two; and nine are Faculties of Law. There are thirty Royal, three hundred and twenty Communal; and two Private Colleges; one hundred and twenty Private Institutions, or Boarding Schools, and one thousand and twenty-five Select Private Schools. The studies of these are Philosophy, Natural History, Elementary Mathematics, Latin, Greek, and modern languages.

The Primary Schools embrace only reading, arithmetic, and writing: and the “Primary Superior” add history, geography, elements of chemistry, and surveying. Their number is about fifty thousand.

At Paris there is a “Normal School,” for the education of Professors; and throughout the kingdom about sixty for masters of the Primary Schools.

The minister is appointed by the king, and the other officers directly, or indirectly by him. There are thirty General Inspectors, two for each academy or district. The “Proviseurs” have a care of the household and conduct of the students, and “Censors” superintend studies. Teachers are selected at a distance from their own departments, so that no local interests may grow up against the great central authority. Private institutions are forbidden to teach any thing else than grammar, elements of arithmetic, and geometry. Reports from the Academical Boards are examined twice a-week by the Central Board of the University, and the University presents a report every two years, to the Chamber of Deputies.

Education in France is a universal and uninfringible monopoly, and has the benefits and evils of such systems. The Central Board establishes uniformity in books, and instruction; it decides whether you are to teach your son pot-hooks, or straight strokes; but it impedes also improvement in the school-books, and processes of teaching; it selects competent instructors, but it represses the exercise of ingenuity by prescribing their duties; it cuts up the Lancasters, the Fellenbergs, and Pestalozzis by the roots. I say nothing of the independence of mind, without which there is neither genius, nor virtue, which is repressed by so absolute an authority. It suppresses also imposture in the teachers, but it destroys, too, the spirit of competition which imparts life and vigour to all human employments. It does not suppress the jobbing which arises out of all government projects, or intrigue, or favouritism in the appointment of its officers.

This is the system lately engrafted upon the great Prussian plan, which it is the fashion to praise so much about in the world. Time will perhaps reveal its merits; but this is by no means certain. There are other causes at work for the diffusion of knowledge amongst the people, and it is so easy to ascribe the merit to the Prussians; besides, it is not likely that, once used to receive instruction from their magistrates, as it were, for nothing, the people should consent to educate themselves at their own cost; or that, seeing for a long time effects produced by a certain machinery, especially so remote from their causes, they should conceive them producible by any other.

I have looked at the working of this plan in Paris and several of the neighbouring towns, and am sorry that I cannot share in the flattering hopes entertained of its results. Burke lays it down as “one of the finest problems of legislation” to know “what the state ought to undertake to direct by the public wisdom, and what it ought to leave, with as little interference as possible, to individual discretion.” “All governments,” he observes, “fall into the error of legislating too much.” I have no good hopes of any system of education under the management of a government.

Nothing is so badly managed as a government itself all over the world; and to have as little as possible of it seems to me the perfection of social economy. The rich and middling classes will take care of their own children always, and no one, I presume, will say that they will not do it better under the impulse of parental feeling than they who act only from delegated authority. Why do we not put the cultivation of the earth under the management of a company? A parent, being able, feels as strong a necessity to educate his son as to cultivate his field. To the parent only, who is destitute, and to whom there is but the alternative of a bad system or none; to him only whose instincts are frozen by necessity, should the sceptre of legislation be extended--extended as medicine to the health, with prudence, and only when the native vigour is irrecoverable by the natural stimulus. You cannot by any human device prevent the division of the poor and rich into different schools; they do not attempt it even in arbitrary Prussia. And it is better the government, with its broad shoulders, than individuals, should make the distinction.

Under a general system the two parties mutually prejudice each other. On the one hand, the current of private charity, so fruitful in its natural channel, is dried up by it. A community of which the individuals give cheerfully; one the timber, another the stone, another his personal services, towards a building, will, under a public system, require to be paid for their smallest contributions; and how many rich legacies have we inherited in Philadelphia, not a dollar of which would have been given under a public system. On the other hand, how many communities through the country, able to support good private schools, without the intermeddling of the government, have no longer the ability, and are obliged either to send their children abroad, or place them, with a total disregard of their morals and education, in a public school, where sixty scholars are taught by an old gentleman of sixty. It is easy to imagine what sort of schools are those in which the teacher receives, as in New England, twenty, or as in Pennsylvania, thirty dollars a month, for this wide diffusion of his services.

