The thousands of small republics, all independent each of the other, that are called Societies, Hospitals, Colleges, etc., are governed, not by idols that have hands and handle not, or by badly salaried potentates who have eyes and see not, but by energetic and clear-sighted men, who receive immense salaries, but who, in return, devote to the Institutions that they rule over, all the resources, all the force of their minds. Take the schools and colleges for instance. I am convinced that, in Paris, a _proviseur_ does not know the names of more than thirty or forty of the pupils attending his _lycée_. At any rate, there are not twenty of them that he could recognise in the street and call by their names. His emoluments range from five to six hundred pounds a year. In England, the head-masters of the great Public Schools receive three, four, five, and even six thousand pounds a year. Well, I guarantee that these head-masters know individually every one of the thousand boys or so that are under their care. They know the place that each one occupies in his class. The pupils are placed by the head-master, according to their merit and aptitude, in such and such form, in such and such department. He will write to some parents, "Your son has no taste for classics. I will put him in our modern school to learn mathematics and science. I advise you to make an engineer of him, an officer," etc. In France, work is generally in inverse ratio to the emoluments. In England, work is in proportion to the salary: responsible work, at all events. Take the Church. English bishops are fortunate mortals, who receive emoluments amounting to something like eight and ten thousand pounds a year. But, over here, a bishopric is no sinecure. In France, the clergy of a diocese receive from their bishop orders which they obey blindly; they all teach the same dogma, and have no competition to keep up; but, in England, everybody reasons and argues: the young clergyman, fresh from Oxford or Cambridge, has his own way of interpreting the Scriptures, and the bishop is constantly called upon to pacify, to conciliate all his little clerical world who are for ever dogmatising, discussing, disputing, in the pulpit, in meetings, in the newspapers, and keep him on the alert all the year round. If a French priest shows signs of independence of thought, he is treated as a rebel, and his case is soon settled; public indifference to religious matters consigns him to swift oblivion, when he has succeeded in making a little noise, which happens very rarely; but, in England, the priest who holds original views is backed up by partisans who immediately take up his cause; at any moment, he may set up for a martyr and become a source of continual annoyance to his bishop.