women of the middle classes were not always able to read, and those of the laboring classes were ignorant even of their alphabet -he, like M. de Talleyrand, should not only have advocated the duty of providing instruction for all classes of the community, but also have boldly and vigorously proclaimed the equal rights of both sexes to the benefits of education. The bill in question would have placed the schools for girls, hitherto so contemptuously neglected, on an equal footing with those for boys; the branches of study were to be the same in both, with differences merely in the kinds of manual labor to be introduced into each. The projected law also proposed two other important modifications, viz., the introduction of gymnastics and of athletic games and exercises in the open air, for the purpose of strengthening and developing the body-an idea which its framer had borrowed from the study of the ancient republics—and the instruction of the pupils in the various industrial arts and in agriculture. "I propose," says M. Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, "that all children shall be taught to cultivate the earth. They may also be made to work upon the roads. Different localities, seasons, and manufactures in the neighbourhood of the schools will offer special resources for their instruction." Many parents, however, who would not, perhaps, regret the initiation of their children into various other branches of industry and agriculture, might probably object to their employment in mending roads. The proposition was in reality a protest against the exclusively scholastic forms which education had hitherto been made to assume, as the proposal to bring up the youth of France on a Spartan diet, and with an ascetic simplicity of outward conditions, was also a protest against the luxury and corruption of the preceding reigns; the reaction, as is so often the case under such circumstances, tending to overshoot the mark. Shortly after the presentation of his project, Lepelletier SaintFargeau was assassinated. Forty thousand copies of the text of the proposed law were sold in Paris on the day of his death, but no attempt was made to put his project into execution. Besides these two remarkable documents, the various Assemblies which governed France from 1789 to 1802 put forth a great number of Decrees relative to public instruction, and especially to the establishment of primary schools. Thus, in 1793, a committee named by the Convention had reported a vague project for the organisation, all over France, of four degrees of schools,-viz., Primary and Secondary Schools, Institutions, and Lyceums. From twenty to twenty-five thousand primary schools-being one school for each square league of its territory-were to be established throughout the French Republic. Later in the same year two other decrees were issued, of which the first ordained the establishment of a Primary School in every locality containing from four to fifteen hundred inhabitants; and in the second prescribed the course of elementary instruction to be given in them. A third, towards the close of the same year, prohibited the acceptance of any gratuity from the parents, on the part of the teachers, on pain of the loss of their situation; in the following year various decrees provided that all children should learn the French language, extended the limits of primary instruction, and modified the circumscription of the schools; determined the rules for the examination of teachers, and granted them a retiring pension; decided that a suitable building should be provided by the State for each school, and should serve also as a dwelling for the teacher; and placed the Primary Schools under the superintendence of the municipal authorities. Another decree ordained that the teachers should be chosen by the maires and Municipal Councils; and that their remuneration should consist of a residence and the amount paid by the parents. But the agitation of the time prevented these various decrees from being carried into effect. The Revolution was destructive rather than constructive in its character; and though many of the ideas thrown out during that momentous struggle were destined to bear fruit in after years, it was impotent to substitute better institutions in the place of those it had overthrown. At a later period, Napoleon, "building up a despotism on the foundations that had been laid for liberty," took advantage of the prostration and vacuity that followed the excesses of that great upheaving, and re-constructed the social edifice to the profit of his own ambition. The advantage to be derived from obtaining the command of the educational department was too evident to escape the notice of his penetrating genius. As early as 1794 he re-organised the School of Medicine; he subsequently founded the Schools of Pharmacy and of Law, and in 1806 he constituted the University. The first idea of this last institution had seen the light in 1800, when the Councils-General, in a series of minutes published the following year by the Minister of the Interior, Chaptal, had expressed themselves in favor of the adoption of a national system of education, and had called for the re-establishment of the ancient Colleges under a form in harmony with the new political institutions; the organisation of the staff of teachers under one chief; the opening of primary schools, colleges, and private seminaries; the appropriation of a portion of the public revenues to education, and the foundation of fellowships; the subordination of pupils to teachers, and of teachers to a constant discipline, and the authority of a Jury of Instruction; the adoption of an unitary programme of studies throughout France, and of religious teaching as the basis of intellectual culture. Napoleon is often regarded as the inventor of the system of centralisation in France, which seems to aim at the absorption of all the national energies in the hands of the Government, and which presses with such ubiquitous constraint on the action of individuals at the present day, not only rendering all spontaneous initiation on their part impossible, but actually withering, through enforced inaction, the moral sinew of the people, and causing them to lose even the desire of that large individual liberty, bounded only by the law as the expression of "the common sense of all," which the AngloSaxon regards as his inalienable and most precious birthright. But it is evident, from this rapid sketch of the educational projects put forth during the most activé periods of the revolutionary ebullition, and again renewed as the excitement of that period began to subside, that the aspirations of the French people already tended toward the establishment of a National Unity on the basis of an enforced equality, of which the Government should be at once the expression and the instrument, as distinctly as the tendencies of the English people-as shown in the whole course of their historyhave aimed at the development of individual liberty and initiative. Napoleon did not invent the system of French centralisation, so powerfully organised at the present day. He merely availed himself, with his marvellous acuteness and consummate practical skill, of the materials he found ready to his hands, and which he built up into a monument of his own