The Scotch have been putting this forty-pound-a-year system to the test these two hundred years in their Parochial Schools, and with the most tender nursing, their schools are in the same puny and ricketty condition as at their seven months’ birth. The Scotch are a persevering people, and if they begin by building a house at the roof, they keep building on even after the inutility of their labours has been demonstrated. So the turkeys in your Schuylkill county, their eggs being removed, and stones substituted, continue hatching on as usual. The Yankees, a shrewder people, are beginning to find out that their school system, copied from the Scotch, notwithstanding the care with which they starve their teachers, is actually getting worse every year. I have no objection to the government giving money, the more, the better, but I have no hesitation in saying that it will serve no useful purpose unless the relation between parent and teacher is preserved, and the executive department left to their management. In this delicate concern, the arm of the government should be concealed; her virtues should be busy without noise.

If I were the state; if I owned, for example, your community of Pottsville, I would contribute all I could towards buildings, apparatus, and libraries, and circulating useful books, and above all towards elevating the character and acquirements of the teachers. I would devise some way, by a succession of honours and profits, to make men teach, as in the army they make them fight. For instance, I would pay a per centage, up to a certain number of pupils, to each school; and the teacher with ten years’ approved services should receive a state diploma and the title of professor; thirty years’ services should entitle him to half pay, and I would take care of his wife and children at his decease. I would not encourage universities but for the advanced age of the pupils, and the transcendent branches; so as to give them a higher character, and leave the field of general instruction open to the common teachers, and to a fair and equal competition of abilities. Thus I should find abundant means of employing all my school funds; and this without the Inspectors, Censors, Proviseurs, and the other expensive apparatus of the “_Bureau Central de Paris_.”

If any one of the honourable and useful departments of a state is filled with an inferior class of men, it shows a defect in the policy of such a state. If I wished to devise some means the most direct, to degrade the character of a teacher, I could not hit upon one more efficacious than this French and Prussian system. All that the Prussian receives to console his condition of absolute dependence, is two hundred dollars per annum; the highest professor at the gymnasium, receives five hundred. With this “appointment” he must be all schoolmaster, without any alloy of gentleman about him. It is certain that not any of the respectable literary circles of Europe will receive this working man of the Muses into their society.

The Prussians are not addicted to commerce; nor do they read newspapers, nor meddle with the state; their habits are quiet and agricultural; and they care much less about the heads of their children, than that their cabbages may have good heads for _sour crout_. If not educated by the government, they would, no doubt, remain ignorant of letters. The Prussian system may, then, be a very good system for Prussia; but it is not, therefore, necessary or applicable to the United States;--except it be to our German nests of Pennsylvania; but these are melting away, and will soon be lost in the general improvements of the state.

A part of this system are the Normal Schools, which we are trying, also, to introduce into New England. They seem to me of little value, for they can teach but little that is not taught in any other place of education; besides, under present circumstances, they defeat their own purpose. A good school for educating teachers in America, would, perhaps, be the very best place one could imagine to disqualify men for teaching. I know the trustees of the “Girard College” think otherwise, and entertain sanguine hopes of supplying the whole country with eminent teachers from that institution. I do not see the reasonableness of their hopes; unless we may suppose that the young gentlemen of talent, out of gratitude, will forego the opportunities they may have of wealth and distinction in other professions, to starve themselves for the benefit of the state of Pennsylvania.

Several writers here express fears that this monopoly of education may be turned to the prejudice of liberty; which I believe to be a vain apprehension. The teachers being laymen, it is certain it will not be turned to the profit of the hierarchy. The French literature, which finds its way into every country of Europe, is a complete code of ridicule of the priesthood and nobility; and the more people are taught to read, the more difficult will be the re-establishment of these two orders. Public opinion is but little modified by the books and lectures of the schools; and the minister’s authority, however absolute in the University of Paris, will be but little felt, if in contradiction with that greater university--the world. The studies of the schools are forced upon unripe and unwilling minds; those of society are voluntary, and introduced as reason is developed. Besides, it is human nature to relish most that which is most prohibited. Nothing ever brought the works dangerous to religion more into reputation, than the denunciations of the clergy. In crimes and errors, one cannot cure the patient, by starving and checking perspiration. It happens, too, that the French books, which are most replenished with wit and genius, are precisely those which are most obnoxious. It is true, however unfortunate, that education, liberty, and irreligion are sown here in the same soil, and grow together under the same cultivation. To preserve the French student from the contagion of principles dangerous to the aristocratic and clerical institutions, he must be forbidden the whole of the national classics down to Lafontaine’s Fables, including the history of his country--I was going to say, the company of his father and mother, and his schoolmasters.

