1 70 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION 



which would be learned with an avidity only to be equalled by 

 the distaste with which scraps of dead Latin and imperfect 

 French are rejected by a lad who knows that not a grown 

 man of his class retains any knowledge of either, or cares to 

 acquire it. 



Let me not be mistaken. For the highest class of education 

 I look on the dead and foreign languages as essential, but they 

 are useless unless pursued until the student has them well 

 under command, and can forget the instrument through which 

 he communes with the thoughts of men of other nations, and of 

 all ages. I am no fanatic, who would destroy a great instru- 

 ment of culture by which many generations have been trained, 

 but I say, that for workmen, foremen, and the smaller class of 

 manufacturers and tradesmen, such mental provender as is 

 afforded by a little Latin, French, music, dancing, and drilling, 

 is garbage as compared with the healthy food in the Prussian 

 school. 



I will now draw your attention to what can be done in a 

 charitable institution in Paris, worthy of imitation in many 

 respects, although managed by a Catholic religious body called 

 the Freres Chretiens, who are by no means universally popular. 

 I allude to what is called the school of St. Nicolas in the Rue 

 Vaugirard. This is a boarding-school for the poorer classes, 

 administered and taught by the religious body, the members of 

 which live in the school, and receive their food, and about 10. 

 annually out of the profits of the school. About 1,700 workmen's 

 sons are boarded and clothed in this establishment, and they pay 

 II. 4s. per month during ten months in the year ; the school is 

 slightly assisted by charitable bequests, and the average cost of 

 each pupil is 171. per annum, the total revenue being 28,OOOZ. 

 The boys are received between the ages of seven and ten, and 

 some do not leave till about eighteen or nineteen. The 

 mechanical drawing executed by boys of thirteen or fourteen 

 in this school is wonderfully good. There were plans of the 

 kitchens to a large scale, showing the details of the cooking 

 apparatus, steam-boiler, and so forth, executed from dimensions 

 taken by the pupils themselves. T saw the drawings in all stages 

 of progress, and each drawing differing in colour and arrange- 

 ment according to the disposition of the draughtsman, showing 



