ive a Revolutionary education, "all the
acquirements and the manners and customs of a Revolutionary soldier."
Their costume, at first, consisted of a blouse of white ticking and a
police cap. But this uniform was considered to be not sufficiently
military, and the painter, David, was commissioned to design another.
Being then in the classic and impracticable mood of his career, he
furnished, for these budding warriors, a tunic _a la polonaise_,
decorated with knots, _d'hirondelle_, to serve as epaulettes, and with
frogs, a waistcoat _a chale_, a fichu _a la Collin_, as a cravat; tight
pantaloons, disappearing in half-gaiters of black canvas. Each of these
articles was of a different color from all the others, the stuffs having
been procured by requisitions made among the merchants of the Halles.
The footman was armed with a Roman sword with a red scabbard, suspended
across his body by a black scarf, on which might be read: _Liberte_,
_Egalite_, over the image of a sword placed over a row of other swords.
The horsemen carried the sabre of the chasseurs a cheval. The
cartridge-box was in the Corsican shape. The pupils were all awakened at
daybreak by the report of a thirty-six-pound gun, which indicated the
hour of morning prayer; this prayer being the hymn that Mehul had set to
music, and which began with the invocation:

"Sire of the Universe; intelligence supreme."

The Ecole de Mars was abolished by a decree of the 23d of October, 1794.

Almost behind Saint-Etienne-du-Mont are the buildings of the famous
Ecole Polytechnique, which, "to our French families, so essentially
_fonctionnaresques_, appears like the portals of the Administrative
Paradise: all the mothers dream of it for their sons." To be a graduate
of this institution is to have a certain title to distinction in the
intellectual and scientific world. It was founded by a decree of the
Convention, under the initiative of Monge, in March, 1794, and
consequently celebrated its centennial in 1894, with great ceremony. It
was instituted as a school of public works, a school of mines, maritime
construction, bridges and highways, the marine, the artillery, etc. It
was established in the Palais Bourbon, under the direction of
Lamblardie; the pupils were to be admitted between the ages of sixteen
and twenty, this limitation being afterward extended to the age of
twenty-five. Their number was fixed at four hundred. By a decree of
September 1, 1795, the name of th