ambition that he flattered himself would prove eternal. "A few years afterwards," says M. E. Rendu, in his "Introduction on the Origin of the Present French University," "Bonaparte passed through Turin. One day, when he visited the palace of the University, founded in 1771 by Charles Emmanuel III., he caused the statutes of that institution to be brought before him, and was struck with the grandeur and strength of the idea embodied therein. This weighty authority, which, under the name of Magistrates of the Reform, governed the educational body; this body of teachers, united by a community of doctrine, and voluntarily submitted to the civil power, which consecrated itself to the instruction of youth, as to one of the most important functions of the State; a body perpetually renewed from a normal school, which should transmit from generation to generation the traditions of established principles and of approved methods; at ease in the present, through the guarantees afforded by its special jurisdiction, and tranquil as to its future, through the certainty of an honorable pension; this order of teachers, recruited from a special body trained to the work of education, and chosen from candidates who had successfully passed a public examination; this noble confidence of the sovereign power, which conferred upon the Council charged with the general direction of the University a permanent right of internal legislation and of continuous improvement; this vast system of education pleased him, and he preserved its memory in his own mind. After having restored the altar, and promulgated the Code Napoleon, after having, by various laws, substituted lyceums in place of the central schools, improved the Schools of Medicine, and created those of Law, he determined to found a general system of public instruction for all France. He remembered the University of Turin, and he created the Imperial University of France." The creation of the University, which, as we shall see, still plays a most important part in the work of Education in France, was thus, as is remarked by M. E. Rendu, the result in part of the desires put forth by the Councils-General in 1800, mentioned above, and in part, also, of the visit of Bonaparte to the University of Turin; and its constitution embodied the principles laid down by the Councils-General, with the exception of the provisions which the latter would have introduced for the spread of education among the masses; an innovation which Bonaparte was by no means anxious to introduce. A sketch of the nature of this institution, of the modifications it has undergone up to the present day, and of its working at the present time, will form the subject of my next Paper. But before terminating the present sketch, I must acknowledge my obligations to the admirable treatise on the subject of Education in France recently published by Madame Coignet a work which I hope, on some future occasion, to bring more especially before the readers of the "English Woman's Journal;" to the " Analyse du Code Universitaire, ou lois, statuts, et ordonnances de l'Université Royale de France," and other works by M. E. Rendu; to the Histories of Martin and Thierry; and the "Receuil de lois sur l'enseignement," published by the French Government. A. B. XXXIII.-ELIZABETH VON RECKE. PART II. ANA GREAT misfortune, which as rarely passes unobserved as great prosperity, had attracted observation to Frau von Recke; and, retired as was her life, some gentle praises were heard of her in the country around, and at last reached the husband who had so rudely thrust her away from his home. Strangers saw what he had been blind to; and when the public voice told him what a treasure he had thrown away, with selfish regret he requested her to return to his house. She expressed her good will towards him in the most friendly way, but showed a decided disinclination to comply with his desire; and, in the irritation of the moment, he demanded a formal separation, which was quickly accorded, to be followed, on his part, by the deepest repentance at having thus given up the last hope of renewing conjugal relations with her, although she still continued to be his faithful counsellor and friend. Remaining in undisturbed retirement, Elizabeth devoted herself indefatigably to the cultivation of her moral and mental faculties, though making no display to the world, till, in 1782, one of her hymns having happened to fall into the hands of the celebrated composer, Hiller, he requested and obtained from her the whole collection, which he caused to be published at Leipsic in the following year. Her health had now become so much worse that her doctor, as a last resource, advised her to visit Carlsbad; and she accordingly took a journey there in 1784, in company with her friend, Sophie Becker, who kept a journal of their travels, afterwards published. Travelling improved her health; and the opportunity it afforded for making acquaintance with the most distinguished men in German literature was equally beneficial to her in an intellectual point of view. At the house of a relative, in Königsberg, she became intimate with Kant and Schaffner. In Berlin, where her two half-brothers resided, she was received both at court and in the highest society with great respect; and Nicolai, Mendelssohn, and Spalding became her friends. At Dresden she made acquaintance with Meissner and Naumann. Wherever she went her arrival was welcomed and her departure regretted. At Carlsbad she derived great benefit from the waters; but a fresh drop of bitterness was to be mingled with her cup, for while there she received news of the death of her beloved stepmother. But for the thought that it would now devolve upon her to be the stay of her father's declining days, this blow would have quite prostrated her. Her return, however, could not be immediate, and she had therefore to fix on a residence for the winter; no easy task, for the common custom among the German nobility of allotting a disproportionately scanty income to the daughters, in order to make it more easy for the sons to support the family fame, had appropriated to Frau von Recke, so limited a sum for travelling expenses, as necessitated the strictest economy in her little expenditure. In this emergency the poet Göcking offered her a residence in his country-house at Wulferode. On her way thither, she remained for a time at Weimar, and had the gratification of joining that circle of distinguished men with whose names and works she was already familiar. Above all, she sought out Wieland, whom she had to thank for having emancipated her from her youthful delusions, by showing her the depths of the human heart, and affording her a clue to the labyrinth of life. Even from such of his works as are censured by the moralist, she had derived only instruction and warning. Here, too, she became intimate with Counsellor Bode, the celebrated translator of several classical English works; and this enlightened man gave her a clear explanation of the aims of secret associations, and of impostors, who like Cagliostro, devote themselves to spreading the domain of superstition. She had already lost all her former taste for mysticism, but what she heard from Bode made her feel the strongest abhorrence for all mystical doings, however innocent or |