What French Girls Study

I AM often asked if, in my experience of French school life, I found the standards of education for girls as high in France as in America. I can only answer that the French ideas of what a young girl should study and how she should study are so different from ours that it is hard to say which has the highest standards. Perhaps the best answer I can give is to describe the course of studies pursued at a high-class French school, and leave my readers to form their own opinions.

I shall not write about public schools, as I have had no experience with them in either country. Before passing on to private schools, however, I should like to say a few things about the opportunities of higher education for women, — a subject popular in both countries. In this French women have an immense advantage over American women, from the fact that all the schools of the University of Paris except the (Protestant) theological school are open to them ; that they may pass its examinations, take its degrees, and share its privileges and honors equally with the men ; and that its courses are nearly all free : so that the highest education in the world lies within easy reach of the poorest girl. The same is true of many of the universities of southern Europe, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and France ; and this is no new thing, but a relic of the Middle Ages.¹ Before America was discovered women were taking honors and even filling chairs at the great Italian and Spanish universities ; and though this enthusiasm for study among women died out with other effects of the Renaissance, and has only lately been revived, their privileges have never been wholly lost, and are to-day greater than those enjoyed by the women of northern Europe, of England, or of the United States. If the women of southern Europe are not as highly educated as the men, it is from choice, for they have few educational disabilities.

But the women students of the University of Paris must not be mistaken for college undergraduates. Their position is very different. The Continental universities do not give undergraduate courses as we understand them. These are given at the lyceums and colleges, where boys from ten to eighteen years of age are educated, and where they are prepared for the degrees of bachelors in arts and sciences and letters. The diplomas for these degrees are given by the Council of the University at competitive examinations, held before the Council or its appointees, but French youths do not attach the dignity to them that our young men do to an A. B. The French young man looks upon his bachelor’s degree simply as the necessary preparatory step to something higher, and does not consider that he has a liberal education, or is in any sense a university man, until he has fit son droit ; that is, taken his degree in law or one of the other faculties, whether he means to be a professional man or not, law being the usual study of the young men of leisure and fashion. Thus a French youth expects to take his bachelor’s degree at eighteen or nineteen, and his degree in law or his master’s or doctor’s degree at twenty or twenty-one. The longer school terms and greater discipline and concentration of his early life at preparatory schools and colleges bring him out from two to three years ahead of the average American young man.

The women students of the University of Paris, then, are on a higher level than our college girls. They are following courses in the schools or faculties of law, medicine, and pharmacy, or studying for master’s and doctor’s degrees in arts and sciences and letters. Over two hundred professors teach, in these schools, and the lectures are attended by more than ten thousand students, who are admitted without regard to sex, nationality, religion, or color. Among them are representatives of twenty-five nationalities, and a large number of women. The courses are free to foreigners as well as to the French. A small examination fee only is required from those who are candidates for degrees.

The women students get their preparatory training sometimes at private schools, sometimes at normal schools, and sometimes on the lecture system. This system will need some explanation to Americans, as we have nothing that exactly corresponds to it. It is a longstanding custom in the French colleges and lyceums, as well as in many of the classic and scientific public, schools for boys and young men in Germany, and one that has been adopted in Italy also, to repeat many of their most important courses of lectures to classes of girls, — much on the system adopted later at the Harvard Annex, but with these notable differences : that in the French, German, and Italian system these courses are not only given by the same professors, but they are given in the same class-rooms and with the use of the same apparatus ; and they are also free, these schools being state institutions. A number of young girls from ten to eighteen years of age, though they do not aspire to university honors, are educated on the lecture system. They follow pretty closely the courses prescribed for the boys. These are not the exact equivalent of our college courses, as the French college does not teach the dead languages, which are taught in the lyceums or classical schools.² A French lad has to make up his mind early as to what he means to do in life. He must decide at ten years of age whether to take the classical course at the lyceum and go up for university honors, or to take the modern course at the college and afterwards study a profession, either at the University, or at the Polytechnic, the School of Mines, the School of Political Sciences, the School of Fine Arts, or some other of the great professional institutions of Paris. The college course gives the best 舠 all round ” education, and is the one generally followed by the girls. It is eight years long, and includes grammar, rhetoric, logic, French composition, literature, the history of literature, French constitutional history, universal history, geography, the natural sciences, mathematics, and philosophy.

