dom in the collèges till they take their first degree, when they are suddenly thrown into a state of uncontrolled licence, so the girls are kept, either at home or en pension, in a position of domestic or scholastic surveillance of a very strict and unconfiding kind, till the time comes for them to be married; and marriage is to them what the bachelor's degree at the University is to their brothers; it opens the door to unrestrained liberty, for which their previous training has generally as little fitted them, as the college education has qualified their brothers for the freedom of the life of a Parisian student either of medicine or of law. Thus, instead of acting upon them as a holy restraint, marriage is often their emancipation from all restraint: and no wonder, since it has lost all the sacredness of its character in the public eye; and though the Church teaches that it is a sacrament, yet, since the administration of it, without the previous consent and agency of the State, is punished by the State as an offence against the law, its sacramental character is obliterated and forgotten.

Tuesday, August 27.-Went early this morning to the Rue des Postes, hoping to find the Père Ravignan, whose book, "On the Institution of the Jesuits, by a Jesuit," mentioned above, I have just read with great interest. The preparatory discipline and study, as he describes it, of the Jesuits-pursued for nineteen years without intermission-is indeed wonder

ful, and, together with the principle of implicit obedience, seems to be the great secret of their power. They boast that, while all other religious orders have become lax in course of time, and have required reforms to reinvigorate them, this has not been the case with the Jesuits.

The Père de Ravignan was not at home, and was preparing to leave Paris to-morrow. I walked into the Ecole de Droit, where an examination was going on vivá voce; there were four students, in black gowns, and long bands, and two professors also in academical dress, with law-books on a table before them. The questions proposed to the examinees were on the rights of fathers, of husbands, &c., as property of children, wives, &c. The examinationroom was small and ill-kept, but the academic costume gave the proceeding a certain degree of dignity, which could not be said of three other examinations which I attended on this and the next day.

The first of these was an examination at the Sorbonne, or chef lieu of the University, for the honour of agrégation, as it is called (this word is usually spelt in French with one g, I know not why), and the young men who are examined are candidates for the distinction as well as emolument of becoming agrégés of the University. If, in our English Universities, we had fellowships, not in private colleges, but in the University, we should have something corre

spondent to these places of agrégés; and if we had annual examinations in the University for these places, we should have something like this concours d'agrégation of which I am speaking. In the present year there are forty-one vacancies, and 285 candidates, of which nineteen are for philosophy, thirtyeight mathematics, twenty-four physics, twenty-five history, fifty-two literature, 127 grammar. Of these 285 candidates for agrégation, twenty-seven belong to the école normale, 171 are tutors or professors in the Parisian colleges, others are maîtres d'études, or surveillans, in these establishments.

The examinations for agrégation which I attended -being the only ones which are going on this weekwere in philosophy and mathematics. The former I visited twice. The first time, I found two youths about twenty-one years of age standing opposite to one another, one on one side of a table, and one on the other; these were two of the candidates. There were many spectators present, sitting on benches rising one above another; the candidates were between the audience and the examiners, who were seated behind the table on a platform somewhat raised above the floor. The principal examiner was the celebrated M. Cousin, who occupied the centre ; on his right and left sat four other examiners, Messrs. Garnier, Simon, Franck, Jacques: neither examiners nor candidates wore any academic dress.

The question proposed for examination was a

comparison of the Platonic and Aristotelian doctrine concerning ideas. One of the two competitors pleaded the cause of Plato, the other that of Aristotle. The discussion (in French) was sustained on both sides with a good deal of dexterity and fluency of language. The examiners did not interfere for the sake of moderating or guiding the disputation.

The following day I attended the same Philosophy School, as we should call it. There were the same examiners as before, but only one candidate at the table. M. Cousin opened the proceedings by announcing to the candidate qu'il avait la parole, as the expression is, "to give a lecture on the nature and uses of logic;" adding, that he might "take two or three minutes to consider the subject—and then begin." So accordingly the youth did he was about twenty years of age-and after a very short pause he launched forth into a soliloquy, more than three-quarters of an hour long, with scarcely any pause or intermission of any kind; but it was concerning any thing else rather than about logic: he gave us an exordium about metaphysics, and their uses, and the true principles of philosophizing; and then a little episode to prove that men might arrive at something like truth in their reasonings, although it could not be denied that our senses were very liable to deceive us; and then came a refutation of the system of Kant.

The examiners did not exercise any control over

his argument, or remind him that they had proposed a certain subject, and that he was discussing a different one; however, they treated his lecture with not much more respect than he did their subject; for M. Cousin, after having occupied himself with correcting a proof-sheet, left the room; another examiner was writing letters; so that the poor youth was left to say out his say unregarded, like a clock striking in an empty church.

The mathematical examination presented a livelier scene. It was held in an upstairs room in the same building, the Sorbonne; the philosophical being on the ground-floor. The mathematical examiners were sitting at a long table, their faces turned to the spectators, with the exception of one examiner, who took the most active part in the examination. He sat with his back to us. At one end of the table was a large black board, and the examinee standing at it with chalk in his hand, working out questions in the integral calculus, vivá voce, and almost at every step interrupted by interrogatories, accompanied with lively gesticulation, from the last mentioned examiner, to which he replied in a very vivacious manner. There was nothing like dignity on the part of the examiner, nor respect on that of the examinee. The examination was rather like a verbal altercation between two equals, than between teacher and scholar; indeed the executive of the University does not seem