the details,
or to leave it blank.

The result can scarcely be cited as a proof of his educational zeal.
Elementary schools were left to the control and supervision of the
communes and of the _sous-prefets_, and naturally made little advance
amidst an apathetic population and under officials who cared not to
press on an expensive enterprise. The law of April 30th, 1802,
however, aimed at improving the secondary education, which the
Convention had attempted to give in its _ecoles centrales_. These were
now reconstituted either as _ecoles secondaires_ or as _lycees_. The
former were local or even private institutions intended for the most
promising pupils of the commune or group of communes; while the
_lycees_, far fewer in number, were controlled directly by the
Government. In both of these schools great prominence was given to the
exact and applied sciences. The aim of the instruction was not to
awaken thought and develop the faculties, but rather to fashion able
breadwinners, obedient citizens, and enthusiastic soldiers. The
training was of an almost military type, the pupils being regularly
drilled, while the lessons began and ended with the roll of drums. The
numbers of the _lycees_ and of their pupils rapidly increased; but the
progress of the secondary and primary schools, which could boast no
such attractions, was very slow. In 1806 only 25,000 children were
attending the public primary schools. But two years later elementary
and advanced instruction received a notable impetus from the
establishment of the University of France.

There is no institution which better reveals the character of the
French Emperor, with its singular combination of greatness and
littleness, of wide-sweeping aims with official pedantry. The
University, as it existed during the First Empire, offers a striking
example of that mania for the control of the general will which
philosophers had so attractively taught and Napoleon so profitably
practised. It is the first definite outcome of a desire to subject
education and learning to wholesale regimental methods, and to break
up the old-world bowers of culture by State-worked steam-ploughs. His
aims were thus set forth:

"I want a teaching body, because such a body never dies, but
transmits its organization and spirit. I want a body whose teaching
is far above the fads of the moment, goes straight on even when the
government is asleep, and whose administration and statu