I must now give you an account of the particular institutions of Paris. You have your choice of five royal colleges; “_Louis le Grand_,” “_Henri IV._,” and “_St. Louis_,” which receive boarders and externs; and “_Charlemagne_,” and “_Bourbon_,” externs only. The average number of pupils for each is about a thousand. The studies are ancient and modern languages, mathematics, chemistry, natural philosophy, natural history, geography, penmanship, and drawing. They are superintended by a “Proviseur” and a “Directeur General des Etudes.” In August, there is a general competition for prizes, between a few pupils selected from each college, conducted with pomp before the heads of the universities, and other dignitaries of the city. A subject is given, the competitors are locked up, and a council of the university decides, and the names of the successful students, and the schools to which they belong, are published in the journals; which excites a wonderful emulation amongst fifty, and a wonderful jealousy and discontent amongst five hundred; and many get prizes on these days who get nothing else all the rest of their lives.

The price of boarding and instruction is about 220 dollars per annum. There are besides these, and of the same character, “_St. Barbe_ or _Rollin_,” and “_Stanislaus_,” two private colleges. There are in the city, and under the inspection of the university, 116 academies for gentlemen, and 143 for ladies; and a great number of primary schools, in which about 10,000 children are taught gratuitously or for a small price; the boys by the “_Frères de la Doctrine Chretienne_,” and the girls by the “_Sisters of Charity_,” or nearly the half by the “_Frères Ignorantins_,” who profess reading and writing only, with the catechism; any one having higher attainments being disqualified. There are schools also for the blind and dumb.

This machinery of schools, or something equivalent, exists in other countries, but the Parisians have two institutions, which they regard as choice and pre-eminent. Science, which is elsewhere immured in the cloisters of the universities, here breathes the wholesome and ventilated air of social life. “Wisdom uttereth her voice in the market-place; she crieth aloud in the streets.” These are the “_Academie de Paris_,” and the “_College Royal de France_.” Every branch of human knowledge has here its professors, and the doors of the temple are open to the needy of all nations. In the former, which you will find on the “_Place Sorbonne_,” are Faculties of Theology with six professors; of Letters with twelve; and Science, twelve.

It is the theatre upon which Guizot, Cousin, Villemain, and others acquired their professorial celebrity--a noble theatre for the encouragement, exercise, and reward of eminent abilities. The Faculties of Law and Medicine are held each in separate buildings. The “_College de France_” has twenty-one professors, who give lectures on all the higher branches of science and letters; also upon the Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Chinese, and Italian languages. There is besides a Special Royal school for Oriental Languages, to which the government allows annually 3600 dollars. The salaries of professors in these schools seldom exceed 1200 dollars; a pension is given after twenty years’ services.--Besides these, they have the “_Ecole Polytechnique_,” with three hundred scholars, from sixteen to twenty years: twenty-four at the expense of government; the charges of the others 200 dollars a-year. In connection with this is the “_Ecole des Ponts et Chaussés_,” in which eighty of the pupils are instructed specially in the arts of projecting, and constructing roads, canals, &c.

There is a school for Astronomy at the Observatory; also, a “School of Mines,” with an extensive cabinet and lectures, and a “School of Pharmacy,” with a botanic garden. This gives a diploma and licence to practice to Apothecaries.--There is a gratuitous school of Mathematics and Drawing, and one of Drawing for ladies, and two courses of lectures at the Garden of Plants. The Conservatory of Music has four hundred pupils; twelve at the expense of government; it gives prizes, and through the year several concerts. There is a Gymnasium too, and a school of Equitation. Mercy! what a litter of schools.

The institutions also for encouragement and literary intercourse, are numerous in all the branches of learning. At the head of these is the “_Institut de France_.” Of the others, the most distinguished are the “_Academie de Medicine_,” and the Geographical, Historical, and Agricultural societies.

