ce, or Vauban. Such are the efforts that France
demands of the young men who leave her celebrated school.

Now let us see the fate of these men culled with so much care from
each generation. At one-and-twenty we dream of life, and expect
marvels of it. I entered the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees; I was a
pupil-engineer. I studied the science of construction, and how
ardently! I am sure you remember that. I left the school in 1827,
being then twenty-four years of age, still only a candidate as
engineer, and the government paid me one hundred and fifty francs
a month; the commonest book-keeper in Paris earns that by the time
he is eighteen, giving little more than four hours a day to his
work.

By a most unusual piece of luck, perhaps because of the
distinction my devoted studies won for me, I was made, in 1828,
when I was twenty-five years old, engineer-in-ordinary. I was
sent, as you know, to a sub-prefecture, with a salary of
twenty-five hundred francs. The question of money is nothing.
Certainly my fate has been more brilliant than the son of a
carpenter might expect; but where will you find a grocer's boy,
who, if thrown into a shop at sixteen, will not in ten years be
on the high-road to an independent property?

I learned then to what these terrible efforts of mental power,
these gigantic exertions demanded by the State were to lead. The
State now employed me to count and measure pavements and heaps of
stones on the roadways; I had to keep in order, repair, and
sometimes construct culverts, one-arched bridges, regulate
drift-ways, clean and sometimes open ditches, lay out bounds, and
answer questions about the planting and felling of trees. Such are
the principal and sometimes the only occupations of ordinary
engineers, together with a little levelling which the government
obliges us to do ourselves, though any of our chain-bearers with
their limited experience can do it better than we with all our
science.

There are nearly four hundred engineers-in-ordinary and pupil
engineers; and as there are not more than a hundred or so of
engineers-in-chief, only a limited number of the sub-engineers can
hope to rise. Besides, above the grade of engineer-in-chief, there
is no absorbent class; for we cannot count as a means of
absorption the ten or fifteen places of inspector-generals or
divisionaries,--posts that are almost as useless in our c