Very much stress is laid on the examinations, which commence at the age of fifteen or sixteen, when the _lycee_ and college training terminates. The system since 1902 has consisted of a period of seven years divided into two parts. At the expiry of the first, which consists of four years, the pupil can choose one of four courses. The first is Latin and Greek, the second Latin and sciences, the third Latin and modern languages, and the fourth sciences and modern languages. Having passed three years on one of these courses, he should be ready for the two examinations by which he can obtain the degree known as the _Baccalaureat de l'enseignement_. This is the outer gateway to be passed through before the scholar can enter the citadels of any of the great professions, such as law, letters, medicine, or Protestant theology. The State provides the higher education in its universities and in its specialised higher schools, and since 1875 private individuals and bodies, so long as they are not clerical, have been permitted to take part in the advanced educational work of the country, but the State faculties alone have the power to confer degrees. The five classes of faculties associated with the various universities confer degrees in law, science, medicine, letters, and Protestant theology. [Illustration: LE PUY-EN-VELAY IN THE AUVERGNE COUNTRY.] The keystone of the arch of learning in France is the _Institut de France_. It embodies the five great academies of science and literature, but omits that of medicine, which stands apart. In England some social importance attaches to a man on account of his having been educated at Eton or Harrow and having afterwards taken a degree at one of the two mother universities, irrespective of his having shown himself an indifferent scholar, but south of the Channel the scene of a man's education counts for naught in later life. The moral and social sides of the English system would seem to have crowded out to a great extent the intellectual side, which, with the essentially practical people of France, forms the whole structure. From the teacher in the primary school to the heads of the universities no effort is made to influence character: "As soon as the student leaves the lecture hall he is free to return to the niche he has constituted for himself, to its probable triviality and its possible grossness, or to the vulgar pleasures of the town.... We lose the advantage of that peculiar monastic, thoughtful life which is offered to the young Englishman."[3] [3] W. L. George.