The Public Libraries are the “King’s,” containing four hundred and fifty thousand volumes, sixty thousand manuscripts, one hundred thousand medals, and more than a million of engravings; the Library of the Arsenal, one hundred and eighty thousand volumes; of the Pantheon, one hundred and fifty thousand, and thirty thousand manuscripts; the Mazarine, one hundred thousand; and the City Library forty-eight thousand; and others, as of the Institute and Sorbonne, to be consulted occasionally. There are near two hundred Reading-Rooms, also Circulating Libraries in all directions; and newspapers and reviews are a part of the furniture of every café, and other public house--without saying any thing of the Museums and Institutions of the Fine Arts.

In the Law School, a degree of Bachelor requires two years’ attendance on lectures; a Licentiate three, and “Doctor of Laws,” four. Pleading in court is preceded by a degree of Licentiate, three years’ study, examination and thesis, and after oath of office a noviciate, or constant attendance on the courts, of three years. The Lawyers are _Avocats_ and _Avoués_. The latter enjoins twenty-five years of age, certain years of study, a certificate of capacity from the Faculty of Law, and a Clerkship of five years in a _Cour Royal_. The duties of the _Avocat_ are subordinate. This arrangement brings the inconvenience to the client of acting by two persons; the want of the best advice in the beginning, of unity of action and undivided responsibility. The advantage is that the _Avoué_, not being subjected to the details and humbler duties of a suit, takes a higher professional rank and character, and is less subject to undue influences, having no immediate relation with the parties. In admission to the bar, there is no inquiry about moral character, and the judges are selected immediately from the schools. I will try to give you in two words the machinery of French justice. I go out of my course in reverence for your profession.

There is a “Minister of Justice.” His office is to pursue and bring to punishment all wrongs done to the state. It is a bad relation, being that of vengeance and not mercy. Our principle is reversed, and the accused is considered guilty until proved innocent. For the whole kingdom there are 27 Royal Courts; and, corresponding with our Common Pleas, 365 courts, called “Tribunals of the First Instance.” To each of the former is attached a “_Procureur General_,” and under him a “_Procureur du Roi_,” with a “_Judge d’Instruction_,” and justices of the peace.--The plaintiff, or a police-officer, applies to a commissary, or mayor, or justice, or _Procureur du Roi_, and if a criminal action, the accused, who cannot be confined beyond twenty-four hours, is summoned before a “_Juge d’Instruction_,” who questions, and releases, or commits him.

In the latter case he produces him, of course with all possible proofs of guilt (and to collect these proofs he may detain him, innocent or not, nine months in prison)--before a Chamber of Council, having three judges, himself one, to examine whether there is cause of trial; and next before a Chamber of Accusation, which examines finally, and this concurring, he is tried at the Assizes. A jury of thirty (taxables to 200 francs) are chosen by ballot, of whom the accuser and accused strike off nine. The “_Procureur General_” then opens the trial, states the crime and names the witnesses; and the “_Avocat General_” appeals to the jury in behalf of the injured community, for justice.

The President questions first the prisoner, who if incautious or foolish, may be led, as is the intention, to convict himself, or if expert, as he has the right to question also, he may induce discussions not always to the credit of the magistrate or the majesty of justice. Secondly, he examines witnesses, the prisoner and counsel cross-examining, and the _Avocat General_ then sums up the facts and evidence. Last of all the accused speaks, either by counsel or personally in defence; the court appointing counsel in case of his inability. The President then sums up, gives his opinions, the jury declares him guilty or not guilty, and the court determines the punishment. Small offences are decided before a justice of the peace or a minor court, with liberty of appeal. Civil actions, below 1,000 francs, are tried before a justice of peace and decided finally by a _Juge d’Instruction_: above that sum there is an appeal to a Royal Court. In the “Court of Cassation” at Paris, the decision of any criminal or civil case may be re-examined, and if reversed it is referred to another tribunal. If the original decision is confirmed, it is reconsidered by this court, and if unanimous in the former opinion, it is submitted to a third tribunal, whose decision concurring with the first, is final. There are courts also expressly for the decision of commercial affairs. One at Paris with a president and two judges elected from the most respectable merchants. The number of judges of the kingdom is 4,000; of justices of the peace 3,000; the Avoués of Paris are above 200. The salary of a justice is 2,400 francs, of a Judge of Cassation 15,000; of a President judge 20,000; and a Premier President 40,000; and the entire expense of justice is above three millions and a half.

