ROUTINE VERSUS DISCOVERIES. 
Ill 
Gods, and found a place for the dog and the bull among the bril- 
liant constellations of its heaven. Let us confess that we should 
have all profited more in our classes, if our professors, instead of 
posting us up on the victories of Alexander, had taken the trouble 
to instruct us upon the history of each conquest of man over na- 
ture, on the conquest of the cereal grains, of the vine or of the ox ; 
and of the influence of these over the progress of humanity. Ah ! 
doubtless, but there is the hie : if the learned attempted to render 
studies attractive, children in two years would know more than 
their masters, and these would soon lose the advantage of the posi- 
tion that the ignorance of the masses has hitherto preserved. 
It is always, alas ! the same history, of the repulsions of consti- 
tuted authorities for grand discoveries, whether the discoverer be 
named Galileo, Columbus, or Fourier; it is the old war of ob- 
scurantism against progress, of papacy against science, of the 
priest against the Man. 
I once was present at a lesson in vocal music among the brothers 
of the Christian doctrine, baptised by the liberal sect by the name 
of ignorantins. The lesson (a gratuitous lesson) was given by one 
of those intrepid soldiers of the good cause, whom no ill- will dis- 
courages, whom no obstacle can cause to deviate from the path of 
rectitude, where a superior impulsion guides them — by Dr. Cheve, 
a man whom my reason would proclaim one of the noblest intel- 
lects of the epoch, if my affection did not call him my friend. 
There were a hundred children, docile and attentive to the words 
of the master, a hundred virtuosos impassioned for their art, as the 
power and earnestness of their songs attested, and proud, as all 
children, all sincere creatures are, of displaying their knowledge 
before strangers. They had studied two months, and they sang 
at first-sight pieces of Rossini and Mehul ; and the hour of the 
music lesson, which everywhere else in schools is an hour of pun- 
ishment for most children, had become for these, for all, an hour 
of recreation. It never bea’an soon enough, and never finished late 
enough ; and I understood by the expansion of triumphant joy 
among the young disciples, by the touching expression of their 
sympathies for the master, that there might be for this person, 
rich or poor, a reward more precious than gold. The method of 