The most popular cours or courses of lectures are decidedly those of the College of France. This famous institution is unlike other colleges in having no students, properly speaking, and in teaching not only the classical courses, but everything within the range of human knowledge worth teaching. It is a body of forty-two professors, representing every known branch of learning, who give courses of instruction on their special subjects, which are free and open to all, without distinction of sex or race, whether candidates for degrees or not. It is probably the most advanced school of learning that exists. The renown of its professors is world - wide, and as it comes under the immediate direction and patronage of the Ministry of Public Instruction, it is a special pet of the government, and never lacks means to carry out its most ambitious schemes. Many hundred women attend its lectures, and they are not all advanced students or those preparing for university honors ; for it has been a popular thing in Paris, the last twenty years or so, for bright young girls, even of the most fashionable families, to follow certain of its courses during the last few years of school life ; that is, from about their thirteenth to their eighteenth year.

It will readily be seen that it would be impossible to compare a French girl who has studied four or five years at the College of France with a girl graduate of one of our coeducational or girls’ colleges, for the reason that she does not follow a prescribed course of studies, and is not required to pass examinations. There are open to her the finest opportunities for advanced study that the world affords, but, unless she goes up to the University examinations and takes a degree, there is nothing to prove whether she has simply been taking elementary courses in rhetoric, natural history, and physics, for example, or whether she has been pursuing profound studies in metaphysics, international law, and Sanskrit, and making original researches in the latest thing in science or medicine. Many young girls, daughters of wealthy and fashionable families, who are educated at home by their parents and governesses, go to the College of France for a limited number of special courses. The courses most popular among these young girls I found to be all branches of history, literature, the history of literature, rhetoric and composition, natural history and physics, while a few studied logic, psychology, and political science. They were instructed at home by private teachers in modern languages, music, arithmetic, penmanship and letter-writing, sewing and embroidery, and various domestic accomplishments, while some who had a taste for art worked several hours a week in studios. They usually took three or four courses at the College each year, with two or three lectures a week in each. Those who had taken the requisite courses went up to the public competitive examinations of the University at the Hôtel de Ville to try for the diploma qualifying them to teach. This diploma is the ambition of every bright French girl, whether she means to teach or not; and as the examinations are open to aLl, even to pupils of private schools, upon the payment of a small fee, girls of the wealthiest and most aristocratic families, who have been educated by governesses or at the most exclusive convents, do not hesitate to go up to the Hôtel de Ville side by side with the pupils of public colleges and normal schools, and so have made these competitive examinations the fashion of the educational day.

In going back and forth to the public lectures, the girls are always accompanied by one of their parents or by a governess, and these chaperons sit in the class-room during the lectures, and often take as lively an interest in the courses as the girls themselves. When the parents are persons of leisure, it is their great delight to accompany their children in this way, and to help them afterwards in studying the subjects at home. As a general thing in France, parents, fathers as well as mothers, take a much more active interest and larger personal share in their children’s education than is common with us.

As many friendless girls come up to Paris from the provinces and smaller cities for the advantages of the University and for the College lectures, there is a large convent established in the Latin Quarter, where the girls may obtain comfortable board and lodging with the good Sisters for a very small sum, and where their health and morals and manners will be well cared for and suitable chaperons provided for them. The chaperon system is strictly carried out everywhere with girls and young women, and with boys under eighteen, even in the middle and poorer classes; and, although it does not come under the head of studies, I cannot omit here a reference to this system, which is so strong a factor in the formation of a Freneh child’s mind and character. It does an admirable work in bringing the young into constant companionship and friendly intimacy with mature and experienced minds, as well as in keeping the old in touch with the interests and aspirations of the young, and is no doubt one explanation of that devotion to family life and home ties that is so pleasing a characteristic of the French, and one of their greatest charms in the eyes of those who dwell long enough in France to judge of its people from knowledge, and not from hearsay.

But, even with the safeguards they throw around it, the lecture system will never be as popular with the great mass of the French people, high or low, as the private religious school. The French take the broad view of education which includes the fullest development of the whole being, from its moral, spiritual, physical, and social as well as from its intellectual side. They also believe that a woman, to be thoroughly womanly, should be educated by women, a manly man by men. They carry out this theory even in the public elementary schools, the boys’ and girls’ schools being always in separate buildings, with a separate staff of teachers.—exclusively male teachers for the hoys, women teachers for the girls. The custom prevalent among us, of classes of grown hoys in grammar and high schools (or mixed classes of boys and girls) studying under women teachers, is one they would not tolerate. There is no nation where the relations between mother and son are more close and tender than among the French, yet save for his mother’s influence the boy is early emancipated from the control of women, and given over to tutors, that they who train him for a man’s work may be men. It is the same with girls. Nowhere do we see closer companionship between father and daughter, brother and sister, than in France, but the girl’s educators, they who form her to truest womanhood, must be women.

