[Footnote 6352: Even though Taine had visited Eton and other English schools, he appears to have a somewhat rosy picture of life inside these institutions. I have been 9 years to a similar school and can assure the reader that the headmaster's wife is no suitable substitute for a real mother and her table does not replace one's own home. The rector of my school once stated that boarding schools should only be resorted to when one could not remain at home. It was my impression that this school had two effects upon me: the first that I wanted, in spite of good grades, to stop my studies and get a job and the second that I became, like Taine, an opponent to the system. Later on in life I should come to appreciate all the useful things like languages, literature, math and physics which I had learned in this well-organized school. I also came to understand that much worse than harsh discipline is no discipline and no learning at all, something which happened to my children when they attended, for one year only, the American School in Bangkok. (SR.)] [Footnote 6353: Pelet de la Lozère, "Opinions de Napoleon au Conseil d'État," p.172. (Session of April 7, 1807:) "The professors are to be transferred from place to place in the Empire according to necessity." --Decree of May 1, 1802, article 21: "The three functionaries in charge of the administration and the professors of the lycées may be transferred from the weakest to the strongest lycées and from inferior to superior places according to the talent and zeal they show in their functions."] [Footnote 6354: A splendid description which also fits the international civil servants working for the United Nations. I know this because I was one for 32 years of my life. I suspect it also fits members of the police forces, secret or not. (SR.)] [Footnote 6355: Act of Jan. 11, 1811.--Decree of March 17, 1808, articles 101 and 102.] [Footnote 6356: Boissier ("Revue du Deux Mondes," Aug. 15, 1869, p. 919): "The externe lycées cost and the interne lycées bring in."] [Footnote 6357: "Statistique de l'enseigncnient secondaire" (46,816 pupils, of which 33,092 internes and 13,724 externes).--Abbé Bougaud, "Le Grand Péril de l'Eglise du France," p. 135.--"Moniteur," March 14, 1865, Speech of Cardinal Bonnechose in the Senate.] [Footnote 6358: Name of the navy school-ship at Brest.--TR.] [Footnote 6359: Bréal, "Quelques mots, etc.," p. 308: "We need not be surprised that our children, once out of the college, resemble horses just let loose, kicking at every barrier and committing all sorts of capers. The age of reason has been artificially retarded for them five or six years."] [Footnote 6360: On the tone and turn of conversation among boys in school on this subject in the upper classes and even earlier, I can do no more than appeal to the souvenirs of the reader.--Likewise, on another danger of the internat, not less serious, which cannot be mentioned. (Here Taine undoubtedly refers to homosexuality. (SR.))]