The Sun.
London, England, 1868-04-25 00:00:00

EDUCA7ION IN FRANCE.

The last publication of the Bishop of Orleans
on the education question, entitled, " Les
Alarmes de l'Episcopat justifiees par les faits,"
has reached a third edition in the course of a
few days. The bishop shows how the ene-
mies of Christianity are concentrating and
banding themselves together with the more
especial purpose of usurping the functions of
education, and particularly of female education,
so as to nip the religious feeling in its very
bud. He says that they openly boast of their
intention of " laying the axe to the root of the
tree," and eradicating all " religious preju-
dices" from the minds of the rising generation.
And he brings forward a series of tableaux
which are certainly very startling in proof of
these atrocious designs being really contem-
plated.
His demonstration consists of five
parts, in which he unfolds the various means
by which the above ends are being worked out.
These are the school of female free-thinkers,
the Freemasons' Education League, the re-
cently-established lectures for young females
(which implicate the Government directly in
the irreligious movement), the materialism
openly taught in the Medical School of Paris,
and lastly, the active propagandism of infidelity
by all these instruments together, and by irre-
ligious publications of every description. The
bishop accuses all these parties of a common
understanding among themselves ; and if he
does not include the Government, he includes
at least the Minister of Public Instruction as
their accomplice. Ho proves that regular
schools had been erected in France for the for-
mation of female free-thinkers, and of female
teachers professing the same principles (Ecoles
de fines libres peaseurs). The bishop learnt
the fact only from a newspaper, in which he
happened to read an account of the funeral of
one of the female founders of these schools,
which at once opened his eyes to the magni-
tude of the evil, and led him to make the in-
quiries and discoveries he now publishes. The
schools were known as the Professional Schools
of Madame Lemonnier. The published pro-
spectus of her society merely stated that the
" reception of all creeds at her classes," the
(necessary) " exclusion of all religious instruc-
tion" (as being no part of professional instruc-
tion), and the " abandonment of all such reli-
gious instruction to the parents or ministers
of the pupils." But, as the Bishop of Orleans
shows, these professions were a mere blind for
parents to entrap or ensnare their children into
instruction in the most absolute infidelity. The
language used at the funeral of Madame B.
(the lady above referred to) can leave no doubt
as to what her principles and practice must
have been. Her husband, who was the spokes-
man at her funeral, openly professed himself

" a free-thinker," as had been also " his dear
wife, who had joined herself to the great
work of Madame Lemonnier, the education of
young women, and the teaching of morality
without religion, because she also believed
only in science and justice, and looked to no
other beacon of safety either during life or in
the hour of death." He went on to say that
the blow which had struck his wife was "fatal
and unjust ;" and the more " unjust," be-
cause " amongst this chosen troop of devoted
women " she had been " one of the youngest
and most beautiful." The bishop says that
" one stands stupified over such language,
spoken in the presence of 300 young girls,
the pupils of these ladies and of their pro-
fessional schools, standing there with their
teachers, and, as described, ' holding bouquets
in their pious hands and throwing flowers
over this tomb,' from which a priest and every
sign of religion were strictly banished." A
lady-professor afterwards delivered an oration
in a similar strain. No wonder that the bishop
as he tells us, " did not stop there," bat roused
himself about these " schools of 300 young
girls," placed under such teachers. He sets
to work and obtains biographies of the founder
of the society, prospectuses of its schools,
minutes of the general meetings for the propa-
gation of its instruction ; and convinces him-
self that " the systematic object of the move-
ment was the formation of free-thinking young
women." Morality without religion is its
motto. The founder of the society, Madame
Lemonnier, from being Protestant, became a
St. Simonian and free-thinker ; and the object
of her successors, as stated by her husband in
her biography, was " to rear young women in
her principles, who, becoming in their turn
mothers, might propagate throughout all
France the sacred traditions of the profes-
sional schools." The bishop asserts that these
are no mere " exceptional eccentricities," but
" a great work of propagandism." "We are
in the face," he says, "of a deeply laid and
vast enterprise of impiety directed against the
faith of the young girls of France." These
schools exist in Paris, and he can name the
streets and number of the houses. They exist
by subscription ; and the bishop does name
openly a long list of notorious names of male
and female patrons and supporters. What is
more, he says, M. Duruy knows these schools
and these houses, where young girls receive
such instruction for life and death, and " they
seem to possess the full sympathy of the
supreme head and official and all-powerful
source of inspiration of national education
in France." M. Duruy went to visit these
schools, and more, in the Corps Legislatif, he
pronounced a eulogy upon them, taking good
care to say nothing of the spirit which ani-
mated them. The bishop forcibly points out
the dangers to be apprehended to Christian
society from " the League of the Freemasons."
We have already more than once called atten-
tion to the untiring vigour with which the
Bishop of Orleans has exposed the insidions
attempts of M. Duruy against religion in the
establishment of the female lecturers. On
the question of Propagandism, the bishop
says that M. Duruy boasts of having dis-
tributed 70,000 books amongst commune and
other school libraries, in the course only of last
year. In the list of those distributed at St.
Etienne, are found such works as Renan.'s Vic
de treBll4, Proudhon's Revolution &dale, Vol-
taire's Candide, &c., with the works of George
Sand, Eugene Sue, Pelletan, &c. Summing
up, he concludes that, under the pretext of
professional schools for young females, the
Freemasons' league, popular libraries, the new
lectures, and the light of science, materialism
is making extensive inroads upon State edu-
cation. The bishop's conclusions are sup-
ported by a formidable appendix of 150 pages
of small type, containing nearly eighty letters
tohimself from different members of the French
episcopacy, with pastorals, circulars, &c., ad-
dressed to the clergy—all adhering, in terms
more or less forcible, to his own views, and
joining in the cry of alarm raised apparently
from one end of the country to the other on
this important subject.