medicine, but those who wish to become officers or doctors do not leave the _lycée_ after the _baccalauréat_, and some stay on three or four years longer. The _externes_, that is, those who go to the _lycées_ only for the classes, are well off, for these find their pleasures and moral training where they should be found, at home and with comrades of their own choosing. But the _demi-pensionnaires_ are nearly as unfortunate as the _internes_, as these are condemned to most of the prison tortures of one of the worst gifts the genius of Napoleon gave to the land he so basely used. “Everyone knows well enough 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 aged men and not of youth.” For this reason you will never hear a French boy speak with any kindly sentiment of his school-days. Napoleon, who invented the horrid system, was a creature absolutely destitute of kindness or humanity. He wanted more destructive machines, willing for the chance of what is euphemistically called “glory.” Virile independence in boyhood was just the very last thing a man like Napoleon could be expected to value. An English schoolboy will cheerfully go to the wars by force of his own good-will, but he will not be whipped thither by Government whether he wills it or not. And you would never find him submitting, as his French brother does, with patience and resignation to a scholastic system which atrophies his body and unduly heats his brain. The instincts of his race must be considered, and these make for energy, action, and independence.