Such a life, this constant change of position, profession, career, taste, patron, and residence, bore a strong resemblance to what we should nowadays call a Bohemian life; and everything shows that Rabelais’ habits, without being scandalous, were not more regular or more dignified than his condition in the world. Had we no precise and personal information about him in this respect, still his literary work, _Gargantua and Pantagruel,_ would not leave us in any doubt: there is no printed book, sketch, conversation, or story, which is more coarse and cynical, and which testifies, whether as regards the author or the public for whom the work is intended, to a more complete and habitual dissoluteness in thought, morals, and language. There is certainly no ground for wondering that the Sorbonne, in proceeding against the _Vie tres-horrifique du grand Gargantua, pere de Pantagruel,_ should have described it as “an obscene tale;” and the whole part of Panurge, the brilliant talker of the tale, “Take him for all in all the best boy in the world,” fully justifies the Sorbonne. But, by way of striking contrast, at the same time that the works of Rabelais attest the irregularity of men’s lives and minds, they also reveal the great travail that is going on and the great progress that has already been made in the intellectual condition of his day, in the influence of natural and legitimate feelings, and in the appreciation of men’s mutual rights and duties. Sixty-two years ago M. Guizot published, in a periodical collection entitled _Annales de l’Education,_ a Study of Rabelais’ ideas compared with the practice and routine of his day in respect of Education; an important question in the sixteenth as it is in the nineteenth century. It will be well to quote here from that Study certain fragments which will give some notion of what new ideas and tendencies were making their way into the social life of France, and were coincident with that great religious and political ferment which was destined to reach bursting-point in the reign of Francis I., and to influence for nearly a century the fortunes of France.