force which sways a period, a generation, and which sometimes inclines us more and more to Nature, reviving in our hearts the desire of the land. Still, it is a good sign that the very schoolmasters are nowadays less exclusively urban and literary in their standards. Science, indeed, is beginning to dethrone literature even in the National school, and what is Science but an Aspect of Nature? Science leads back to Nature, as more important than the classics. Among the posthumous notes of that noble apostle of national education, M. Felix Pécaut, in the little book called “Quinze Ans d’Education,” which saw the light at the close of 1902, I find the following noteworthy passage:-- “They say that the National schools favour the village exodus. They say that, after six years of book-learning, the young rustic dreads the coarse habits, the hard work, the soil, the sweat, inseparable from the life of a farm-labourer. “What is the remedy? First of all, teach the children to take an interest, not only in books, but in the life of the fields. Teach them gardening, and how to keep bees, the making of cheese and the management of a dairy. Show them the reason of these things, their cause, and the possible improvements. Above all, in educating your little rustics, do not impose an ideal from without; work your reform from within. Make your scheme of education deliberately rural; be sober, just; teach them courage, and the contempt of mere ease and well-being; give them a wholesome, ample way of looking at things; instil the taste for an active life, the delight in physical energy. Try and turn out, not a mandarin, but a man of the fields.” XII