M. Jules Simon appears_ to have identified himself with the
-cause of education in France rather more actively than is at all usual even with eloquent advocates. At the coronation of a rosiere at Puteaux on Sunday, after observing that women need instruction above everything, he said, "Mon Dieu! there are schools, many schools ; but there is still one thing wanting, and that is why I do not die. We have not obtained gratuitous obli- gatory instruction." And when that is obtained, M. Simon will sing his Nano dimittis. That is a most honourable feeling,—at least, if gratuitous instruction would be in France as much used and valued as instruction for which a parental sacrifice has been made,—but it is hard to live up to the same point of patriotic pas- sion. It would be easy to feel as much about the abolition of slavery, but to feed your mind on the hope of a law for gratuitous and obligatory instruction sounds almost as impossible, as to feed your mind on the hope of a law for gratuitous and obligatory vaccination. Yet there may live public-spirited doctors equal even to that feat -of aspiration.
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