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.