My School Days in Paris. By M. S. Jenne. (Griffith
and Farran.)--• There are many readers, doubtless, to whom this little photographic picture of a life akin to their own, but yet strangely different from it, will prove interesting. Miss Jeune tells the story of her life at a Pro- testant school in Paris, without the enthusiasm with which some people contrive to recall days which very possibly they did not much enjoy at the time, but still with a certain feeling of kindliness and pleasure. On the whole, the impression given is that the tone of the place was good, quite pure, and without even that nonsense about sweethearts, &a., which English girls are sometimes so fond of—ono young compatriot who put on a bow for the benefit of the music master was promptly put down—that the work was excessively hard, and not very skilfully arranged ; and gener- ally that the atmosphere, if quite sweet, was somewhat still and in want of freshness and movement. There was none of the freedom which, according to our notions helps to form character. The girls, for instance, were never out of the eight of the sous-maitresse. Some of the punish- ments were of Draconian severity. Imagine "a thousand lines to write for every inkstand spilt ;" this seems to us worse than what was, however, considered the ultitnum supplicium, "no broad-and-jam at either the second &Collar or dinner." " Sentences of so severe a nature," says the author, with a certain awe, " were rare." The book has plenty of curious little traits of manners and life in it, e.g., that French young ladies fight by lowering the head and running full tilt at the offenders. We do not know what they do in England, but we suppose that when they get into Eton, as their elder sisters seem to have got into Cambridge, they will use their fists in the usual way.
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