The reputation of Buonaparte as a soldier, was the means which raised him to the Imperial dignity; and, unfortunately for himself, his ideas were so constantly associated with war and victory, that peaceful regulations of every kind were postponed, as of inferior importance; and thus war, which in the eye of reason ought always, even when most necessary and justifiable, to be regarded as an extraordinary state into which a nation is plunged by compulsion, was certainly regarded by Napoleon as almost the natural and ordinary condition of humanity. He had been bred on the battle-field, from which his glory first arose. "The earthquake voice of victory," according to the expression of Britain's noble and lost bard, "was to him the breath of life."[329] And although his powerful mind was capable of applying itself to all the various relations of human affairs, it was with war and desolation that he was most familiar, and the tendency of his government accordingly bore an aspect decidedly military.

The instruction of the youth of France had been the subject of several projects during the Republic; which was the more necessary, as the Revolution had entirely destroyed all the colleges and seminaries of public instruction, most of which were more or less connected with the Church, and had left the nation almost destitute of any public means of education. These schemes were of course marked with the wild sophistry of the period. In many cases they failed in execution from want of public encouragement; in others, from want of funds. Still, however, though no fixed scheme of education had been adopted, and though the increasing vice and ignorance of the rising generation was sufficiently shocking, there existed in France two or three classes of schools for different purposes; as indeed it is not to be supposed that so great and civilized a nation could, under any circumstances, tolerate a total want of the means of educating their youth.

The schemes to which we allude had agreed in arranging, that each commune (answering, perhaps, to our parish) should provide a school and teacher, for the purpose of communicating the primary and most indispensable principles of education. This plan had in a great measure failed, owing to the poverty of the communes on whom the expense was thrown. In some cases, however, the communes had found funds for this necessary purpose; and, in others, the expense had been divided betwixt the public body, and the pupils who received the benefit of the establishment. So that these primary schools existed in many instances, though certainly in a precarious and languishing state.

The secondary schools were such as qualified persons, or those who held themselves out as such, had established upon speculation, or by the aid of private contributions, for teaching the learned and modern languages, geography, and mathematics.

There was besides evinced on the part of the Catholic clergy, so soon as the Concordat had restored them to some rank and influence, a desire to resume the task of public education, which, before the Revolution, had been chiefly vested in their hands. Their seminaries had been supported by the public with considerable liberality, and being under the control of the bishop, and destined chiefly to bring up young persons intended for the Church, they had obtained the name of Ecclesiastical Schools.

Matters were upon this footing when Buonaparte brought forward his grand project of a National University, composed of a Grand Master, a Chancellor, a treasurer, ten counsellors for life, twenty counsellors in ordinary, and thirty inspectors-general; the whole forming a sort of Imperial council, whose supremacy was to be absolute on matters respecting education. All teachers, and all seminaries of education, were subjected to the supreme authority of the National University, nor could any school be opened without a brevet or diploma from the Grand Master, upon which a considerable tax was imposed. It was indeed the policy of the government to diminish as far as possible the number of Secondary and of Ecclesiastical Schools, in order that the public education might be conducted at the public seminaries, called Lyceums, or Academies.

In these Lyceums the discipline was partly military, partly monastic. The masters, censors, and teachers, in the Lyceums and Colleges, were bound to celibacy; the professors might marry, but in that case were not permitted to reside within the precincts. The youth were entirely separated from their families, and allowed to correspond with no one save their parents, and then only through the medium, and under the inspection, of the censors. The whole system was subjected to the strict and frequent investigation of the University. The Grand Master might dismiss any person he pleased, and such a sentence of dismission disqualified the party receiving it from holding any civil employment.

In the general case, it is the object of a place of learning to remove from the eyes of youth that pomp and parade of war, by which at an early age they are so easily withdrawn from severe attention to their studies. The Lyceums of Buonaparte were conducted on a contrary principle; every thing was done by beat of drum, all the interior arrangements of the boys were upon a military footing. At a period when the soldier's profession held out the most splendid prospects of successful ambition, it was no wonder that young men soon learned to look forward to it as the only line worthy of a man of spirit to pursue. The devotion of the young students to the Emperor, carefully infused into them by their teachers, was farther excited by the recollection, that he was their benefactor for all the means of instruction afforded them; and thus they learned from every circumstance around them, that the first object of their lives was devotion to his service, and that the service required of them was of a military character.

There were in each Lyceum one hundred and fifty exhibitions, or scholarships, of which twenty were of value sufficient to cover the student's full expenses, while the rest, of smaller amount, were called half or three quarter bursaries, in which the parents or relations of the lad supplied a portion of the charge. From these Lyceums, two hundred and fifty of the most selected youth were yearly draughted into the more professional and special military schools maintained by the Emperor; and to be included in this chosen number, was the prime object of every student. Thus, every thing induced the young men brought up at these Lyceums, to look upon a military life as the most natural and enviable course they had to pursue; and thus Buonaparte accomplished that alteration on the existing generation, which he intimated, when he said, "The clergy regard this world as a mere diligence which is to convey us to the next—it must be my business to fill the public carriage with good recruits for my army."

Of the whole range of national education, that which was conducted at the Lyceums, or central schools, was alone supported by the state; and the courses there taught were generally limited to Latin and mathematics, the usual accomplishments of a military academy. Undoubtedly Brienne was in Napoleon's recollection; nor might he perhaps think a better, or a more enlarged course of education necessary for the subjects of France, than that which had advanced their sovereign to the supreme government. But there was a deeper reason in the limitation. Those who, under another system of education, might have advanced themselves to that degree of knowledge which becomes influential upon the mind of the public, or the fortunes of a state, by other means than those of violence, were disqualified for the task by that which they received in the Lyceums; and the gentle, studious, and peaceful youth, was formed, like all the rest of the generation, to the trade of war, to which he was probably soon to be called by the conscription. If the father chose to place his son at one of the Secondary Schools, where a larger sphere of instruction was opened, it was still at the risk of seeing the youth withdrawn from thence and transferred to the nearest Lyceum, if the Directors of the Academy should judge it necessary for the encouragement of the schools which appertained more properly to Government.

Yet Napoleon appears to have been blind to the errors of this system, or rather to have been delighted with them, as tending directly to aid his despotic views. "My university," he was accustomed to say to the very last, "was a masterpiece of combination, and would have produced the most material effect on the public mind." And he was wont on such occasions to throw the blame of its failure on Monsieur Fontanes, the Grand Master, who, he said, afterwards took merit with the Bourbons for having encumbered its operation in some of its most material particulars.

Buonaparte, it must be added, at a later period, resolved to complete his system of national education, by a species of Corinthian capital. He proposed the establishment of an institution at Meudon, for the education of his son, the King of Rome, where he was to be trained to the arts becoming a ruler, in the society of other young princes of the Imperial family, or the descendants of the allies of Napoleon. This would have been reversing the plan of tuition imposed on Cyrus, and on Henry IV., who were bred up among the common children of the peasants, that their future grandeur might not too much or too early obscure the real views of human nature and character. But it is unnecessary to speculate on a system which never was doomed to be brought to experiment; only, we may presume it was intended to teach the young Napoleon more respect to the right of property which his princely companions held in their toys and playthings, than his father evinced towards the crowns and sceptres of his brothers and allies.