The judges are habited in black robes of silk, with a crimson sash about the neck and across the breast, with golden tassels. The lawyers wear a black gown, and a “_toque_” or cap. They usually hire this costume for the occasion from a stall within the “_Palais de Justice_.” This cap supplies the place of the old wig; it does more, for the pleader occasionally takes it off and shakes it at the judge, or throws it upon the table in the fury of debate, and then puts it on again. It is certain that gesture was designed by nature to make up the deficiencies of language. It is often the more expressive of the two, and whoever omits it or misuses it, must leave imperfect his meanings or the passions he attempts to represent. Cicero even sets down mimicry amongst the accomplishments of an orator. Whoever converses in English and French will feel, for some reason, a disposition to much action in the one, and less in the other, in expressing the same feelings, which gives rise to a diversity of taste.

But in all such matters there are standard rules in truth and nature which cannot without bad effect be violated. In gesture the English sin by neglect or awkwardness; the French chiefly by extravagance. Rapidity and frequency impair dignity, and even gracefulness is acquired somewhat at the expense of strength. A French orator will tear his ruffles when the occasion does not warrant it; reserving nothing for a fiercer passion. To tell you he has seen a ghost, and not heard of it, he will apply a forefinger to the under lids of his two eyes; and to tell you emphatically that he came on horseback, he will set two fingers to ride upon a third. While the Englishman “on high and noble deeds intent,” puts his right hand in his bosom and his left in his breeches pocket. Propriety lies somewhere between these two extremes. There are two choice lawyers at the French bar, at present, Berryer and Charles Dupin; both eminent models of chaste and graceful oratory. This is enough of the limping old Lady Justice.

A degree of Doctor of Medicine must be preceded by a degree of Bachelor of Letters and Science, and four courses of lectures, a thesis sustained in public, and five public examinations. A vacancy in a professorship is supplied by a “_concour_” that is, the several candidates appear before the Faculty, a subject is given, they retire, and in the prescribed time return with their thesis, which they read and sustain in public, and the choice is settled by a majority of the judges. The diligence of a French doctor should take him to heaven. He rises in the night, and, long before other men have left their pillows, has done a good day’s work. He has visited from four to five hundred sick in the hospitals, prescribed for each, made his autopses and other operations, and explained the cases separately and conjointly to his pupils. He has then consultations till ten, breakfasts, and is in his Professor’s chair at the hour, visiting his patients and giving audience in the intervals of these duties--and has the rest of the day to himself.

In his professorial capacity he wears a cap, a gown and crimson sash. He has given up the wig and gold-headed cane to Molière. Medicine here is divided into strict specialities. One man feels your pulse, and another gives you physic. This exclusive attention to one object, at the same time it impairs the general excellence of the profession, has made the French the most expert operators in the world. Civiale in his _Lithotritie_ has no equal amongst living men; Laënnec does wonders in Auscultation with his Stethoscope, and Larrey, who has cut off the legs of half Europe, and was knighted by Bonaparte for such merits, has been far obscured by the fame of Dupuytren.

It is said here commonly by foreigners that in the French practice there is a reckless sacrifice of life and disregard of humanity, by adventurous and needless experiments; having, at least, no other object than surgical instruction, and that, from neglect or ignorance of treatment after operations, the loss of patients is greater than in any other country. I should suppose, from what I have myself seen, that a millstone, compared to a French surgeon’s heart, would be good pap to feed one’s children upon. I may remark, also, that the science of medicine seems to me less indebted for its improvement to the good feelings, than to the pride, jealousy and avarice, and other bad passions of its practitioners. They have, to be sure, the courtesies they cannot well avoid for each other in social intercourse, but their private and professional purpose appears to be to starve each other, to persecute each other to the grave, and dissect each other after death. Broussais whips all the world, and all the world Broussais. A lecture of Lisfranc is a flourish of bludgeons and daggers; he lashes Velpeau and Roux, even stabs Dupuytren in his winding-sheet, and has as many lashes in return. It is surprising that the professors of humanity should be precisely those who have the least of that commodity on hand. The great disputes, just now, amongst the choice professors, are whether one ought to bleed or not bleed in acute fevers;--this in the nineteenth century! and whether one should administer purgatives in typhus and typhoid affections.

