Foreign Notices. — France. 489 



and in any particular art or profession, we shall find that early education 

 has had a greater influence than any other. We have not time at present 

 to prove this in detail, but we can assert, without fear of being found wrong, 

 that the most speedy and eflTectual manner of raising all the arts of a country 

 to the highest degree of perfection, and precisely to the degree necessary for 

 the greatest prosperity of that country, is to facilitate the education of the 

 great mass of the people, and leave all the rest to individual exertion. Render 

 the whole population of a country a reading population, and you will soon 

 have every thing from that population which human nature is capable of, 

 under the given circumstances of climate and geographical position. Paris may 

 be said to be overstocked with science of every description. Speaking ge- 

 nerally of books on agriculture and horticulture, those published in Paris 

 are much more scientific than those published in London. There are not, 

 perhaps, half a dozen practical gardeners in Great Britain, who, strictly 

 speaking, can be called scientific men : but there are several times that 

 number in France, who have gone through a complete course of instruc- 

 tion, theoretical and practical, under the late M. Thouin, at the Jardin des 

 Plantes ; who understand and apply the Jussieuean system of botany, and 

 reason on the operations of pruning and culture, in accordance with the 

 current principles of vegetable physiology and chemistry. But all the other 

 gardeners are in the lowest state of ignorance ; whereas, in Great Britain, 

 10,000 gardeners may easily be found who understand botany, who are ge- 

 neral readers, and who are in fact exceedingly well informed men on every 

 subject. In France there seems no gradation from the highly cultivated 

 and intellectual professors, authors, and members of societies, of the metro- 

 polis, to the most deplorably ignorant, and, in comparison with England, 

 miserably fed, mass of country population. The first and grand source of im- 

 provement for France is the removal of this ignorance; when that is effected 

 agriculture and gardening will be carried to a higher degree of perfection than 

 they can ever be in Britain ; because her climate admits of a greater variety 

 of products in the open air. We do not say that the effects of agricultural 

 and horticultural societies will not contribute to this improvement ; but 

 we do say that incomparably more would be effected by a powerful society 

 for the general diffusion of education, for the establishment in every village 

 of a school for teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, and drawing; and, if 

 possible, in addition, a small general library, and what we have in a former 

 Number of this Magazine named a labourer's institution. The establish- 

 ment of such schools and institutions would be worthy of an enlightened 

 government ; but every government is not enlightened, and perhaps it is 

 the destiny of mankind to obtain such institutions with a little difUcultj', in 

 order that they may prize them higher, and retain them longer. It is a fact, 

 that the necessity of educating the mass of the people has long been as fully 

 acknowledged by the learned men of Paris, as it has by a great number of 

 individuals in England, and especially in Scotland ; but in Britain the opi- 

 nion being more general, and more freely expressed, it has more influence 

 on the government. In France, as in every other country, public opinion 

 is gaining ground, and the natural tendency of things in all countries is to 

 arrive at the acknowledgement of this principle as the basis of public go- 

 vernment. 



Socie'te pour V Emeignenent E'l^mentaire, Rue Taranne, No. 12. — The 

 number of hospitals and public charities in Paris is astonishing ; some account 

 of thein may be found in a work entitled Almanack Philanthropique, by M. 

 Eugene Cassin, of Rue Taranne, No. 12., who is a general agent for the Hor- 

 ticultural Society of Paris, the Socie'td pour rEnseignemertt E'lementaire, 

 and for several others. The last-named Society was established soon after 

 the Lancasterian system of education came into notice in England; audits 

 object was to diffuse a knowledge of this system in France, and on the Con- 

 tinent generally. The Society was at one time in a comparatively flourish- 