It is, then, the exceptional girl who is educated on the lecture system. Among the rich it is the almost universal rule to educate their children, both boys and girls, in private schools and colleges. The public elementary schools are frequented only by the children of the very poor, and never by the comparatively well-to-do, as with us. Even the poor prefer the free religious schools wherever they are established, and these, since 1880, have necessarily been private schools.³ On the other hand, the university and professional schools, which in America are almost everywhere private institutions, are in France almost exclusively public free institutions, and are frequented by rich and poor alike.

The great majority of girls’ private schools in France are convent schools. French parents prefer them for their children not only on account of the moral and religious training and the careful attention to health and manners insured, but also from the superior quality of the secular instruction given. This advantage springs from the life and methods of the instructors themselves. The nuns are the teachers, and they teach, not from any necessity of earning their living, but from devotion to a cause. When a woman decides to enter a religious order, she has the choice of a number of orders, consecrated to an immense variety of works ; therefore, other things being equal, if she chooses an order devoted to the education of the rich, it is because she has certain mental gifts, a love of imparting knowledge, and an interest in and sympathy with young girls of this class that draw her to this sort of work rather than to any other. It is her life work, to which she freely consecrates her powers, and not a temporary occupation, which she is driven to by necessity, and will withdraw from as soon as she has made money enough. Before entering a teaching order she must first pass the government examinations and obtain the necessary diploma qualifying her to teach. After entering the order she usually passes through two novitiates : one, lasting a year or two, of a purely spiritual and religious character, in which she tests her fitness to lead a conventual life ; then, if she perseveres, a second novitiate, lasting from two to five years, in which she is specially trained to her life work of education. Her capacities are carefully tested by her superiors, and her talents, in whatever direction they may lie, cultivated to the utmost. Some novices prove to have little gift for teaching, but may have great personal influence over the children, or a gift for practical affairs. Such are detailed for the general discipline of the school, or for the management of its household and business concerns. By this means the teachers are secured exemption from those outside cares and worries which, with teachers living in the world, do far more than the school routine towards breaking them down and unfitting them for the best and highest work. Thus we find three qualities in their teaching that are of immense advantage to the taught, — thoroughness, concentration, and enthusiasm.

The necessity for this thorough training will be better understood when I explain that the teaching is not done through textbooks and recitations, as in American schools, but through oral instruction. This method prevails entirely in the French as in most European schools. Textbooks are little used, at the most serving as books of reference, or outlines which the teacher fills in and amplifies. The lectures are preceded by an informal oral examination of the class on the subject of the preceding lecture ; then the instructor takes up the subject of the day, on which she is prepared to give the most exhaustive information, often reading extracts from different writers of authority, showing the subject in all its aspects. The pupils take notes during the lecture, and afterwards, in study hour, write out abstracts from these notes. They are allowed to ask questions freely and to take up points of discussion, no matter how much the lecture may be interrupted thereby. The discussions, however, are held well in hand by the teacher, that they may not degenerate into mere battles of crude opinions among the pupils. This method of oral instruction is of course a strain upon the teacher, but it makes the work far more interesting both to her and to the class. The teachers are fully equipped to meet the strain, while the element of personal enthusiasm brought into the study, and the contact with their well-trained, mature, vigorous understandings, are invaluable as an inspiration to the pupils. The advantage this training in oral instruction is to the teachers themselves can hardly be overrated. If such experience as I have had with my own sex, in Europe or in America, may count for anything, I will say that nowhere have I found feminine intelligence so keen, well balanced, broad, and philosophical, or language so facile and elegant, lucid and strong, as among certain of our instructors in the schools of France and Germany who had been trained to oral methods, either in religious orders or in the normal schools.

A large number of private schools in Paris are boarding-schools. This comes from the manner of life of the aristocratic families. Many of them spend the greater part of the year, from Whitsuntide to New Year, on their estates in the country, where educational advantages are few, and live in Paris four or five months only, during the winter and spring. If the children followed the movements of their parents, it would be a serious interruption to their school work, so they stay at boarding - school till the summer vacation. While in Paris, the parents visit the children twice a week at the school, and may take them to walk or to drive; and once a month the children spend a day and night at home, and very jolly occasions these family reunions are.

