children_. Far
better have this system and lack the one she has now, but if she only
had our common school system together with her colleges and academies,
she would surpass, by far, any other nation. America very much needs
such a system. It is free, broad, and liberal, and with ordinary care
will make any country glorious in the sciences and arts. Certainly until
America cares less for mere cash and more for the arts and sciences,
until she is generous enough to foster them and appropriate money to
help young men of genius, and offer prizes to men of talent, the fine
arts will not prosper with us. Only the arts which in a pecuniary sense
_pay_, will thrive, and the rest will live a starveling life. Can we
rest content with such a prospect? No country is better able to be
generous in such matters than America.

While in Paris I made the acquaintance of several students of law and
medicine from America, and from them I learned that the professors in
all the different institutions are exceedingly polite and kind to
foreign students, and especially to Americans. Foreign diplomas are
granted by the different colleges, and no difference is made between a
native and a foreign scholar.

The students of Paris are an intellectual class, and as a body are
inclined at all times to be democratic. In England and in America
learning seems always to incline to conservatism. The great schools and
colleges are opposed to radicalism. This is generally true in America,
in the old institutions of learning, and it is emphatically true of
England. Cambridge and Oxford are the strong-holds of the blindest
toryism. They are two hundred years behind the age. But in Paris this is
not the case. The colleges are reformatory and radical. The Academies
have the same disposition, only it is modified. Many of the members of
the French academy are sincere republicans. I cannot account for this
singular fact, unless it be that the French mind is so active and so
brilliant that it easily arrives at the truth. A Frenchman, if he
considers the matter of government and politics, very soon arrives at
his conclusion--that man has rights, and that a form of government which
comes least in collision with them is the best. It is entirely a matter
of theory with him. Everything tends to theory. The practical is
ignored. Hence, while Paris abounds with theoretical democrats and
republicans, there are few men in it capable of administering the
affairs of a demo