ut
any incoherency in its structure, with no incongruity in the materials,
without any hidden imbalance. He has been taken in hand before his
twelfth year, when very young; his cure, who has been instructed from
above to secure suitable subjects, has singled him out in the catechism
class and again at the ceremony of confirmation;[5267] he is found to
have a pious tendency and a taste for sacred ceremonies, a suitable
demeanor, a mild disposition, complacency, and is inclined to study; he
is a docile and well-behaved child; whether an acolyte at the altar
or in the sacristy, he tries to fold the chasuble properly; all his
genuflexions are correct, they do not worry him, he has no trouble in
standing still, he is not excited and diverted, like the others, by the
eruptions of animal spirits and rustic coarseness. If his rude brain is
open to cultivation, if grammar and Latin can take root in it, the cure
or the vicar at once take charge of him; he studies under them, gratis
or nearly so, until he has completed the sixth or the seventh grade, and
then he enters the lower seminary.[5268]

This is a school apart, a boarding-house of picked youths, an enclosed
hot-house intended for the preservation and development of special
vocations. None of these schools existed previous to 1789; at the
present day(in 1885), they number 86 in France, and all the pupils
are to become future priests. No foreign plants, no future laymen, are
admitted into this preparatory nursery;[5269] for experience has
shown that if the lower seminary is mixed it no longer attains its
ecclesiastical purpose; "it habitually turns over to the upper
seminary only the bottom of the classes; those at the top seek fortune
elsewhere". But if, on the contrary, "the lower seminaries are kept
pure, the entire rhetoric[5270] class continues on into the upper
seminary; not only do they obtain the bottom of the classes but the
top."--The culture, in this second nursery, which is prolonged during
five years, becomes extreme, wholly special; it was less so under the
ancient regime, even at Saint-Sulpice; there were cracks in the glass
letting in currents of air; the archbishop's nephews and the younger
sons of nobles predestined for Church dignities had introduced into
it the laxity and liberties which were then the privileges of the
episcopacy. During the vacations,[5271] fairy scenes and pastorals were
performed there with costumes and dances, "The Enthronement of the