I met Captain de Bonfils the other day in Paris, and asked him to tell me what were the qualifications required for a staff officer in his service, and how he had been fortunate enough to obtain employment in so distinguished a corps. This request he complied with at once; assuring me that the career of one officer in the corps d’état-major may be taken as an exact sample of all, and that the same qualifications are required from every one who aspires to the honour of holding a commission in that regiment. To apply the term regiment to the French staff is perhaps not quite appropriate, as the corps consists entirely of officers. Belonging to this body are thirty colonels, thirty lieutenant-colonels, one hundred chefs d’escadron (who would be termed majors in the English service), three hundred captains, and one hundred lieutenants. No one can join the regiment unless he passes through the special school instituted in eighteen hundred and eighteen for that purpose, and now called L’École Impériale d’Application d’État-Major. This my friend, Captain Louis de Bonfils, of course, did. There are sixty pupils in the establishment, one-half of whom leave it every year; thus creating thirty annual vacancies. Of these thirty, three are selected from the École Polytechnique; the remaining twenty-seven places in the staff-school are filled by competition from amongst fifty-seven candidates, thirty of whom must be sub-lieutenants who have been at least one year in the service, and must be under twenty-five years of age; and twenty-seven from the pupils of the military school of St. Cyr. Captain de Bonfils was one of the latter class. He had already spent his regulated time of three years at St. Cyr; and having passed the required examination for a commission in the line, might have joined a regiment without delay. Being one of the twenty-seven pupils at the head of the list amongst the hundred who had passed in his term, he entered his name as a candidate for admittance into the École d’État-Major, and, as he was successful, joined that institution. Here he remained two years, going through the regular course of instruction in military science; and--although, like the rest of the pupils, he held the rank of a commissioned officer--under almost as strict military and collegiate discipline as any school-boy. Winter and summer, the young men in this college rise at six o’clock, and, with the exception of an hour for breakfast, half-an-hour for recreation in the middle of the day, and the same in the afternoon, work at one or other branch of their studies until five in the afternoon; at which hour they dine, and are then at liberty to go where they like, until ten in the evening. When they want to be out of college later, leave must be asked and obtained from the governor of the establishment. During the two years they remain at the staff-school, their time is divided regularly every day, each hour bringing its allotted task. The course of studies includes