All the day-schools, both private and public, whether for girls or boys, rich or poor, are really day boarding-schools ; that is, the pupils spend the whole day at school, taking their noon meal there, having their recreations in the school playgrounds, and doing all their studying within school hours. This system is believed to have great advantages of health, discipline, and time-saving over the system of two sessions, or that of one long session with home study.⁴ School begins at half past seven in the morning, or eight at the latest, the European nations being earlier risers than we. As the French never eat heartily in the early morning, the children take simply a cup of chocolate or soup or hot milk, with a little bread, before leaving home. They are accompanied to the school door by one of their parents, or by a governess or tutor. The father usually walks to school with his boys, the mother with her girls. Although I know no large city where a self-respecting woman or young girl can go about alone with more absolute and agreeable security than in Paris, yet it is a thing no French girl ever wants to do. It shocks her sense of maidenly dignity and reserve. — she would cry her eyes out with mortification, if forced to do it; and the attitude of American girls in this matter is something she will politely excuse, but wholly fails to understand. A boy, too, would feel neglected, — as if his parents did not care what became of him, — if they let him roam the streets alone, to get into mischief or not at his own sweet will. He adores his father, is proud to walk the street arm in arm with him, and the two are usually close friends and affectionate companions.

Let us suppose that school begins at eight o’clock, though that is unfashionably late. First there is an hour of instruction, then an hour of study and writing, followed by the long instruction of an hour and a half. At half past eleven comes breakfast, — a hearty meal, consisting of meat or fish, vegetables, and pudding, with plenty of bread and a concoction of thin claret and water, popularly known as abondance, the usual beverage of children in southern Europe. In this, the most temperate portion of the civilized world, water is never drunk unless mixed with wine, even by babies. After breakfast there is half an hour or forty minutes of active exercise in the open air, — running, jumping, and playing of lively games on the school playgrounds, which are often very extensive, even in the heart of the city, owing to the French manner of building their houses around courtyards and having wide gardens in the rear. The girls are in their element at these recreations, big girls of sixteen or eighteen romping like children of six or eight. We were kept to strict silence in study hours, and the whole discipline of French schools is very austere ; but at recreation, though always under supervision, the one rule impressed upon us was that no one should stand still and mope. A few delicate girls were taken on quiet walks, but for the rest of us, play we must, and play we did. The French say that the best players make the best workers, and that the girl who has a bit of the tomboy in her always makes the finest character. Certainly the French girls were as boisterous and irrepressible at play, as cram full and brimming over with fun and frolic and high spirits, as any girls it was ever my luck to see ; but they were industrious, cheerful, and thorough workers in the schoolroom, docile, sweetmannered and graceful in the parlor, while their sense of honor in observing the general discipline of school life was something fairly heroic. After recreation comes another hour of study, followed by an hour of manual work, — sewing, embroidery, drawing, and painting, — or by classes in music. Then there is another half hour of open-air recreation, then the afternoon recitation, and a final hour of study. Thus the school day of nine hours is divided into six and a half for study and instruction, one hour and a half for dinner and play, and one hour for manual work. Among the little children, the hours for study and instruction are broken into by frequent short indoor recreations, and by exercises in calisthenics, marching, dancing, and singing; so that they are never at one occupation more than half an hour. After they are eleven years old, however, the hours are generally arranged about as I have given them above. At half past four or five in the afternoon school breaks up, and the prettiest sight of the whole day is the merry, enthusiastic family meetings that take place, when school is over, in the entrancehall, where the parents are waiting for the children. The inevitable walk follows, for the French are great walkers, and the father and his boys join the mother and her girls either in sight-seeing in the city or in merrymaking in the parks and gardens. The working day is over for father as well as for children ; and the mother, too, has finished her home duties, her shopping and social visiting, and all are free to enjoy one another’s society for the rest of the day and evening. In the long spring and summer afternoons they often make excursions together into the beautiful suburbs, taking their evening meal at an open-air restaurant.

Before we consider the subjects studied in a French private school there are two things to be borne in mind. First, the element of stability in a schoolgirl’s life. She enters at five years of age, sometimes at four, the school where she will remain till her education is finished. Her teachers know her from earliest childhood ; they watch her character develop and her mind unfold. They understand her capacities. Perhaps her mother has been trained in the same school before her, or she may have relatives among the nuns. At any rate, she is their child; they know and love her, and they lay the foundations of her education well, for they are responsible for the whole structure. They have the end in view from the beginning. They lead her up gradually from one thing to another. They calmly lay out for her courses of study embracing five, six, ten, and even twelve years. There is always plenty of time and no hurry. Things are taken quietly and gone into deeply. The school terms are longer and school life is less broken into by vacations than with us. The girls study more hours a week and more weeks in the year than we do. School opens the last week in September, and does not close till the second week in August. There are no spring or winter vacations and no Saturday holidays. Six weeks in the late summer, a few days each at New Year and Easter, all Sundays and the principal Church holidays, and usually a half holiday on Thursday are all the breaks made in school life, which goes on almost uninterrupted in slow, healthful regularity for ten months and a half out of the twelve.

