The students quitting the Polytechnic in the manner described in the account of that school, at the average age of twenty-one, enter the School of Application, with the provisional rank, the uniform, and the pay of sub-lieutenants (_sous-lieutenants_.) The ordinary term of residence is two years. Under special circumstances this may be shortened; and in case of illness or want of application individual students are occasionally retained for a third year. Each new body of students, each _admission_ or _promotion_, is classified at the end of the first year, and the students composing it are arranged in order of merit in accordance with the reports of the professors, but without an examination; at the close of the second year they pass a final examination before the Board of Officers, and are definitively placed in the corps they have chosen, the artillery or engineers, according to the order of merit. They are allowed to count, as regards retirement from the service and towards military decorations, four year’s service on account of the two years passed at the Polytechnic School, and of the time passed in preparing for admission to it, reckoning from the day of their admission to the School of Application. Metz is a fortified place on the Prussian frontier, the seat of war at the time of the school’s first foundation; it is on the line of railway to Mannheim, about thirty miles from the point where this branch diverges from the main line to Strasburg. The Moselle flows through the town, and is employed, with its little affluent the Seille, in the military defenses. The garrison numbers 10,000 men; there is an Arsenal, a school of Pyrotechny for the manufacture of rockets, two Regimental Schools, one of Artillery and the other of Engineers. The School of Application occupies buildings erected on the site, and partly the original buildings themselves, of a suppressed Benedictine monastery. Three sides of the cloistered monastic quadrangle are devoted to the offices, lecture-rooms, galleries and halls of study. A fourth, formerly the ancient church, is converted into a _salle des manœuvres_. There is an adjoining residence for the commandant; and a separate modern building, four stories in height, affords lodging to the young men. The _salle des manœuvres_ is a large area under a lofty roof, rising to the whole height of the buildings of the quadrangle; it contains artillery of various descriptions, mortars, field and siege guns placed as in a battery, and is amply large enough to allow cannon to be moved and exercises performed when the state of the weather may make it desirable. The amphitheaters or lecture rooms, much on the same system as those at the Polytechnic, are two in number, one for each of the two divisions. Officers of the artillery and engineers who are in garrison, are entitled, if they please, to attend the lectures, and other officers also may be admitted by permission.