On our way we saw several persons carrying the dead body of General d’Estaing,[1] who had just been shot by General Regnier[1] in a duel. The cause of the quarrel arose in Egypt, where both officers served with distinction. D’Estaing was an able man, and is much regretted; but Regnier is possessed of very splendid abilities and an acute and penetrating genius, as is shown in the admirable account he has sent the Agricultural Society concerning the state of agriculture in Egypt. This unfortunate affair does not excite the sensation here that the death of a fighting booby does in London. Duelling is by no means so frequent as under the Monarchy, the point of honour being little understood by the Republican nobles. XXV ESTABLISHMENTS FOR PUBLIC INSTRUCTIONS. THE MILITARY SCHOOL. THE CHAMPS DE MARS. THE GOBELIN MANUFACTORY. THE HÔTEL DE VILLE AND THE GARDE MEUBLE In old France there were more universities, colleges and public schools than in any other part of the world. All these were overthrown by the Jacobin Revolution, and the funds allotted to their support squandered on the adventurers who figured and still figure on the theatre of the French Republic. To this hour there is no general plan of education in the country. There are only three central schools in Paris, and their organisation is essentially defective. Abstract sciences and history fill up the whole course of education until the pupil is eighteen years of age. Geography is not taught; there is no professor of foreign languages, and only one lecturer upon the ancient and classical tongues, who once a week reads aloud a discourse rather for his own amusement than for the advantage of his pupils. In consequence of these arrangements the understanding of the scholar is never exercised. To teach the abstract sciences to boys merely by reading dissertations to them is much the same as to attempt the demonstration of a problem by Euclid without pen, ink or paper. These central schools therefore are no manner of use, they only serve as a parade of useless erudition on the part of the professor, and nurse consummate ignorance and vanity in the students who attend them. However, when the pupils have somehow or other gone through their classes, they are removed to the Polytechnic school, which is the Parisian University. About 400 boys are here finishing at this Polytechnic school, laboratories, mechanical workshops and philosophical apparatus are provided for the use of the pupils.