Another element in French school life is concentration. A girl’s time is less broken into by outside interests than with us, and there is less strain upon nerves and imagination. Not till her growth is attained, her school life over, and her mind and character are fairly formed is she allowed to read novels, to go to parties and dances, to attend the theatre, or to indulge in any of the distractions and dissipations so frequently permitted to growing schoolgirls in America. No matter how wealthy and aristocratic her parents, she is inured to early hours, simple food, plain surroundings, and regular occupations ; and her dress is the quiet dark uniform, without ribbon or ornament, which is customary in dayschools as well as boarding-schools. In my experience of private schools in both countries, it has seemed to me that the French girl is more simple and childlike, on the one hand, and more serious-minded, more capable of sustained work and thought, on the other, than the average American girl of the same age. From the fact of not having frivolous amusements and sentimental vagaries to disturb her mind and work on her nerves, and being better disciplined from infancy to obedience, regularity, and self-control, she throws her youthful energy and enthusiasm more wholly into the interests of her school work and her family life ; and as a consequence she is less nervous than her American sister, less subject to backaches and headaches, works with less fatigue, is more active and merry at play, more simple in her tastes, more easily amused and contented with everyday life and labors, and perhaps more frank, loyal, and affectionate in her family relations and school friendships.

Novel-reading, with a few carefully selected exceptions, is never indulged in by young people in France, and rarely even by matrons. The French have a magnificent literature outside of fiction, and plenty of clever and entertaining stories of travel and adventure, history and biography, for the young people, who do not feel the need of romances, and are all the healthier and better without them. What is good for the young people, however, seems to be bad for the novels. It is an interesting question of cause and effect. Are so many French novels bad because, young people and well-bred women being debarred from reading them, the authors adapt themselves to the tastes of men and women of the world, or are young persons debarred from them because they are so bad that only men and women of the world may read them ? The French, in fact, are almost Puritanical in their horror of novels. If a girl sees a novel in the hands of young women or lads, she shakes her head sadly and says, “ Poor things ! They have been badly brought up.” Even the daily newspapers are avoided by women and young people. Yet Frenchwomen are remarkable for their intelligent interest in the political, social, and literary questions of the day. I think the fact that the masculine Gaul is less taciturn than the Anglo-Saxon male has something to do with this. A Frenchman dearly loves to talk, to sharpen his wits in lively conversation. He reads his paper at the café or the club, discusses its contents with, his men friends on the boulevards by the hour, then returns, brimful of ideas, to his own fireside, and goes over the whole thing again, with unflagging interest, among his women folk and boys. It is not his fault if they are not well informed on all the topics of the day. He does not seem to be as firmly convinced of the mental incapacity of his wife and daughter as the less chivalrous American. Perhaps he has less reason to be, — who knows ? Let us see if we can discover in a Frenchwoman’s education the reason why she is such an intelligent and interesting companion to the men of her family.

And now that I come to the question of studies I have an admission to make which I fear will overthrow, in the minds of American readers, any respectful opinion they may have begun to form of the education of girls in France. I may as well say at once that the French never, or practically never, teach Latin or Greek or mathematics, and very little science, in girls’ schools. I know that there are a few colleges for girls where these subjects are taught, and that they may be elected in the public cours ; but they are rarely elected, and in the private schools they are politely ignored. Now that this is stated I feel that the worst is over, and that I can go on freely to explain why it is that girls neglect these branches, and what those studies are to which they give preference.

I think we all appreciate that a girl cannot learn everything before she is seventeen. If her school life is to stop at that age, then many subjects, admirable, useful, and desirable in themselves, must necessarily be omitted from her list. The question becomes, “ What can be omitted from the average girl’s education with least, detriment to her own mind and character and to the advancement of the society in which she will take her place?” The French reply: “ Her best mental and moral training will be to learn a few things well rather than many things superficially. In choosing what these few things shall be, do not omit the correct and elegant use of her own language, and a familiarity with all that is best and highest in its literature and in the literature of all ages. Let her get her knowledge of the classic literature through the medium of scholarly and well-written translations and essays, rather than spend years over grammar and dictionary for the sake of making a crude translation of her own. Let her have a practical knowledge of arithmetic ; but if mental discipline is desired, let her study logic rather than mathematics, ethics rather than science. Do not omit thorough courses in universal history and the philosophy of history, in geography and natural history, in religion and ethics, — those studies that will interest her in her fellow-creatures, in the world about her, and in the great social, political, religious, and intellectual movements of to-day and of all times; opening her mind to the great interests of human society, and preparing her to take her place in it and to train a race of heroes and heroines. Do not omit the acquaintance with one or more living languages, and some branch of polite accomplishments according to her gifts ; and do not omit training in the domestic arts of sewing, the keeping of accounts, and the use of money. If in later life she chooses to take up the study of the classics, mathematics, and science, so much the better; but do not neglect ever so little, for their sake, the things that will make her a companionable, useful, and thinking member of society.”

