I saw four-year-old children perform like soldiers, evolutions round benches to orders given by whistle, and raise and cross their arms to the word of command, and with strange trembling voices sing hymns of praise to God and their benefactors; and I became convinced that the educational establishments of Marseilles were extremely bad. Any one seeing them would naturally conclude that the French people must be ignorant, coarse, hypocritical, full of superstition and almost savage. Yet one need only come in contact with and chat with any of the common people, to convince oneself that on the contrary the French people are almost what they consider themselves to be: intelligent, clever, sociable, freethinking, and really civilised. Take a workman of, say, thirty years of age: he will write a letter without such mistakes as at school, sometimes even quite correctly; he has some idea of politics, and therefore of recent history and geography; he knows some history from novels, knows something of natural history, and he very often draws, and is able to apply mathematical formulae to his trade. Where did he get all this? I recently discovered the answer in Marseilles, by wandering about the streets, drink-shops, _cafés chantants_, museums, workshops, wharves and book-stalls. The very boy who told me that Henry IV was killed by Julius Cæsar, knew the history of _The Three Musketeers_ and of _Monte Cristo_ very well. In Marseilles Tolstoy found that everybody had read Dumas' works, of which there were twenty-eight cheap editions. He estimated that each week, in the _cafés chantants_, at least one-fifth of the population received oral education, as the Greeks and Romans used to do. Comedies and sketches were performed, verses declaimed, and the influence for good or evil of this unconscious education far outweighed that of the compulsory education given in schools. 1861 In January he reached Paris, where he spent a large part of his time in omnibuses, amusing himself by observing the people. He declares he never met a passenger who was not represented in one or other of Paul de Kock's stories. Of that writer, as of Dumas _père_, he thinks highly. 'Don't talk nonsense to me,' he once said, 'about Paul de Kock's immorality. He is, according to English ideas, somewhat improper. He is more or less what the French call _leste_ and _gaulois_, but never immoral. In everything he says, and despite his rather free jests, his tendency is quite moral. He is a French Dickens.... As to Dumas, every novelist should know him by heart. His plots are admirable, not to mention the workmanship. I can read and re-read him, though he aims chiefly at plots and intrigue.'