shall be taught the Latin and Greek languages, English Grammar, geography, and the higher part of numerical arithmetick, to wit., vulgar and decimal fractions, and the extrication of the square and cube roots. In order to provide proper facilities for children of particular ability, the overseer of the hundred schools (one for ten schools) shall appoint from among the boys who shall have been two years at the least at some one of the schools under his superintendance and whose parents are too poor to give them farther education some one of the best and most promising genius and dispositions to proceed to the grammar schools. At the end of the first year one third of the boys shall be discontinued as public foundations after examination; "all shall be discontinued at the end of two years save one only, the best in genius and disposition, who shall be at liberty to continue there four years longer on the public foundation, and shall thence forward be deemed a senior." Finally, "the visitors will select one among the said seniors of the best learning and most hopeful genius and disposition who shall be authorized by them to proceed to William and Mary College; there to be educated, boarded, and clothed three years: the expense of which shall be paid by the Treasurer." This rigorous selective process looks very familiar to any one acquainted with the modern French system of free elementary schools, boarding _colléges_ and _lycèes_, and the system of competitive scholarships and fellowships of the French. But it was not fully developed in France before the Third Republic and it was not even dreamed of before the Revolution. Many times the French have been criticized for the undemocratic features of an educational system which reserves secondary education to those who are able to pay and to the small number of children who win scholarships. There is no possibility that this scheme was ever borrowed by Jefferson from any French theorician, and there is, on the contrary, some reason to believe that in France it owes its beginning to the publication of Jefferson's plan in the "Notes on Virginia" printed in Paris and in French in 1786.