The usual studies, then, of a well-educated French girl are literary, historical, and ethical in character, artistic and practical. In the school that I attended, those who desired were prepared for the competitive examinations of the University of Paris, and there were post-graduate courses in philosophy and contemporary political and constitutional history. The courses in philosophy were extremely popular. They were given in the public parlors of the convent by professors of the Collége Ste. Geneviève, and were attended by many society ladies and graduates of other schools, and were always crowded to the doors.

It is not sufficient, however, to name the studies pursued by the girls, for it is in the thoroughness of the methods of study, and the time and attention given to each, that the great difference lies between our private schools and those of France.

In these schools, the children are usually divided into classes, according to their proficiency in their own language, its grammar and literature, and the art of rhetoric and composition. If a girl is in the first or second division, it means the first or second division in French. In all other studies she takes her place according to her capacities, independent of her division, and her work in these studies affects her standing in her division only by its excellence, and not as she is backward or advanced in the subject itself. This seems to give a fairer average, considering the inequality of mental gifts, and is an incentive to good work in all branches, as it is the work that counts. By this method more attention is paid to individual capacities, no girl having to be pushed forward or held back unduly to keep pace with her division in all things, while, besides affecting her general standing, any specially brilliant work in a single study is separately rewarded.

The test of scholarship is not parrotlearning, but good understanding. Having no text to memorize, we were obliged to listen attentively to the instructions, cultivate all the intelligence and memory we had, and learn to express ourselves in our own words, both at the frequent oral examinations and in our written abstracts. We had to take a good deal of pains with these abstracts, as we were marked on them as well as at the examinations. From the moment a child can hold a pen in her hand she spends the greater part of her working hours writing out abstracts, or copying them when corrected; and by the time we had listened to a lecture, taken notes of it, written out our abstract, had it corrected, been examined on it, copied it, reviewed it at the monthly examinations, and again at the quarterly examinations, we must have been stupid indeed if we had not acquired a pretty clear idea of the subject, and, what is more, learned to express our idea readily and in good language.

The knowledge of the French language and its literature is most strongly insisted upon. Fifteen hours a week, forty-five weeks in the year, for at least ten years, the French girl devotes to perfecting herself in her own language and literature. Every morning school opened with an hour’s instruction in French; every afternoon it closed with preparation for the next day’s lesson. Grammar, orthography, and definition for the younger children, rhetoric, composition, and the principles of logic (the French mind sees a connection between the art of reasoning well and the art of speaking or writing well) for the older girls, occupied the morning hour four times a week. The other two days the hour was given to the study of French literature, of which there were several courses, graded according to the children’s capacities ; the advanced pupils taking up Provencal and Old French literature, among other branches. All were exercised daily in reading and elocution, had two lessons weekly in penmanship and letter - writing, and were obliged to write themes every week for lessons in “ style.”

Besides the French courses in letters there was a most interesting course in the history of universal literature, which was continued through three school years. One half of the first year was devoted to the literary study of the Bible, the other half to that of the Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church and the mediæval chroniclers and hymn-writers. The second year was devoted to the pagan literature of Greece and of Rome, and a glimpse into Oriental literature and traditions. The last year we took up the Renaissance, Dante, Tasso, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe, and the outlines of Italian, Spanish, English, and German literatures. We studied the most famous examples through the medium of translations; we learned many of the most celebrated passages by heart; we read essays by the great modern critics, and were taught to study the different literatures comparatively, drawing interesting parallels and contrasts between Jewish and Greek, pagan and Christian, Oriental and Scandinavian, ancient and modern, etc. The themes of our weekly compositions were frequently drawn from such subjects. I venture to say that some of the girls, though they knew not a word of Greek, and no Latin except what they acquired through familiarity with the liturgy of their Church, had, on the whole, a better acquaintance with the general spirit and thought of classic literature than have many college girls who take honors in Greek and Latin, besides an acquaintance with patristic and mediæval literature of which our girls would be quite innocent.

