In the provinces[6338] as at Paris, people were seeking, trying and groping.

There was room and encouragement for original, sporadic and multiple invention, for schools proportionate with and suited to various and changing necessities, Latin, mathematical or mixed schools, some for theoretical science and others for practical apprenticeship, these commercial and those industrial, from the lowest standpoint of technical and rapid preparation up to the loftiest summits of speculative and prolonged study.
On this school world in the way of formation, Napoleon has riveted his uniformity, the rigorous apparatus of his university, his unique system, narrow, inflexible, applied from above.

We have seen with what restrictions, with what insistence, with what convergence of means, what prohibitions, what taxes, what application of the university monopoly, and with what systematic hostility to private establishments!--In the towns, and by force, they become branches of the lycee and imitate its classes; in this way Sainte-Barbe is allowed to subsist at Paris and, until the abolition of the monopoly, the principal establishments of Paris, Massin, Jauffrey, Bellaguet, existed only on this condition, that of becoming auxiliaries, subordinates and innkeepers for lycee day-scholars; such is still the case to-day for the lycees Bossuet and Gerson.

In the way of education and instruction the little that an institution thus reduced can preserve of originality and of pedagogic virtue is of no account .-- In the country, the Oratoriens who have repurchased Juilly are obliged,[6339] in order to establish a free and durable school of "Christian and national education," to turn aside the civil law which interdicts trusts and organize themselves into a "Tontine Society" and thus present their disinterested enterprise in the light of an industrial and commercial speculation, that of a lucrative and well-attended boarding school.

Still at the present day similar fictions have to be resorted to for the establishment and duration of like enterprises.[6340] Naturally, under this prohibitive regime, private establishments are born with difficulty; and afterwards, absorbed, mutilated and strangled, they find no less difficulty in keeping alive and thus degenerate, decline and succumb one by one.