Even in Paris, however, the material obstacles are not slight. Most of the schools are far too cramped for space, especially in those wealthy and crowded parts of the city between the Rue de Rivoli and the Boulevards, for instance, where every foot of ground and every breathing-space are worth large sums of money. In a city where the people are so closely packed, and where a family is content to live on a flat, how is room to be found for spacious, airy school-buildings, with a detached seat and desk for each pupil, a large central hall and a play-ground adjoining? Such establishments must inevitably cost immense sums of money, but Paris, if we may judge by the annual increase in the educational appropriations, seems determined not to let this difficulty stand in the way of her children obtaining a good education. A word as to the teachers. The female lay teachers are, it must be acknowledged, very greatly inferior to the lady teachers in the United States. It is said that in England when a man has failed at everything else he becomes a coal-merchant. We should not dream of applying this remark to French ladies as regards school-teaching. At the same time, it is an established fact that the French girls' schools which are managed by nuns, and especially those of the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, are far above the other female educational establishments. Most of the male lay teachers are appointed from the primary normal schools which exist in the chief town of every department; and it is a noteworthy fact that the majority of them are ardent Republicans, notwithstanding the fact that during the Empire every effort was made to win them over to the imperial side. In every normal and primary school was the bust of Napoleon, and a liberal distribution took place of the famous _Journal des Instituteurs_, every paragraph of which, political or educational, was dressed up in Napoleonic attire. Possibly, some of the lay primary school-teachers may have adopted republicanism out of a spirit of natural opposition to their old adversaries and competitors, the _instituteurs congreganistes_. Of these, too, a word must be said. While in the secondary clerical schools most of the instructors are Jesuits, in the primary schools most of the teachers belong to the confraternity of the _Ecole Chretienne_, the members of which, without taking the vows and assuming a lifelong engagement, agree nevertheless to remain single, to submit to the discipline of the society and to wear the ecclesiastical dress. Strict Ultramontanists, these brethren have been somewhat unjustly nicknamed the _freres Ignorantins_. Living as they do in common, with but few wants, and receiving, whenever they require it, pecuniary aid from the wealthy party to which they belong, they are satisfied with a rate of pay less than one-half that of the lay teachers, and are thus preferred in a large number of communes on the simple ground of economy. Their plan of instruction is the same as that