But perhaps the finest course of study is the historical one. From the time the little children first learn to read they spell out, not stories of cats and birds and good little girls, but stories of kings and queens, of heroes and heroines, of saints and martyrs, Bible stories and tales of chivalry. At eight they begin the histories of Greece and Rome and France, of the Bible and the Church, and are well drilled in these till about their twelfth or thirteenth year, when they begin the great course of universal history, a study of history by epochs and movements, — the philosophy of history, we might call it. This course absorbs ten hours a week, there being three instructions of an hour and a half each, the rest of the time being taken up with study and the writing of abstracts and drawing of chronological tables. The course is five years long. The first year embraces general ancient history to the early period of the Roman emperors. The second year takes up the decline and fall of the Western Empire, the formation of Christendom and of the Holy Roman Empire, the rise of Mohammedanism, the great Asiatic invasions, and the period of the Crusades. The third year is devoted to the study of the Renaissance, the decline and fall of the Eastern Empire, the age of the great discoveries, the Protestant reformation, the Council of Trent, and the Spanish and Portuguese conquests in America and Asia. The fourth year starts with the reign of Louis XIII., and goes through the Thirty Years’ War, the reign of Louis XIV., the wars of succession, the rise of the Russian Empire and of Prussia, the revolution and restoration in England, the age of diplomacy and of the balance of power. The last year is given to an extended course in contemporary history from the period of the French Revolution to the present day. Beside these courses there is an obligatory course of one year for advanced students in the political and constitutional history of France, and a several years’ course in sacred history, with two instructions weekly. This last course goes over a great deal of ground. It begins with the study of Old and New Testament history, and takes up mythology, the Oriental and Scandinavian religions, the history of the early Church and of the Popes, the early councils, the great schisms of the East and of the West, the beginnings of monastic life, the missionary labors of the Dark Ages, mediæval scholasticism, the military and the mendicant orders, the spread of Mohammedanism, the Crusades, the Inquisition, Protestantism, the missionary labors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the infidel philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Vatican Council, and the present condition of religions throughout the world, together with the critical study of the most important forms of heresy and unbelief from the apostolic age to the present day. Although this included much that was doctrinal, yet there were separate courses of Christian doctrine, to which six hours a week were given, and which extended over the whole school career. These were familiarly called catéchismes, and with the little children consisted principally in instructing them in the truths of religion and its moral teachings, and preparing them to receive the sacraments. The older children, however, were taken more deeply into the subject, and it became a serious study in theology and ethics. In my division, I remember, we spent an entire year on the Ten Commandments alone, taking them up from different points of view with respect to natural religion, revelation, moral philosophy, the common law of Christian nations, canon law, the science of government, social and political science, etc.

It may be thought that these questions are too profound, too far beyond the comprehension of very young girls. Yet some of the best thinkers and brightest scholars in these classes were girls under sixteen years of age. The most brilliant and original girl in school, who had finished all the courses I have mentioned, and many others beside, was barely fifteen, and the two who ranked next to her in general brilliancy of attainments were only thirteen. The truth is, children are capable of greater things than we readily believe. It is surprising to see how easily girls still in short dresses will grasp the most far-reaching social and ethical questions, how keen their logic is, and what lively interest they take in science at an age when we are inclined to keep them at dolls and toys. Besides, very young girls are too ignorant of the world, too full of joyous illusions, to be troubled by tlre gravity of the great questions of humanity, and are not so depressed, so discouraged, so overwhelmed by them as they will be when older. Their spirit is more elastic, their intuitions are keener, the workings of their minds less morbidly involved, at fifteen than at twenty or twenty-five. At least, this strikes me as true of French girls between the ages of thirteen and seventeen who study ethics and social science, as compared with American girls and young women studying somewhat the same subjects in later life. The older girls seem to become either restless, anxious, and morbid, or else intensely arrogant, in dealing with these questions, and do not easily throw them off their minds. But the young French girls enter into such studies with keen intelligence and hearty interest; then recreation hour breaks in, and they tear out into the garden, and romp and scream like wild things. After working off the steam in half an hour of active exercise and gay frolic, they come trooping back to the schoolroom, cheerfully and seriously ready to grapple with life’s biggest problems. It may be, however, not so much owing to their age as to the basis of religious faith from which they survey these topics that the French girls make more ingenuous and cheerful students.

