In the estimation, at least, of the inhabitants, the university of Caen ranks at present the third in France; Paris and Strasbourg being alone entitled to stand before it.  The faculty of law retains its old reputation, and the legal students are quite the pride of the university.  Since the peace, many young jurisprudents from Jersey and Guernsey have resorted to it.  Medical students generally complete their education at Paris, where it is commonly considered in France, that, both in theory and practice, the various branches of this faculty have nearly attained the acme of perfection.  The students, who amount to just five hundred, are under the care of twenty-six professors, many of them men of distinguished talents.  The Abbe de la Rue fills the chair of history; M. Lamouroux, that of the natural sciences.  They receive their salaries wholly from the government; their emoluments continue the same, whether the students crowd to hear their courses, or whether they lecture to empty benches.  It is strictly forbidden to a student to attempt to make any remuneration to a professor, or even to offer him a present of any kind.  The whole of the dues paid by the scholars go to the state; and the state in its turn, defrays the expences of the establishment.

There is likewise at Caen an Academy of Sciences, Arts and Belles Lettres, which has published two volumes; not, strictly speaking, of its Transactions, but exhibiting a brief outline of the principal papers that have been read at the meetings.  The antiquarian dissertations of the Abbe de la Rue, which they contain, are of great merit; and it is much to be regretted, that they have not appeared in a more extended form.  A chartered academy was first founded here in the year 1705; and it continued to exist, till it was suppressed, like all others throughout France, at the revolution.  The present establishment arose in 1800, under the auspices of General Dugua, then prefect of the department, who had been urged to the task by the celebrated Chaptal, Minister of the Interior.—­Some interesting, letters are annexed to the second part of the poems of Mosant de Brieux, in which, among much curious information relative to Caen, he describes the literary meetings that led to the foundation of the first academy.  The town at that time could boast an unusual proportion of men of talents.  Bochart, author of Sacred Geography; Graindorge, who had published De Principiis Generationis; Huet, a man seldom mentioned, without the epithet learned being attached to his name; and Halley and Menage, authors almost equally distinguished, were amongst those who were associated for the purposes of acquiring and communicating information.