M. Boulaud and Chaumel, and somebody else, are gaining famous reputations for this “new practice,” which gained and lost reputations in America forty-six years ago. However, from the facility of dissections, the number of sick in the hospitals, as well as from the eminence of the teachers, and cheapness of education, the School of Medicine of Paris is called very generally the best school of the world. It has at present twenty-three professors, besides honorary professors and assistants, and the number of students is about four thousand five hundred.

I have already said a great deal about these French schools, but I have added another sheet and may as well go on to the end of it. From a bare enumeration, you see that education is here thrown in every one’s face as a thing without price. If books and instruction constitute learning, the most literary people of this earth are assuredly the Parisians. But there is scarce any error to which short-sighted mortals are more subject than referring effects to wrong causes; and I believe a very common application of it is, to attribute a vast number of virtues to our learned institutions which they are not entitled to. I believe we over-rate generally the advantages to be derived from abroad to the prejudice of personal exertions; a source to which, after all, we must resort for at least three-fourths of our acquirements.

Corporations of learning are altogether modern devices, and many nations were eminent in learning before their invention. At the end of the fifteenth century, all science was thought to be shut up in their halls. Only think of ten thousand students in the University of Bologna at once!--and it was not until Lord Bacon and some others had dissipated a little of this error, and taught men to look into nature and experience, and not into the cloisters of the monks, for mental improvement, that any one sought it elsewhere.

But many persons are still wedded to the system, and still think that all that is wanting to the discipline of the mind, is the munificence of government in founding Universities; so some think that building churches is all that is wanting to take one to heaven. There has never been a law-school in Great Britain, and in no country of Europe has there been an equal number of eminent lawyers, and teachers of the law. It is since the Revolution that a law-school exists with any credit in France, and her Hôpitals and d’Aguesseaus, and other distinguished lawyers, are anterior to that date. And what did the old French Academy for learning, which the members would not have done, and done better, in their individual capacities? The unaided works of individuals of the same period are as superior to her united labours, as the poetry of Racine or Boileau to her prize poems, or Johnson’s Dictionary to the Dictionary of the Academy.

When men have been used to see a certain assemblage of objects in connection with learning, to imagine it attainable by any other process is more difficult perhaps than you imagine. When Doctor Bell attempted to introduce writing upon sand into his school at Calcutta, it was opposed by the patrons of the school as a ridiculous innovation, and not one of the regular instructors could be found, who would even aid in making the experiment; all stuck out for the dignity of pot-hooks and goose-quills, and this doctor was forced to train a few of his own pupils to these new functions; which gave him the first idea of his monitorial system of teaching. We perceive daily the inefficiency of our present systems and practices, but we have been set a-going in a certain direction, and we will not depart from it.

It is known that the Athenians were the people of the world, who set the highest value upon learning, and that they had no Universities or Colleges; and that they obtained a literary eminence, which modern nations do not pretend to have equalled, without the instrumentality of such institutions. The profession of teaching amongst them was left open to the competition of professional ability, and the teacher received no salary from government or any corporation; except that the academy was assigned to Plato, as the Lyceum to Aristotle, and the Portico to Zeno, in reward of extraordinary services. But the teachers of that country were such men as Aristotle, Plato, Isocrates, Lysias, Longinus, and Plutarch, who, be it said with much respect for the Cousins and the Villemains, have had no superiors since their times; and the Lyceum, Academy, and Portico, though private schools, and sustained only by the teachers’ merits, and the public patronage, were the noblest institutions of any age or country, not excepting the Sorbonne, and the College de France.

The good which these corporate institutions do, seems to me doubtful; the evil which they do is manifest. I will notice one or two instances; and first, the injury they inflict upon the common or private schools, which covering a greater surface of instruction and communicating the knowledge most useful to mankind, should not hold a second place in the public concern. It is a rule of all countries not to supply the professorships of colleges from the inferior orders of the profession. In other pursuits, promotion is the reward of actual services; from lawyers are judges, from sailors admirals, and from cardinals popes; but in teaching, the very fact of being a teacher acts as a disqualification for any higher distinction.

