horseman. Skill of government, was but a Pedanteria in
comparison: then woulde he adde certaine prayses, by telling what a
peerlesse beast a horse was. The only serviceable Courtier without
flattery, the beast of the most beutie, faithfulness, courage, and such
more, that if I had not beene a peece of a Logician before I came to
him, I think he would have perswaded mee to have wished my selfe a
Horse."[265]

That this was somewhat the spirit of the French academies there seems no
doubt. Though they claimed to give an equal amount of physical and
mental exercise, they tended to the muscular side of the programme.
Pluvinel, says Tallemant des Reaux, "was hardly more intelligent than
his horses,"[266] and the academies are supposed to have declined after
his death.[267] "All that is to be learned in these Academies," says
Clarendon, "is Riding, Dancing, and Fencing, besides some Wickednesses
they do not profess to teach. It is true they have men there who teach
Arithmetick, which they call Philosophy, and the Art of Fortification,
which they call the Mathematicks; but what Learning they had there, I
might easily imagine, when he assured me, that in Three years which he
had spent in the Academy, he never saw a Latin book nor any Master that
taught anything there, who would not have taken it very ill to be
suspected to speake or understand Latin."[268] This sort of aspersion
was continued by Dr Wallis, the Savilian Professor of Mathematics at
Oxford in 1700, who was roused to a fine pitch of indignation by
Maidwell's efforts to start an academy in London:[269]

"Of teachers in the academie, scarce any of a higher character than a
valet-de-chambre. And, if such an one, who (for instance) hath waited on
his master in one or two campagnes, and is able perhaps to copy the
draught of a fortification from another paper; this is called
mathematicks; and, beyond this (if so much) you are not to expect."

A certain Mr P. Chester finishes the English condemnation of a school,
such as Benjamin's, by declaring that its pretensions to fit men for
life was "like the shearing of Hoggs, much Noyse and little Wooll,
nothing considerable taught that I know, butt only to fitt a man to be a
French chevalier, that is in plain English a Trooper."[270]

These comments are what one expects from Oxford, to be sure, but even M.
Jusserand acknowledges that the academies were not centres of
intellectual light, and quotes to prove it certain question