“However,” as Sainte-Beuve says, “we may jeer at the French Academy, but it has not ceased to be popular in Europe.” Foreigners and Parisians are equally eager for tickets, and French genius more eager than either for the prizes and renown it confers. It is one of the monarchical institutions restored by the Convention after its suppression in the Terror. Only, instead of the monarchical Institute it had been, it became a national Institute, existing by grace of the State and the people, and not by that of a minister like Richelieu, or a monarch like Louis XIV. It was thus composed of a hundred and forty-four members in Paris, and an equal number in the provinces, with power to associate twenty-four learned men with its corps. It was divided into three parts: Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Moral and Political Sciences, and Literature and the Fine Arts. This new national Institute was opened on the 4th of April, 1796, when Daunou pronounced the inaugural address. In those days there was no such thing as a perpetual secretary. The excellent republican spirit of the State was naturally modified under the Consulate, and completely demoralised under the Empire. Napoleon reinstituted the perpetual secretary of the _ancien régime_, suppressed the class of Political and Moral Sciences,—the least to be expected of a political dictator without any notion of morality,—and divided the two other classes into three, and thus restored the ancient Academy of Sciences, French Academy, Academy of Inscriptions and Letters, the Academies of Painting and Sculpture. Hence grew the ambition to connect, in unbroken continuity, the defunct institution of a vanished monarchy and the new institution of the Directory. In 1803, it began the reactionary period, and posed as Royalist in sentiments and opinions. Sainte-Beuve defines the Academy as that of the reigning perpetual secretary.