To the universities proper that have been enumerated above should be added the Superior medical schools of Amiens, Angers, Limoges, Nantes Rheims, Rouen and Tours. As regards the University of Paris, one would have a very incomplete idea of it if one limited it to the four Faculties that have the Sorbonne for their centre. It includes a large number of establish ments of which the Collage de France, Ecole des Chartes, Museum, Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Ecole des Langues Orientales are only the prin cipal. More or less directly connected with it, though not all placed within the authority of the Minister of Public Instruction, are also the Ecole du Louvre, Ecole des Beaux Arts, Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, Conservatoire, Ecole Su perieure des Mines, Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, Ecole des Sciences Politiques. Even if one leaves these schools aside, and only takes into account the former, that are the natural complement of the four Faculties, the University of Paris appears as something unique in the world. To give an idea of its im portance it suffices to say that of the 21,033,778 francs annually spent on superior education, 9,952,191 francs, i.e., almost one half, are ab sorbed by the University of Paris alone, and that the number of its undergraduates exceeds 19,800.
Whether this affluence in Paris is a good thing may be and has often been discussed; it is a fact that it takes from the provincial uni versities their best teachers and a large propor tion of their students, but at the same time it •is undeniable that this very density of the scholastic population of Paris is a strong stimu lus to intense intellectual labor: there is no place in the world so replete with illustrious names or so productive of remarkable achieve ments, both literary and scientific.
Private Education.— The monopoly of teaching which Napoleon had given to the Im pedal University, and which the Royal Univer sity retained after it, was abolished, practically in 1830, and officially in 1850 by the Falloux Bill. This bill, though recently modified in many of its clauses, has not been recalled as regards the liberty of teaching.
The development of the public schools was everywhere attended by a parallel increase of the private ones. It is worth remarking, how ever, that this regime of liberty chiefly served the interests of the Catholics who, opposite the State University of France, built up, as it were, a university of their own, including establish ments of the three degrees, primary, secondary and superior. Indeed, so preponderant is their influence in the so-called uenseignement fibre.° that a private school is generally understood to mean a Catholic school.
The private establishment being as exact a copy as possible of those which belong to the state, there is no necessity to insist much on the subject. Yet a comparison of their re
spective importance cannot be dispensed with. With regard to primary education, the state es tablishments are far ahead of the others, with 69,633 schools, 122,607 teachers and 4,661,000 pupils, against 13,462 private schools kept 37,375 private teachers and receiving 1,067,200 pupils. It was chiefly in secondary education that the competition of private industry was successful, for the French middle and classes are to a large extent favorable to Catholicism. The number of boys is not so high in private colleges as in the state lycies and colleges : 72,000 for the former against 100,203 for the latter. The competition is more successful still as regards the education of girls; the state colleges, it has been said before, at tract but a comparatively small number of them. Here the Catholics have an undeniable advantage, but they are far behind with their universities. They gave the utmost of their ef fort in 1875 when they founded three Catholic universities in Angers, Lille and Lyons, and a Catholic Institute in Paris. For these they are wholly dependent upon charitable foundations (superior education being gratuitous and the matriculation fees being received by the state); so, far from being able to increase them, they experience great difficulty in maintaining what they have created. On the whole, therefore, the superiority of the state establishments is ob vious and assuredly sufficient to reward the pecuniary sacrifices of the nation.
A law passed on 1 July 1901, amended and completed in 1904, ordered that all the schools under the management of religious orders (congréganistes), should be closed within 10 years. Private schools have therefore become less and less numerous, as most of them (espe cially secondary schools) were managed by congreganistes (lesuites, Maristes, etc.).
Professional and Technical Instruction. —Among the schools and institutions of tech nical instruction we must mention the follow ing military schools : Ecole Polytechnique, which is perhaps the most famous of the land for the training of artillery officers; Ecole de Saint-Cyr, Ecole de Cavalerie at Saumur, Ecole Superieure de Guerre (Paris). The Naval School of Brest forms naval officers.. The following institutions deserve also special mention: Ecole des Arts et Métiers (Paris); ficole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures (Paris) ; Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commer dales, Paris; Ecole des Mines (Paris and Saint Etienne); Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees (Paris) ; Ecole des Beaux-Arts (Paris); Ecole Nationale des Arts decoratifs (Parts), and also numerous practical schools of commerce and agriculture in the provinces.