where she will ever remain as long as her children so strive, the centre of civilisation. The new building has a spacious lecture-hall, a museum, billiard-room, theatre, and library. The fame of its brilliant lectures has drawn such a large gathering from the centres of fashion and idleness that many a time the workman, the real "lord of the soil," has been turned away from his own door, having arrived late, when all the places were taken by the well-dressed usurpers from the boulevards and wealthy avenues.
Branch colleges have happily been established on the same lines at Montmartre, Grenelle, Belleville, the Boulevard Barbés, the Barrière d'Italie, the Rue Mouffetard, and, without the city wall, where the idea first started under the personal superintendence of its noble founder, M. Deherme, at Montreuil sous Bois. Alas, it cannot be said that the impetus that formed these admirable institutions has continued with the same force. Some of the people's colleges are temporarily closed, because the workmen have not shown ardour of late in attending them. It may only mean the defection that accompanies all strong reactions. Nobody but Don Quixote could for ever live and die at the fever-point of chivalry. Humanity traverses passionate crises, which reveal in a transient flash all that is best and worst in it, and then calms down to the
