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These academies were one of the chief attractions which France had for the gentry of England in the seventeenth century. The first one was founded by Pluvinel, the grand écuyer of Henri IV. Pluvinel, returning from a long apprenticeship to Pignatelli in Naples, made his own riding-school the best in the world, so that the French no longer had to journey to Italian masters.
His observation, repeated during the Caroline Island eclipse of 1883, was photographically verified ten years later by M. de la Baume Pluvinel in Senegal. An instrument of great value for particular purposes was introduced into eclipse-work in 1871.
Pluvinel was soon to make a world-renowned riding academy in Paris, but the art of fencing was more slowly disseminated. One was still obliged, like Captain Bobadil, to make "long travel for knowledge, in that mystery only."
That this was somewhat the spirit of the French academies there seems no doubt. Though they claimed to give an equal amount of physical and mental exercise, they tended to the muscular side of the programme. Pluvinel, says Tallemant des Réaux, "was hardly more intelligent than his horses," and the academies are supposed to have declined after his death.
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