No steps have, however, been taken by the French government to prevent the _free_ choice of a profession being granted to the most successful students. We have now followed the student at the Polytechnic to the end of his school career. He is then to pass to his particular School of Application, in which (as the name implies) he is taught to apply his science to practice. It is difficult to state precisely the amount of such science which the highest pupils may be thought to possess on leaving; the best idea of it will be gained by reference to the programmes of the most important of the lectures. It is also needless to dwell again on the main features of the school--the emulation called forth, the minute method, the great prizes offered for sustained labor. We must, however, make some remarks on these points before concluding our account, so far as they bear on the subject of military education. VI. GENERAL REMARKS. 1. Keeping out of sight for the moment some defects both in the principles and details of the education of this school, the method of teaching adopted seems to us excellent, and worthy of careful study. In this remark we allude principally to the skillful combination of two methods which have been generally thought incompatible; for it unites the well-prepared lecture of a German professor, with the close personal questioning of a first-rate English school or college lecture. But besides this, its whole system is admirably adapted for the class of pupils it educates. These pupils are generally not of the wealthy classes; they are able, and struggling for a position in life. On all these grounds their own assistance in the work may be calculated upon. Yet they are not left to themselves to make the most of their professors’ lectures. The aid of _répétiteurs_, even more valuable in its constant “prudent interrogations,” than in the explanations afforded, is joined to the stimulus given by marking every step of proficiency, and by making all tell on the last general account. But though the routine and method of the school are so elaborate, play is given to the individual freedom of the pupils in their private work, and this is managed so skillfully that the private work is made immediately to precede the final examination, on which mainly depends the pupil’s place for life. Thus from first to last they are carried on by their system without being cramped by it; every circumstance favorable to study is made the most of; rigorous habit, mental readiness, the power of working with others, and the power of working for themselves, the ambition for immediate and permanent success, all the objects and all the methods which students ever have in view, support and stimulate those of the Polytechnic in their two years’ career.