and habits of study we are about to describe. This will be best understood by a summary of a day's work.

The students are summoned to rise at half-past five, have to answer the roll-call at six, from six to eight are to occupy themselves in study, and at eight they go to breakfast. On any morning except Wednesday, at half-past eight, we should find the whole of the new admission assembled in an amphitheater, permanent seats in which are assigned to them by lot, and thus placed they receive a lecture from a professor, rough notes of which they are expected to take while it goes on. The first half hour of the hour and a half assigned to each lecture is occupied with questions put by the professor relating to the previous lecture. A name is drawn by lot, the student on whom the lot falls is called up to the blackboard at which the professor stands, and is required to work a problem and answer questions. The lecture concluded, the pupils are conducted to the salles d'étude, which have just been described, where they are to study. Here for one hour they devote themselves to completing and writing out in full the notes of the lecture they have just heard. The professor and his assistants, the répétiteurs, are expected to follow and make a circuit through the corridors, to give an opportunity to ask for information on any difficult points in the lecture. A lithographed summary of the substance of the lecture, extending perhaps to two octavo pages, is also furnished to each studying room for the use of its pupils.

The lecture, as we have said, commences at half-past eight o'clock; it lasts an hour and a half; the hour of writing up the notes brings us to eleven. The young men are now relieved by a change of occupation, and employ themselves (still in their places in the rooms of study) at drawing. A certain number, detached from the rest, are sent to the physical and chemical laboratories. The rotation is such as to admit each student once a month to two or three hours' work at a furnace for chemistry, and once in two months to make experiments in electricity, or other similar subjects. In this way, either at their drawing or in the laboratories, they spend three hours, and at two o'clock go to their dinner in the refectories below, and after dinner are free to amuse themselves in the court-yard, the library, the fencing and the billiard rooms, till five. At five they return to the studying rooms, and for two hours, on Mondays and Fridays, they may employ themselves on any work they please (itude libre ;) on Tuesday there is a lecture in French literature, and on Thursday in German; at seven o'clock they commence a lesson, which lasts till nine, in landscape and figure drawing, or they

do exercises in French writing or in German; at nine they go down to supper; at half-past nine they have to answer to a roll-call in their bedrooms, and at ten all the lights are put out.

Wednesday is a half-holiday, and the pupils are allowed to leave the school after two o'clock, and be absent till ten at night. The morning is occupied either in study, at the pleasure of the students, or in set exercises till eleven, when there is a lecture of one hour and a half, followed, as usual, by an hour of special study on the subject of the lecture. On Sunday they are allowed to be absent almost the whole day till ten P. M. There is no chapel, and apparently no common religious observance of any kind in the school.

Such is a general sketch of the ordinary employment of the day; a couple of hours of preparatory study before breakfast, a lecture on the differential calculus, on descriptive geometry, on chemistry, or natural philosophy, followed by an hour's work at notes; scientific drawing till dinner; recreation; and general study, or some lighter lecture in the evening. Were we merely to count the hours, we should find a result of eleven or eleven and a half hours of work for every day but Wednesday, and of seven and a half hours for that day. It is to be presumed, however, that though absolute idleness, sleeping, or reading any book not authorized for purposes of study, is strictly prohibited, and when detected, punished, nevertheless the strain on the attention during the hours of drawing and the lectures of the evening is by no means extreme. Landscape and figure drawing, the lecture in French literature, and probably that in German, may fairly be regarded as something like recreation. Such, at least, was the account given us of the lectures on literary subjects, and it agrees with the indifference to literature which marks the school. Of wholesome out-of-door recreation, there certainly seems to be a considerable want. There is nothing either of the English love of games, or of the skillful athletic gymnastics of the German schools.

The method of teaching is peculiar. The plan by which a vast number of students are collected as auditors of professorial lectures is one pursued in many academical institutions, at the Scotch universities, and in Germany. Large classes attend the lectures in Greek, in Latin, and in mathematics at Glasgow; they listen to the professor's explanations, take notes, are occasionally questioned, and do all the harder work in their private lodgings. Such a system of course deserves in the fullest sense the epithet of voluntary; a diligent student may make much of it; but there is nothing to compel an idle one to give any attention.

It seems to have been one especial object pursued in the Polytechnic to give to this plan of instruction, so lax in itself, the utmost possible stringency, and to accumulate upon it every attainable subsidiary appliance, every available safeguard against idleness. Questions are expressly put viva voce by the professor before his lecture; there is a subsequent hour of study devoted to the subject; there is the opportunity for explanation to individual students; the exaction of notes written out in full form; the professor also gives exercises to the students to write during their hours of general study, which he examines, and marks; general vivâ voce examinations (interrogations générales,) conducted by the professors and répétiteurs, follow the termination of cach course of lectures; and lastly, one of the most important and peculiar parts of the method, we have what are called the interrogations particulières. After every five or six lectures in each subject, each student is called up for special questioning by one of the répétiteurs. The rooms in which these continual examinations are held have been described. They occupy one entire story of the building; each holds about six or eight pupils, with the répétiteurs. Every evening, except Wednesday, they are filled with these little classes, and busy with these close and personal questionings. A brief notice, at the utmost of twenty-four hours, is served upon the students who are thus to be called up. Generally, after they have had a certain number of lectures, they may expect that their time is at hand, but the precise hour of the summons can not be counted upon. The scheme is continually varied, and it defies, we are told, the efforts of the ablest young analysts to detect the law which it follows.