A few studies remain to be mentioned. Algebra and geometry were unknown names to the girls, though they were necessarily taught a few of the signs of algebra and the figures of geometry in connection with their other studies. They were well trained in practical arithmetic ; they learned to calculate with lightning rapidity, to keep accounts neatly, and to understand a few business terms; but less time was given to this than to any other study, and most of the children cordially hated it, though they were never let off from their biweekly drill during their whole school life. Geography, however, was immensely popular. It was studied from a different point of view, of course, than in American schools. France looked very big on their maps, and the United States somewhat small; still, they knew as much about us as we in our turn know of Australia or South America, for instance. They studied physical geography in connection with maps, and the lectures were full of interesting general information about the different countries, their habits and customs, peculiarities of formation, climate and flora, their cities, commerce, architecture, education, art treasures, and industries. The graduating class gave a whole year to the study of France, its departments, internal administration, system of taxation, population, resources, industries, schools, institutions, etc.

The course in natural history was two years long ; it was a favorite study, and, as in geography, a great deal of general information was introduced into the lectures on various subjects. Physics was not taught in the school where I studied, but in other private schools it was often part of the regular course. The classes in drawing and painting were unusually fine in all the French schools that I knew. The French are devoted to art, and many girls, after graduating, go daily to studios and do very serious work. They are full of talent in this direction. Instrumental music was not as generally studied as with us; that is, girls rarely gave any time to music unless they had a marked taste for it; but those who played at all were apt to play remarkably well, with great facility and artistic finish, and were admirably instructed. Harmony, counterpoint, and the history of music were always included in musical instruction. The notion of studying instrumental music without at least an elementary knowledge of these subjects is one that could originate only in an American head. Vocal training is usually put off till schooldays are over, but the children were very fond of singing, and had classes in singing at sight. They took part in the musical services in the chapel, and knew a great number of hymns and psalms and canticles by heart, both French and Latin. We also had no end of stirring school-songs, and on rainy days, when we took our recreation indoors, we made the halls ring with them. The French have a quick ear and a splendid sense of rhythm, and our chorus-singing was something famous.

I need not add that the girls were clever with their needles. This will easily be taken for granted. We were taught fine sewing, embroidery, and fancy-work, and were well exercised in mending and darning. Conversation classes in English, German, or Italian went on during the sewing-hour. The girls who took drawing or music were not wholly exempted from sewing, but attended the classes twice a week. Once a week all were obliged to sew for the poor.

The little girls, as I have said, had frequent classes in calisthenics, dancing, and gymnastics, and also lessons in deportment. Our manners, as in convent schools everywhere, were carefully attended to; but as we grew older and more “reasonable” (reasonableness was the great school virtue forever held up to us) any special training in these matters was discontinued. We learned our manners young, and were never permitted to forget them.

It is the custom, in convents where rich children are educated, for the nuns to carry on some charitable work for poor children, which is supported by the voluntary and secret offerings of the pupils and their parents. Sometimes this charity takes the form of an industrial school to teach trades to poor girls; sometimes it is an orphanage or an infirmary for lame and sickly children who need special treatment and care ; or it may be a day nursery for little ones, or an evening school for young working-girls. Whatever it is, both the pupils and their parents learn to take the deepest interest in ‘‘our little poor,” and this interest calls forth many touching acts of generosity and personal devotion.

Perhaps the description I have given of French girls’ education does not tally with the general notion of the subject. It, will be understood, of course, that I do not draw any comparisons between French private schools and our public schools and girls’ colleges. It would not be a fair comparison, nor is it one that I am competent to make. I have simply given an account of the methods of education in some of the fashionable private schools of Paris, where I either studied myself, or where I had friends among both pupils and teachers, and was familiar with their ways and customs. Those of my readers who are acquainted with the fashionable private schools of our American cities can draw their own comparisons.

Since ray schooldays were over I have often revisited the old scenes and renewed some of the old friendships, and seen the solid, pious education bear fruit in strong characters, fine intelligences, and lovely lives. A few — perhaps the choicest, brightest spirits of all — have returned to the old school, and now sit at the teacher’s desk, wearing the religious dress, and pouring out the treasures of their brains and hearts to the eager, bright-faced children who have succeeded them on the benches. Others are leading honored and useful lives in the midst of their families. The greater number are married. To each in her place may be ascribed the words of King Lemuel in the vision wherewith his mother instructed him: “Her children arise up, and call her blessed.” “ Strength and honour are her clothing.” “ She openeth her mouth with wisdom ; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household.” “ The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her.” “ She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life,”

Henrietta Channing Dana.