If a young person is ambitious of acquiring the elements of science, he must work at home and pay his own masters, for the central schools cannot possibly render him any useful assistance. When he has educated himself he may possibly derive some advantage from attending the lectures of certain Professors. They are the following. In the Geographical School, the science of geography is well taught, but only twenty pupils are admitted to this establishment. The School of Roads and Bridges is also a very useful institution. It was founded by M. Prony[1] during the Monarchy, thirty-six Polytechnicians are received into this school. The School of Naval Architecture is also an institution of the old Monarchy. The School of Medicine contains 1000 students, twenty professors, a modeller in wax and a designer. There is a school of pharmacy, a mineral school and a veterinary school at Alfort near Charenton. But the most important college still remaining is the “Collège de France,” Place de Cambrai, which has survived the storms of the Revolution and retains its ancient reputation. It has seventeen professors, who are all men of the greatest merit and celebrity in the Republic of letters. [Sidenote: CHAMP DE MARS] Lalande, perhaps the ablest astronomer in Europe, is the professor of astronomy; la Croix, a profound geometrician, professor of mathematics; and my estimable and revered friend, de la Metherie, professor of natural history. These different colleges are supported entirely at the expense of the State; the professors are paid out of the public revenues, and students of all ages and countries permitted to consult and attend their lectures free of any expense. But these establishments are not in the least suitable for those who have not long overstepped the boundaries of elementary knowledge, and they are beyond the reach of juvenile or vulgar understandings. The Ecole Militaire, erected in 1751, after the designs of Gabriel, did not suffer as a building during the Revolution, because it was used as a barrack for the troops of the Convention. It is now converted into a barrack for the Consular Horse Guards commanded by Eugène Beauharnais. We were permitted to walk round the piazzas that encircle the court, beneath which soldiers were sleeping in groups. So solemn a silence reigned through the building we might have fancied ourselves in a Benedictine monastery.