plishment lay in Carnot's project of 1848; the idea stifled in 1850 by the deadliest of reactions; valiantly resuscitated by M. Duruy, but in vain; lovingly elaborated by M. Jules Simon and always condemned to wait, until the final advent of the republic compelled every one to see clearly that to make primary education compulsory was the necessary guaranty of social order and the recovery of the country."

The three cardinal points of the reform in France are that primary education should be compulsory, free, and secular. The historical development, however, did not exactly follow the logical. If the state demands the first, it must grant the other two. We can not say to a man "Take this or we'll punish you," and then claim payment for the gift; we must in addition make the gift good, and therefore carefully train the teacher. Since it is impossible in every district to make a separate school for each separate religious body, the teaching in the compulsory school must be secular. This does not exclude morality, which is as necessary to the state as salt is to the sea. Religion, the private concern of each individual, belongs to the clergy and the family.

Not only has M. Ferry shown the antithesis "either confessional religion or atheism" to be false, but he has restored to the teacher the fairest portion of his task.

What answer has the country made to this puissant impulsion from above? What will be the outcome of this energy and passion that we feel moving and surging under the formal covering of law? The answer lies in the future, but the spring is so full of vigorous shoots that we may fairly make a hopeful forecast for the autumn.

We need not hesitate for lack of material. The Government seems only too eager to supply the means for following and criticising its acts. The six volumes of the Recueil des monographies pédagogiques publiées à l'occasion de l'exposition universelle de 1889 form the testament of the belief of the Government in education. The sixty monographs cover a wide range of history, administration, and method. That part of education which can be embodied in visible form, was shown in bewildering wealth at the exhibition. The progress of pedagogic science, forever making and never made, was provided for by two congresses, one covering primary education and the other secondary and higher education. Indeed, it rained congresses: Physical exercise in education, technical education for commerce and industry, bibliography of mathematical sciences, chemistry, physiological psychology, geography, etc.

We shall endeavor to supplement an account of the two congresses and the exhibition specially affecting education, with such other matters as may be of interest to teachers. In the hope of keeping the account clear, the order of time in which the various educational questions were discussed has been neglected.

SECTION II.-THE SORBONNE.

The culminating point of the fruitful coöperation of state and city is to be found in the palatial edifice of the new Sorbonne, solemnly inaug. urated by the President of the Republic on August 5. The impressive ceremony will remain vivid in the memories of all who were fortunate enough to be present.

Robert de Sorbon, born in the first year of the thirteenth century, the son of "a father and mother of low condition," obtained from Louis IX in 1250 or 1256 the gift of a house in which to lodge his pauvres escholiers while they received a free education from various groups of "secular ecclesiastics."

The great reconstruction by Richelieu has been surpassed in grandeur by the new buildings, of which the foundation stone was laid only four years ago. When completed the Sorbonne will cover about 62 acres. It will be the home of the Academy of Paris, the faculty of letters and the faculty of sciences.

The story of the many delays and sacrifices necessary to carry on the great work may be found in the last volume of M. Gréard's Education et instruction.

The enormous amphitheater, capable of seating 3,000 persons, was filled to overflowing by the élite of France, the strangers who had come to take part in the congresses on education, the French students and their guests.

This human hemicycle of young life fringed the dense mass in the center of men who had made their mark in life. The youth of the world was there and it seemed as if the university of the thirteenth century had come back to witness its second birth. The nations were there linked in a common bond as students and seekers after truth. What living breath had changed an administrative machine, set and kept in motion by the omnipotence of the state, but destined only to imprint an official hall-mark on intellectual goods, into a living personality? The place of the impalpable University of France will be taken by local flesh and blood at Paris, at Lyons, at Bordeaux; the virtues that spring out of corporate life will be found again. As science is common to the whole world this corporate life among students from all countries will tend to rise higher and higher towards the clear uplands of truth.

