In addition to these sources of knowledge, there are several literary institutions, called, when I first came here, “_des Lycées_, or _Lyceums_,” but which, in consequence of the national colleges lately established having taken that name, have changed theirs, and assumed the appellation of “_des Athénées_.” The most distinguished of these, “le Lycée,” (or, according to its new title, “l’Athénée,”), “republicain,” has been the principal source of my amusement at Paris. It consists of annual subscribers, who, for the moderate sum of four _louis_, enjoy all its benefits. The society has a large floor, or apartment, situate near the “Palais Royal,” (in a street called by its name); and it is open the whole of every day for the use of the subscribers. There is a small library, where all the periodical publications and newspapers are taken in; and while three or four rooms are appropriated to conversation, one is devoted to reading, and profound silence is there ordered and maintained. In addition to these, there is an excellent lecture room, with all the necessary apparatus for experiments, in which the ablest men in France appear as professors. The subject of the lectures, which are regularly given, always twice, and frequently three times, in the course of the day, are literature, the sciences, and modern languages. When I add, that _Fourcroy_ takes the chymical department, that _Cuvier_ reads on natural history, and that _la Harpe_, till banished by the government, was the professor of literature, you will readily allow, that no establishment can be better organized. Besides these, “_Hassenfratz_” gives very good lectures on agriculture, and the studies connected with that science. “_Sué_,” as an anatomist, is justly celebrated; and the other professors, in their different lines, prove themselves well qualified for the tasks assigned them. With “_Fourcroy_,” and “_Cuvier_,” I was particularly delighted; and it is impossible, without having heard them, to form an idea of the clearness and eloquence with which they explain the subjects of their respective departments. As to “_la Harpe_” I must confess, I was not a little disappointed. From his great renown, and from the encomiums past on him, in early life, by _Voltaire_, I expected to have been at once pleased, instructed, and surprised. In these hopes I was strongly encouraged by the manner in which his lectures were spoken, of at Paris, and by the crowds which flocked to the “_Lycée_,” whenever it was his turn to fill the chair. Dreadful was my disappointment, when, at last, I heard him. _Pompignan_, _la Motte_, _Fontenelle_, and some other authors of that stamp, were the subjects of his discourses; and, beginning with telling us that these writers were either entirely forgotten, or deserved to be so, he continued, for whole days together, to drag their ghosts before his audience, whom he seemed to convert into a “_tribunal révolutionaire_” of criticism, and to