It was only in the seminaries that art was preserved from utter decay. One may trace the _Schul-comödie_ until far down in the eighteenth century, and in the last mention of it I find appears an interesting figure. In 1780, at the military school in Stuttgart the birthday of the Duke of Würtemberg was celebrated by a performance of Goethe's _Clavigo_. The leading part was taken by a youth of twenty-one, with high cheek-bones, a broad, low, Greek brow above straight eyebrows, a prominent nose, and lips nervous with an extraordinary energy. The German narrator says he played the part "abominably, shrieking, roaring, unmannerly to a laughable degree." It was the young Schiller, wild as a pythoness upon her tripod, with the _Robbers_, which became famous in the following year. But I do not mean, Fastidiosus, to cite only German precedents, nor to uphold the college drama with the names of Reuchlin, Melancthon, and Luther alone, majestic though they are. In the University of Paris the custom of acting plays was one of high antiquity. In 1392 the schoolboys of Angiers performed _Robin and Marian_, "as was their annual custom"; and in 1477 the scholars of Pontoise represented "a certain moralitie or farce, as is their custom." In 1558 the comedies of Jacques Grévin were acted at the College of Beauvais at Paris; but it is in the next century that we come upon the most interesting case. In the days of Louis XIV. the girls' school at St. Cyr, of which Madame de Maintenon was patroness, was, in one way and another, the object of much public attention. Mademoiselle de Caylus, niece of Madame de Maintenon, who became famous among the women of charming wit and grace who distinguished the time, was a pupil at St. Cyr, and in her memoirs gives a pleasant sketch of her school life. With the rest, "Madame de Brinon," she says,