"Paris is not France," is a remark frequently uttered by French conservatives, and one which certainly holds good as regards education. The department of the Seine actually expends some $6,000,000 annually on education, which is something over 46 per cent. of the total expenditure for all France under this head. Considering that the population of the department of the Seine does not exceed 2,400,000, it will be seen that the expenditure there for educational purposes is not inferior to that of our own representative States. At the Vienna Exhibition of 1873 it may be recollected that Paris, conjointly with Saxony and Sweden, was awarded the diploma of honor for primary instruction. This branch of education is absolutely gratuitous, and, in view of the experience of other countries, is likely to remain so, in spite of the outcry that parents able to contribute toward the education of their offspring should be compelled to do so. Ink, paper, pens, books, models and maps are supplied free of charge to each pupil. During 1876 not less than 330,000 books, 1,490,000 copy-books and 1,440,000 steel pens were thus supplied in the primary schools of the capital. In Paris there are some 260,000 children of both sexes old enough to go to school. Of this number, 104,000 get some kind of education, either at home or at the boarding-schools, and 134,000 attend the public schools--either under secular or clerical management--and the _salles d'asile_, of which we shall presently speak. The great capital thus contains some 22,000 children who cannot read or write, and this will account for the fact of the educational status of the department of the Seine being inferior to that of many of the eastern departments, and occupying a far lower place on the list than might otherwise have been expected. Up to the age of two years the infants of parents too poor to watch over their offspring in the daytime are admitted into the _creches_. In these admirable private institutions--founded some thirty years ago by M. Marbeau--the infants are washed, fed and tended with maternal solicitude. Between the ages of two and six years the children are admitted into the _salles d'asile_, or children's homes, of which there are over a hundred in Paris. There it is first sought to develop the child's intellectual faculties, prepare it for school, inculcate habits of cleanliness and morality, and instruct it in the rudiments of reading and writing. Between the ages of six and fourteen children are admitted into the schools, and, nominally at least, go through the plan of study drawn up by the board of primary education, and which is as follows: Reading, writing, geography, spelling, arithmetic, compendium of sacred and French history, linear drawing, singing, the rudiments of physics, geometry and natural history, and calligraphy. Were this programme carried out in its integrity, education in France would, it need hardly be said, be considerably further advanced than it is at present.