I would just observe that there is an obvious propriety in the French language being learned under the same direction, as the Latin and Greek.  The pursuit of this elegant accomplishment ought at no time to be entirely omitted.  But the attention of youth is distracted between the method of different masters, and their amiable confidence, in the direction under which they are placed, entirely ruined by mutability and inconstance.  The same observation may also be applied here, as in the learned languages.  The attention of the pupil should be confined as much as possible to the most classical writers; and the French would furnish a most useful subsidiary in a course of history.  Let me add, that though I have prescribed the age of ten years, as the most eligible for the commencement of classical education, I conceive there would be no impropriety in taking up the modern language so early as nine.

Such then is the kind of subjection, that the learning of languages demands.  The question that recurs upon us is; How far this subjection may fairly be considered as exceptionable, and whether its beneficial consequences do not infinitely outweigh the trifling inconveniences that may still be ascribed to it?

But there is another subject that demands our consideration.  Modern education not only corrupts the heart of our youth, by the rigid slavery to which it condemns them, it also undermines their reason, by the unintelligible jargon with which they are overwhelmed in the first instance, and the little attention, that is given to the accommodating their pursuits to their capacities in the second.

Nothing can have a greater tendency to clog and destroy the native activity of the mind, than the profuseness with which the memory of children is loaded, by nurses, by mothers, by masters.  What can more corrupt the judgment, than the communicating, without measure, and without end, words entirely devoid of meaning?  What can have a more ridiculous influence upon our taste, than for the first verses to which our attention is demanded, to consist of such strange and uncouth jargon?  To complete the absurdity, and that we may derive all that elegance and refinement from the study of languages, that it is calculated to afford, our first ideas of Latin are to be collected from such authors, as Corderius, Erasmus, Eutropius, and the Selectae.  To begin indeed with the classical writers, is not the way to smooth the path of literature.  I am of opinion however, that one of the above-mentioned authors will be abundantly sufficient.  Let it be remembered, that the passage from the introductory studies to those authors, that form the very essence of the language, will be much facilitated by the previous acquisition of the French.

Having spoken of the article of memory, let me be permitted to mention the practice, that has of late gained so great a vogue; the instructing children in the art of spouting and acting plays.  Of all the qualities incident to human nature, the most universally attractive is simplicity, the most disgusting is affectation.  Now what idea has a child of the passions of a hero, and the distresses of royalty?  But he is taught the most vehement utterance, and a thousand constrained cadences, without its being possible that he should see in them, either reasonableness or propriety.