There is not a shade of offence to old ideas or colleagues in the phrasing. The work of the medical, legal, and military schools is similarly analysed. The Institute, for which he makes a stirring appeal, is to have the first professors in France and the best laboratories and equipment; it shall have branches all over the country. Public libraries must be built in connection with all higher schools. The French language is to be purified and strengthened. National fêtes shall be designed by artists and scientists, and form part of the great scheme of uplifting the people. Jules Simon has described this speech as “at once a law and a book,” and Renan says it is “the most remarkable theory of public instruction that has ever been propounded in France.” It is certainly a wonderful vision, in its general outline, of the education of the future. No doubt thinkers and reformers of all schools were working for a reform of education. The clergy themselves were prepared on the eve of the States-General to respond to the demand for progress. But only a few in France were fully acquainted with the views of the expert thinkers, and Talleyrand did a fine piece of work in thus presenting them. Unfortunately, a firework of applause was all that he could obtain. The subject was deferred—for ten years, as it turned out. The sadly imperfect education of the earlier regime was succeeded by the complete absence of it during the Revolution. Talleyrand had to wait for the genius of Napoleon to make a beginning with his scheme. It is growing near to realization in the twentieth century.