But otherwise, the evil is still flagrant; for academical honours lie in so narrow a circle, that a small number only can have a hope of reward; and with the most impartial choice equal merit at least must be unjustly rejected. Such honours are taken from a general stock. It is fencing in part of a common; employing the manure upon one spot, which should fertilise the whole field; or it is worse; for, in the exact proportion that the professor rises into distinction, the common teacher is degraded. The one advances, while the other is made to retrograde by the same impetus. Thus in all modern nations the least important individual of a community is the schoolmaster.

Either his talents are not called out by any high motives to exertion; or if his ambition should attempt a rivalry with the institution, having its diplomas, titular distinctions, public honours and endowments, and so many things independent of professional ability to sustain it, what chance has he of success?--That only of the individual who trades against a chartered company: he must expect to be driven from the market. On the other hand the college professor, being without a rival, becomes lazy and inert. Voltaire says, that not one of the French professors, except Rollin, had ever written any thing worthy of remembrance, whilst in Greece, by far the greatest of their distinguished writers had been either public or private instructors.

Another signal mischief of these schools is, the multiplying professional aspirants beyond the necessities of the state, and filling the professions with persons not competent by nature for such pursuits. The ascent to literary and professional honours is exceedingly rugged in all countries, and always crowded to excess with adventurers. The brilliant honours which have attended the fortunes of a few persons here, continually lure others from their useful employments, to try their luck in the great lottery. All are tempted, by a single success, to expect the prize; and the blanks pass for nothing. As soon as any trader or mechanic has grown comfortable by his industry, instead of raising his sons to his own useful employment, he resolves that one, at least, shall be a gentleman, and therefore sends, generally, the most lazy and stupid to college.

The common event is, that the young gentleman having acquired, from his college associations, ambitious desires, and habits altogether adverse to ordinary industry, and finding the avenues to success shut against his little diligence or abilities, is driven to dishonourable expedients for a living; he turns gambler or drunkard: or, at least, if he does not make gunpowder to kill the “King of the French,”[2] he resorts to law, or gospel, or medicine, and gleans the stubble for a miserable subsistence during a long life, (for poor devils won’t die,) or he turns common hack upon the high way of letters, and peddles and hucksters all day, for his meagre provender at night. If you think this a caricature, come and live in the “Latin Quarter,” and you will find it is a handsome enough likeness.

However, I do not mean by all this reasoning, that you are to burn the University of Pennsylvania; but, that a system which cannot be changed, may be improved. I should like to see it confined to the highest possible range of studies, so that a smaller number of persons may be seduced from the laborious pursuits, and those common things, the schoolmasters, may have a wider field of duties, and, consequently, a larger share of the public consideration, and the dignity of human nature. It is silly to talk of the prosperity, especially of a literary employment, where honour and profit are not given to those who administer its duties.

I know two or three members of the Institute, who will be angry if I should tell you not a word of that “_bel etablissement_.” I have read somewhere, that Fulton having sued the protection of this Institute in vain, for a whole year, was afterwards enabled, by an individual, called William Pitt, to bring his valuable invention into the service of mankind; which seems to import, that “forty men” may not have always “_de l’esprit comme quatre_.” Such institutions, when established, like the geographical and other societies, for literary intercourse and correspondence, are of manifest utility; but when they assume judicial powers, and accord the world

“just as much wit,
As Johnson, Fleetwood, Cibber shall think fit;”

standing between the author and the public; or when they become a privileged class, invested with honours, which cannot be attained by others of equal merit, I am a hardened heretic in all my opinions respecting them. I know, moreover, no scheme of patronage that secures such academical honours to the most worthy.

