The general tendency of the training given in the _lycee_ has been towards the suppression of originality. There seems to have grown up in the mind of the authorities an impression that the only means of keeping the youth of France under proper control is by holding them down with an iron grip, not merely during the hours of work but during recreation also. This may have been necessitated by a certain lack of discipline in the earliest years of life, young children being allowed to have their own way to an altogether undesirable extent. As soon as they are old enough the boys, having, as a rule, begun to be a source of much trouble in the home, are sent to school. If their parents are able to afford the fees, the gates of the _lycee_ soon close upon their days of wilfulness and disobedience. In place of the home life and the feminine influence with which they have been familiar, they are confronted with a discipline of semi-military severity. Games are not allowed, and in the hours of recreation in walled playgrounds of a generally forbidding order, walking and talking alone are permitted. Here, as in the class-room, the boys are perpetually under the eyes of the _pion_, whose duties are restricted entirely to the maintenance of order. Owing to suppression in natural directions, it is not surprising if the minds of the boys should turn into the unhealthy directions of intrigue and pernicious literature. M. Demolins, who a few years ago tried the experiment of running his school on English lines, has found the results excellent. So greatly appreciated are his efforts to abolish the bad features of the _lycee_ that he is unable to meet the demand on the capacity of his buildings. He is of opinion that the Anglo-Saxon is superior to the French because of the better training given at school, discouragement of initiative and suppression of independence being the chief features of the schools of his own country, while the Anglo-Saxon allows boys a freedom which develops self-reliance and individuality. "Every one knows our dreadful college," writes M. Demolins, "with its much too long classes and studies, its recreations far too short and without exercise, its prison walks a monotonous going and coming between high heart-breaking walls, and then every Sunday and Thursday the military promenade in rank, the exercise of old men, not of youth." The boarder at the _lycee_, of course, feels the harshness of the regime to a degree that the day-boy never experiences, home hours mitigating the severity of the long working day.