In a speech made last December at the West London School of Art, Mr. Mundella, M.P., stated that he had recently been in France for the purpose of inquiring into the new system of education, which came into operation on the 1st of October last year, and that while there he had spent some time in trying to ascertain the progress the French were making in giving instruction in art. The Vice-President of the Council declared himself “perfectly astounded by the facts that had come to his knowledge on the subject. He had seen in Paris placards, six feet long, offering gratuitous instruction to every person employed in certain trades who would come and accept it. He found schools of art, which were attended by hundreds and thousands of students, in every part of the country. These schools were supported, not only by government aid, but by the different municipalities out of the local rates and taxes. Thus all the artisans of Paris, and a large number of those in the country, were receiving gratuitous art instruction. The Paris municipality expended £32,000 in this way last year, and that sum will be largely exceeded during the present year. He had brought with him the ‘Paris Budget for Education’ for next year (1883), and he found from it that that city with its population of 1,900,000 would spend on education double the amount that was expended for the education of the four millions who lived in London.”
Why then may we not hope to see many Garfields in the French Republic? The first great difficulty is the strong feeling of caste which exists as powerfully in the workman as in any other class.
M. Poulot has related an amusing instance of the way a young lady of the middle class and her mother turned away from him with a kind of horror when they learnt that he actually _worked_ in a factory, and helped to make the steam engines. But I have met with an instance quite as startling on the other side. Meeting at the house of a mutual friend, an orator, who, a few days before, I had heard deliver a strong philippic against the government, at a meeting mainly composed of workmen, and on a question of interest to them, I asked him to introduce me to one of his friends. He assured me that he only knew them in the meetings, but that he did not know the address of any. Nothing could give a stronger impression of the immense chasm between the working class and those not actually members of it, than to find one of their prominent advocates—a man who, I believe, has been devoted for years to their cause—without a single private friend among working-men.—_Good Words._