The president on his arrival was received by M. Armand Fallières, the minister of public education and the fine arts, M. Gréard, the vicerector of the Academy of Paris, and M. Liard, the director of higher education.

The whole assembly stood while the band played the Marseillaise. At the wish of the students it was given a second time and they sang it while the foreign banners were waved to salute the French.

The keynote of the opening address of M. Gréard* was the praise of the University of Paris, Parisius sine pari. Students came from all parts of Europe because there "the love of truth was the sole rule known." The love of truth, what higher aim can any teaching body put before itself? Since Spinoza claimed the libertas philosophandi is any other possible? If we permit any barrier whatever to free investigation, we acquiesce in closing up one of the avenues to truth.

As though to remind the auditory that the Sorbonne was destined for the severe study of science M. Gréard's discourse was followed by a learned account, from M. Hermite, of the works of the various mathematical professors at the Sorbonne since 1808.

Next came M. Chautemps, the president of the Paris municipal council, who, in the course of his speech, said: "To affirm the interest taken in the cause of higher education by the representatives of the people of Paris would be superfluous; for that purpose the sacrifices agreed to for the reconstruction of the Sorbonne are eloquent; they bear witness that in our eyes the power and prosperity of a country are intimately bound up with the life it makes possible for its scholars, its writers, its artists, and that the money devoted to the development of higher studies is transmuted not only into industrial progress, but also into an elevation of the moral and intellectual standard of the whole nation, multiplying a hundred fold the value of each individual and giving a nation the superiority over its rivals."

He was followed by M. Fallières, who saw in the devotion of the republic to education its surest claim to the gratitude of posterity. The French democracy, scarcely free and mistress of itself, recognized with a sure instinct a great regenerative force in science. Eager as it ought to be for the education of the people, it saw that primary instruction was but a canal to distribute the waters that come from a higher source, and that the higher the source was the further and deeper would the waters spread and penetrate.

After touching on the history of the universities since the revolution and noting the lack of coherence among the different faculties, the speaker made an eloquent appeal to the young students to put an end to quarrels and divisions and in a higher region of thought and action to find common ground in a common love for truth and country.

After the ceremony the students, grouped in nations, defiled before the president at the entrance of the Sorbonne.†

*Speaking of M. Gréard, it may be noted here that among his many services perhaps the importation of literary style into works on pedagogy may be the most farreaching in its consequences; when the science of education is made readable, the outer world will be won.

For the full text of the speeches of MM. Gréard, Chautemps, and Fallières see the Bulletin administratif du ministère de l'instruction publique, August 10, 1889.

SECTION III.-THE CONGRESS OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION. Next day M. Gréard opened the Congress on Secondary and Higher Education and a few days later the one on Primary Education.

The success and smoothness of both must be largely attributed to the admirable way in which the preliminaries had been arranged and the ground cleared.

An order of December 11, 1888, nominated the commission for primary education. M. Gréard was chosen president, MM. Buisson and Ollendorff the vice-presidents, and M. Lenient, assisted by M. Defodon, the secretaries. The three questions chosen for discussion were

(1) In what form and to what extent can professional instruction (agricultural, industrial, commercial) be given in elementary and higher primary schools and in training colleges?

(2) What share of primary education ought to be intrusted to women as teachers, head mistresses, and inspectresses?

(3) The functions and organization of practicing schools attached to training colleges and similar institutions.

In answer to these questions memoirs were sent in to the committee of organization from all parts of the world. Happily they were written by teachers and professors in actual practice and displayed that pecul iar innerness which can be shown only in those subjects to which a man devotes his life. No science has suffered more than pedagogy from the amateur, who seems to think that interest, unsupported either by deep study or practical experience, is a sufficient excuse for publishing his half-digested ideas.

With great skill the committee had analyzed these memoirs into a series of definitions and propositions, those on the question of practic. ing schools being the most numerous. Fuller details may be found in fascicule 91 of the publications of the Musée pédagogique, entitled Congrès international de l'enseignement primaire, Analyse des mémoires.

