[68]
This is a school apart, a boarding-house of picked youths, an enclosed
hot-house intended for the preservation and development of special
vocations. None of these schools existed previous to 1789; at the
present day(in 1885), they number 86 in France, and all the pupils are
to become future priests. No foreign plants, no future laymen, are
admitted into this preparatory nursery;[69] for experience has shown
that if the lower seminary is mixed it no longer attains its
ecclesiastical purpose; "it habitually turns over to the upper
seminary only the bottom of the classes; those at the top seek
fortune elsewhere". But if, on the contrary, "the lower seminaries
are kept pure, the entire rhetoric[70] class continues on into the
upper seminary; not only do they obtain the bottom of the classes
but the top." - The culture, in this second nursery, which is prolonged
during five years, becomes extreme, wholly special; it was less so
under the ancient r?gime, even at Saint-Sulpice; there were cracks in
the glass letting in currents of air; the archbishop's nephews and the
younger sons of nobles predestined for Church dignities had introduced
into it the laxity and liberties which were then the privileges of the
episcopacy.
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