2. The mainspring, however, of the school’s energy is the competition amongst the pupils themselves, and this could hardly exist without the great prizes offered to the successful. This advantage, added to the general impulse of the early days of the Empire, has no doubt powerfully contributed to the great position of the school. It has made it a kind of university of the _élite_ mathematicians, and as in England young men look to the prizes of the universities, and the professions to which they lead, as their best opening in life, so in France, ever since the first revolution, the corresponding class has inclined to the active and chiefly military career which is offered by the great competitive school of the country. 3. A preparatory school of this remarkable character can not but exercise a very powerful influence over those three-fourths of its pupils who leave it to enter the army. The obvious question is whether the attempt is not made to teach more than is either necessary or desirable for military purposes, and to this suspicion may be added the fact that the civil prizes being more in request than the military, many of those who enter the army do so in the first instance reluctantly, and that the pupils at the bottom of the list appear to be often such marked failures as to imply either great superficiality or premature exhaustion. 4. In studying the Polytechnic School we have had these points constantly brought before us, and feeling the difficulty of discussing them fully, we beg to invite attention to the evidence sent us in reply to some questions which we addressed on the subject to some distinguished scientific officers and civilians connected with the school. We will give briefly the result of our own inquiries. 5. The complaint of General Paixhans has been quoted. He urges that a considerable proportion of the army pupils are mere _queues de promotion_, and quite insufficient to form _le corps et surtout la tête_ of troops _d’élite_. Other not inconsistent complaints we heard ourselves, of the mental exhaustion and the excessively abstract tendencies of many of the military pupils of the school. 6. Such are the complaints. There is certainly reason to think that, with regard to the twenty or thirty lowest pupils on the list, those of General Paixhans are well founded. These are the _breaks down_, and we are at first surprised that, entering as they must do,[11] with high attainments, they should fall so low as the marks in the tables (with which we are most liberally supplied) prove to be the case. [Footnote 11: The students are selected, by a competitive examination, out of a very large number of candidates, as will be seen from the following table, extracted from the yearly calendars:--