It will be seen at once that such a system, where, though nominally professorial, so little is left to the student's own voluntary action, where the ordinary study and reading, as it is called in our English universities (here such an expression is unknown) is subjected to such unceasing superintendence and surveillance, and to so much careful assistance, requires an immense staff of teachers. At the Polytechnic, for a maximum of 350 pupils, a body of fifteen professors and twenty-four répétiteurs, are employed, all solely in actual instruction, and in no way burdened with any part of the charge of the discipline or the finance, or even with the great yearly examinations for the passage from the first to the second division, and for the entrance to the public services.

With a provision of one instructor to every eight students, it is probable that in England we should avoid any system of large classes, from the fear of the inferior pupils being unable to keep

pace with the more advanced. We should have numerous small classes, and should endeavor, above all things, to obtain the advantage of equality of attainment in the pupils composing them.

The French, on the other hand, make it their first object to secure one able principal teacher in each subject, a professor whom they burden with very few lectures. And to meet the educational difficulty thus created, to keep the whole large class of listeners up to the prescribed point, they call in this numerous and busily employed corps of assistants to repeat, to go over the professor's work afresh, to whip in, as it were, the stragglers and hurry up the loiterers. Certainly, one would think, a difficult task with a class of 170 freshmen in such work as the integral and differential calculus. It is one, however, in which they are aided by a stimulus which evidently acts most powerfully on the students of the Polytechnic School. During the two years of their stay, the prospect of their final admission to the public services can rarely be absent from the thoughts even of the least energetic and forethinking of the young men. Upon their place in the last class list will depend their fortune for life. A high position will secure them not only reputation, but the certainty of lucrative employment; will put it in their power to select which service they please, and in whichever they choose will secure them favorable notice. Let it be remembered that fifty-three of these one hundred and seventy are free scholars, born of parents too poor to pay 40l. a year for their instruction, to whom industry must be at all times a necessity, and industry during their two years at the Polytechnic the best conceivable expenditure, the most certainly remunerative investment of their pains and labor. The place on the final class list is obviously the prize for which this race of two years' length has to be run. What is it determines that place? Not by any means a final struggle before the winning-post, but steady effort and diligence from first to last throughout the course. For the order of the class list is not solely determined by success in the examination after which it is drawn up, but by the result of previous trials and previous work during the whole stay at the school.

For, during the whole time, every written exercise set by the professor, every drawing, the result of every interrogation particulière by the répétiteurs, and of each general interrogation by the professors and répétiteurs, is carefully marked, and a credit placed according to the name of the student and reserved for his benefit in the last general account. The marks obtained in the examination which closes the first year of study form a large element

in this last calculation. It had been found that the work of the first year was often neglected: the evil was quickly remedied by this expedient. The student, it would seem, must feel that he is gaining or losing in his banking account, so to call it, by every day's work; every portion of his studies will tell directly for or against him in the final competition, upon which so much depends.

Such is the powerful mechanism by which the French nation forces out of the mass of boys attending their ordinary schools the talent and the science which they need for their civil and military services. The efforts made for admission to this great scientific school of the public services, the struggle for the first places at the exit from it, must be more than enough, it is thought, to establish the habits of hard work, to accumulate the information and attainment, and almost to create the ability which the nation requires for the general good.

We may now follow the student through his course of two years' study. The first year's work may be mainly divided into three portions of unequal length; two of them of about four months each (with an additional fortnight of private study and examination,) are mainly given to hard lecturing, whilst the third portion of two months is devoted to private study and to the examinations.

In accordance with this arrangement of the year, the four hardest subjects are thus distributed. Analysis and descriptive geometry, the staple work of the school-its Latin, as M. de Barante called it-come in the first four months; there is then a pause for private study and a general examination in these two subjects (interrogations générales as distinct from the interrogations particulières of the répétiteurs.) This brings us to the middle of March. Analysis and geometry are then laid aside for the rest of the year, and for the next portion of four months the pupils work at mechanics and geodesy, private study and a general examination completing this course also. Important lectures on physics and chemistry run on during both these periods, and are similarly closed by private study and a general examination. The less telling evening classes of French literature and German end at the beginning of June, and landscape and figure drawing only last half the year. It may be observed also, that, as a general rule, there is on each day one, and only one, really difficult lecture. This is immediately preceded and followed by private study, but then comes something lighter, as a. relief, such as drawing or work in the laboratories.

The chief feature in the third portion of the year is the complete break in the lectures for general private study (étude libre,) a mouth