We used to see rejected in the old Academy, such names as Helvetius, Molière, Arnault and Pascal, and the two Rousseaus; and such as Sismondi and Beranger, in the present. Beranger, the poet, the most original and philosophical, one of the most richly endowed with poetic genius of the present age, “who, under the modest title of ‘Songs,’ makes odes worthy the lyre of Pindar, and the lute of Anacreon,” was refused the vacant place of this year, in the _Académie des Belles Lettres_, and it was given to Mr. Somebody, who writes vaudevilles. Broussais, who has left an impress upon his age, by his genius, was rejected in the “_Académie des Sciences_” for a Monsieur Double--and who knows M. Double? And Lisfranc, to whom surgery owes more than to any living Frenchman, was excluded for a Monsieur Breschet--and who is M. Breschet? I might as well ask, who, in the “_Académie de Medecine_,” are Messrs. Bouriat, Chardel, Chereau, Clarion and Cornac.[3]

The students pass their nine years here upon Latin, as in America, and by nearly the same processes; that is, the children are drilled as with us upon the studies of mature age, and improve their memories without much troubling the other faculties. A boy for instance, at ten and twelve years, is made to strain after the beauties of Cicero and Horace, which are conceivable only by a well-cultivated manhood; and in the elementary schools, babies are taught, exactly as in Philadelphia, all the incomprehensible nonsense of the grammars. Any child here can tell you why a verb is “active, passive, and neuter,” and how the action must pass from the agent to the object, to make it “transitive;” and they study reading and punctuation on the “Beauties of the Classics,” as we do:--“_vital spark_,” (a comma,) “_Heavenly flame_,” (a semicolon;)--and the little things are taught to “Hic and Hac,” at a public examination to please Mrs. Quickly just as with us. Paris is, also, full of instructors, calling themselves Professors, who have introduced all the different ways of turning dunces into wits, in six lessons, which are practised so successfully in Philadelphia; and they have tapestried every street with their “new systems,” under the very nose of the Minister of Public Instruction. In the chamber adjoining mine is a young Englishman, just arrived, without a knowledge of French, to a course of medical study; he has taken a master, a venerable and noisy old man, who humbly conceives that the whole English nation is stupid, because this youth cannot pronounce _vertu_. He made, this morning, fifty persevering efforts, each louder than the last, and still it was _verthu_. The old gentleman sat afterwards in my room awhile, quite meditative, and at length said, in a very feeling manner:--“I believe the English nation is fool!”--I know another teacher, an Englishman, who retaliates upon the French the violence done his countrymen. He begins by dislocating a Frenchman’s jaws. His “system” is to commence with the difficulties, and all the rest, he says, is “down hill.” So he has a little book of phrases, “made hard for beginners,” as follows:--“_I snuff Scotch snuff, my wife snuffs Scotch snuff_.”--“_A lump of red leather, and a red leather lump_,” &c. The scholar, having overcome these preparatory difficulties, takes up Sterne’s sentimental journey. It is, he says, as one who learns to run, having put on leaden shoes: when relieved from the weight he can almost fly.--I verily believe that the greatest fools, all over the world, are those who communicate knowledge; as the greatest knaves are usually those who teach men to be honest.--_Je ne sais si je m’explique._

In the Parisian schools there is at present no corporal punishment. The student used to be flogged in these same Halls till there were no more birches.--Solomon may say what he pleases, I will not have my children whipped. The only natural authority for whipping, is in the parent, and it cannot be safely delegated to another. The discipline here is every where good.

The professors of Paris are men of the world, and mix in its pleasures. They have nothing in their air of awkward timidity, or haughty arrogance, or ridiculous pedantry--the faults often of those who live apart from fashionable society. They are as well bred as if there were no scholars at all. And they do not set them up here as examples to other men, or make them die, as with us, martyrs to virtue, at the rate of five hundred dollars a-year, and find themselves.--I know several of these professors, and one intimately; he attends to both the moral and intellectual improvement of his pupils, and is most assiduous in his duties. Moreover, he has three rooms in different parts of this “Latin Quarter,” in one of which he has a very pretty little mistress, highly cultivated in music and letters; in another he resides with his books, and has frequent conversations with venerable men about the best systems of education; the third he keeps for occasional adventures. He is much esteemed, and would not be less were I to publish his name.

My opinion is, that America has little to learn from Europe on the subject of schools; she wants but a wise and diligent application of the knowledge she already possesses, and which future experience may suggest; she runs at least as much risk of being led astray by European errors, as enlightened by European wisdom. The better scholarship of Europe, is not attributable to the better organisation of her schools.

I am aware there are opinions and doctrines in this letter which are not orthodox, but you did not ask me to write after other men’s opinions, but my own. On education the sentiments of men are yet unfortunately unsettled, and the field is open for speculation. With great respect, I remain your very humble servant.