Probably no country has ever had so representative a congress; indeed, it would be more correct to call it a pedagogic parliament. Six hundred primary teachers were elected by their colleagues, not counting the delegates of the heads of the higher primary schools and training colleges. Each canton sent up one member to form a second elective body for the department, the member for the latter being determined by the total number of teachers in actual work.

A curious feature of the Paris press was the complete absence in the daily papers of any report or account of the debates in the congress.

On Sunday evening, August 11, at 9, M. Fallières gave a "lunch d'honneur" to the delegates. Next Monday at 10 the members to the number of sixteen hundred assembled in the great amphitheater of the Sorbonne. The minister then made the following speech:

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I was unwilling to leave to another the honor of receiving you. You have answered our invitation. Welcome to Paris, brilliant with the fêtes in honor of the French Revolution and the splendors of the universal exhibi4

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tion; to Paris, where you will hear every language, where you will see every kind of dress, where the marvels of art, of industry, of science from all countries of the world will challenge your attention and your admiration. Welcome to the Sorbonne, where a few days ago under the presidency of the head of the state an unforgettable ceremony inaugurated the new era of higher education.

Your congress succeeds others that have surpassed our expectations, not only by the members who have taken part in them, but also by the value of their labors, the brilliancy of their discussions, the wealth of information given, the importance of the decisions arrived at, and the direction given to public opinion. Your congress in its turn will certainly be neither less brilliant nor less fruitful. I congratulate the committee of organization on the guaranties for success which your congress shows. We recognize the hand of the eminent man who was called some years ago in this very place "the first teacher in France."

There have been many pedagogic reunions, but yours differs in several points from the preceding. At the conferences of 1878 you listened but did not speak. There were others afterwards at which the members spoke, discussed, and voted. But one of them was comprised entirely of inspectors and the heads of training colleges. In the other only primary teachers took part. Moreover, all of them were exclusively French.

Then came the congress at Havre; the doors were opened to representatives of foreign education. But there was no rule to settle either the number or the selection of the members. More than once during the labors of the congress the inequality of the representation was cause for regret. The experience of the past has not been without profit for you, and the better arrangements will be of considerable advantage to all. In this meeting all kinds and degrees of primary education, public or private, teaching or administrative, elementary and higher primary schools, from the village school to Fontenay and St. Cloud are represented.

The number of delegates has been exactly proportioned to the number of schools represented. For the second time we are happy to see among us accredited representatives of pedagogy abroad. They have come from different parts of the world, and their presence here is an honor to us, and I have the delight of addressing to them the brotherly greeting of France.

Under such conditions, who can doubt of the success of our congress?

The very nature of the questions to be discussed is calculated to enhance the brilliancy of their discussion.

At first sight it seems as if we were in presence of three technical questions somewhat narrow and dry. But you are under no delusion, you know what they contain; you soon saw that they were among the most delicate, the most living, so to speak, of the problems of popular education.

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As to technical education-you are going to debate the question that stands on the order of the day in all countries: To what ought primary education to lead? How can ve help it to form not half-scholars or semi-bachelors, but useful workers for the country, men well armed for the battle of life? By what means can the school turn out first-class workmen, intelligent and well-instructed agriculturists, tradesmen trained and prudent? What form, in short, ought we to give to primary education to make it fruitful, practical, useful both to the individual and to the community? Questions enough to strongly excite men's minds. They could not be treated by an assembly more competent than this.

In the second place you will have to discuss the role of women in teaching and administration; a still more delicate and attractive question, as the solutions already arrived at differ in the various countries. The debate can not lack interest. The United States, for example, throw open the whole of education, even that of boys and young people, at least in certain of the towns, to women; whereas in the countries of central and northern Europe everything is confined to men, even the education of girls. Finally, under the name of practising schools you have to deal