A Visit to Paris in 1814 Author:John Scott Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XV. nPHE following remarks on the schools and - literary establishments of Paris, are from the pen of a friend. " The state of education in France ... more »has been lately examined in many publications. I found some of those referring solely to the university of Paris, objecting to its lectures, and to its want of any examinations of the students. Many celebrated men still continue to adorn this institution. — The military and polytechnic schools are large and magnificent establishments; the former intended for the education of young men of good families in the art of war; the latter a seminary in which three hundred young men, selected after a rigorous examination from the inferior schools, receive an extensive education, in the sciences only, for the space of three years. The learned languages are chiefly taught in the university itself, in the college of France, and in the Prytanee, which is divided into the four colleges of Paris, St. Cyr, St. Ger- main, and Compiegne. — It was undoubtedly the aim of Buonaparte to degrade literature and give a superior place to the sciences; How happy ought France to feel, that this attack is no more! That history, legislation, poetry, and criticism may again be allowed to flourish, free from the mutilation of their productions! It was in them that Buonaparte saw and felt the enemies of his power and his despotism. He had . a.degraded religion and a slavish priesthood at his command ; but he seems to have dreaded the voice of history, and to have shrunk from the thoughts of posterity. He seems to. have intended ultimately, to limit the education of youth to the mathematical and physical sciences only, aware that in their studies nothing would occur to inculcate sentiments of horror at the despotism with which he had enchained France ; ...« less