It proclaimed gratuitous instruction, but made no provision for the salaries of the teachers. These hastily instituted reforms were eminently characteristic of the feverish excitement amidst which matters affecting the most serious interests of the nation were disposed of. The First Empire and the Restoration saw but little done on behalf of primary education. Under Louis Philippe the question of gratuitous instruction and compulsory attendance got no farther, notwithstanding the fact of such men being in power as Victor Cousin, Villemain and Guizot. The efforts of Jules Simon and of Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire to have the question settled by the Republican government in 1848 proved futile. Napoleon III., having found 44,000 schools in France at the commencement of his reign, left it with 54,000 at its close--a most insignificant rate of increase, as regards primary instruction, compared with the advances made in the same direction by foreign nations, and with the material progress of France itself during those eighteen eventful years. The Third Republic has, as was observed above, given to the question of education a prominent place among the reforms to be instituted. Scarcely had the most pressing financial and military questions been dealt with ere a searching examination into the educational system of the country was undertaken and its defects laid bare. In a report on primary and secondary education in different countries, read by M. Levasseur before the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences on the 29th of May, 1875, he establishes the fact that out of forty-five nations whose educational statistics he had examined, France only occupies the twentieth place--naturally a somewhat humiliating admission for a nation which has claimed to be the centre and radiating-point of modern civilization. The map on which the departments figure tinged with black proportionately with the illiteracy of their inhabitants is in mourning to a most lamentable extent. It might be taken for the geological map of Pennsylvania, with the coal-regions indicated by black patches; and most assuredly the Lehigh Valley would appear no darker on such a map than does on the chart of ignorance the unfortunate department of the Ariege, with 66 per cent. of its inhabitants absolutely illiterate. Happily, since this map was issued matters have somewhat mended; nevertheless, the lack of appreciation of the benefits of education is still very noticeable in a large number of the departments.