Domestic service is despised by the average peasant, the girls looking forward to marriage, the men to peasant proprietorship, which works so admirably in France. And in many provinces very young children of both sexes go out as servants. At the different houses and châteaux I visited in the Saintonge it was always little girls and boys between seven and ten who served at table, answered bells, and helped in the house-cleaning. I cannot say I found the houses particularly clean, which may be a consequence, but it was interesting and amusing to see a tiny lad enveloped in a blue working bib sweeping the stairs, and little creatures at table removing the plates with not an excessive clatter. One of the good results of this infant service was the indulgent and maternal attitude of master and mistress. Such wee, willing creatures could not be scolded seriously when they broke plates or glasses, and you could not take in their regard the high, impersonal air of England, where servants are mere instruments, not accepted as flesh-and-blood humanity. Here you must, if human yourself, smile and thank and pat a curly head or diminutive shoulder as the quaint creature offers you a course, with, oh! such a stern determination to hold it steady and not accomplish disaster in the neighbourhood of your garments. The standard of comfort, especially in the matter of sanitary appliances, has in France made an enormous progress during the last ten years. Ten years ago in the country even the better classes were little, if at all, in advance of Spain. I have seen such things in châteaux as would not bear description, and could not be credited except upon personal experience. So I ask myself what must be the state of peasant homes and of artisans’ dwellings. With, however, the advance in schooling, comes an appreciation of domestic improvements, and the kitchen is rapidly ceasing to be the best bedroom. Under the Third Republic, so much maligned, public schools for peasant girls have increased, which are considerably an advance on the old convent system of education. Nuns are the worst teachers in the world and the least conscientious. We have the exposure by the Archbishop of Nancy of the method of the nuns of the Bon Pasteur, who train orphans, and instead of teaching them, merely exploit them, and keep up a flourishing institution on the hard labour of children and girls, and, when the time for leaving the convent arrives, cast them out without an outfit or a farthing of all the immense sums they have earned for the convent when they ought to have been learning lessons. Of course, these republican schools are thwarted and vexed by every kind of petty persecution on the part of the clerical party. The French Catholics detest the lay teachers, whom they regard as the rivals of the Christian Brothers and the nuns, and make them suffer accordingly. Their writers of predilection make a point of holding them up for public scorn and ridicule, and so M.