The Grenada gazette. (Grenada, Miss.) 1885-18??, 1886-10-09
EDUCATION IN FRANCE.
Jules Simon Tells What It Was
Fifty Years Ago.
Poor Scholars Living on a Loaf of Bar
ley Bread a Week.-Mrs. Own Hard
Knocks-The Queer College
of Vannes.

Jules Simon is certainly one OF the
most brilliant of living Frenchmen,
and this is sufficient in itself to give an
important interest to any thing which
he writes upon the subject of his early
education. When .ver this education
is spoken Of by his late political asso-
ciates-tur it must be remembered that
he has practically seeded from the
service of the Republic, and is alto
gether the most effective light that the
Conservatives have had in their ranks
for many a day-he is sneered at for
being a pupil of the Jesuits. No doubt
M. Simon's mind received that little
warp which is %perceptible even in the
generally sincere Renan. Brilliant de-
batter, political orator, academician,
justly celebrated for his style and his
esprit. NJ. Simon is at the present time
a brOken-d0wn politician, SpiritueI but
not spiritual, with no following save
those people whom he would have ac-
counted his enemies twenty years ago,
and with some very vigorous antagon-
lists among his old colleagues. He is
a lost leader, and although he has not
been mourned in verse he has been
mercilessly pounded in prose, until, as
we saw two or three months ago, even
the cuticle Of the practiced politician
was penetrated.
In a pleasant series Of papers show
Ing all the more charming characters
ties OF NJ. Simon's style and literary
character, he gives US a story of his
earliest education, and incidentally
conveys a host of curious details as to
college life in France fifty years ago.
When he was doing his rhetoric, as the
French call it, at Vannes in 1880, he
was like nearly all the scholars in this
old college, which was a kind of priv
legged asylum for the struggling ons of
the middle classes, so straitened in his
that he was often at a loss
for a pair of good shoes, and never had
other than the simplest food and the
barest lodging for his whole college
term. 1.-THE college and the scholars
in the college," he says, ''were like
nothing that | have yer seen since. We
formed in the town a kind of small
tribe, which enjoyed a certain respect
and consideration. The doctors and
the lawyers knew by their names the
chief scholars in the upper class. They
were interested in our labors. They
took part at the close of the yearin the
public exercises, asked the usual ques-
tons, and discussed with US many
points of literature and philosophy.
Many of our school companions were
the som of peasants, and wore the old
Breton costume. They were intended
for priests. They were usually much
older than boys are when they enter
college. One of them was twenty-four,
and his presence at the school aston
ished nobody. Most of the rhetoricians
at least twenty years old. Two
or three boarding-houses kept by old
maids grouped together twenty or thir-
ty boarders each. There were the
brilliant children of fortune, who were
looked upon by us with something
very akin to en1J. But we enjoyed
our poverty with its comparative free
lom. We had four hours Of class five
lays in each week, and the rest Of the
lime free range. We were, for that
natter, laborious and properly be-
,aved, as beftted the sons Of the poor.
Moot Of the scholars came from the
loighboring parishes, and found a gar
ct in some poor family, where they
Ilso boarded very cheaply. Some of
he peasants came up from Normandy {
With an enormous loaf Of barley bread, /;
vhich had to last them until the fol- |