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 régime, 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. During the vacations,[71] fairy scenes and pastorals were
performed there with costumes and dances, "The Enthronement of the
Great Mogul," and the "Shepherds in Chains"; the seminarians took
great care of their hair; a first-class hair-dresser came and waited
on them; the doors were not regularly shut: the youthful Talleyrand
knew how to get out into the city and begin or continue his
gallantries.[72] From and after the Concordat, stricter discipline
in the new seminaries had become monastic; these are practical
schools, not for knowledge, but for training, the object being much
less to make learned men than believing priests; education takes
precedence of instruction and intellectual exercises are made