and gentility which places it, if not among the virtues, among the ornaments of life.  Instead of this passion, naturally allied to grace and manners, they infuse into their youth an unfashioned, indelicate, sour, gloomy, ferocious medley of pedantry and lewdness,—­of metaphysical speculations blended with the coarsest sensuality.  Such is the general morality of the passions to be found in their famous philosopher, in his famous work of philosophic gallantry, the Nouvelle Eloise.

When the fence from the gallantry of preceptors is broken down, and your families are no longer protected by decent pride and salutary domestic prejudice, there is but one step to a frightful corruption.  The rulers in the National Assembly are in good hopes that the females of the first families in France may become an easy prey to dancing-masters, fiddlers, pattern-drawers, friseurs, and valets-de-chambre, and other active citizens of that description, who, having the entry into your houses, and being half domesticated by their situation, may be blended with you by regular and irregular relations.  By a law they have made these people their equals.  By adopting the sentiments of Rousseau they have made them your rivals.  In this manner these great legislators complete their plan of levelling, and establish their rights of men on a sure foundation.

I am certain that the writings of Rousseau lead directly to this kind of shameful evil.  I have often wondered how he comes to be so much more admired and followed on the Continent than he is here.  Perhaps a secret charm in the language may have its share in this extraordinary difference.  We certainly perceive, and to a degree we feel, in this writer, a style glowing, animated, enthusiastic, at the same time that we find it lax, diffuse, and not in the best taste of composition,—­all the members of the piece being pretty equally labored and expanded, without any due selection or subordination of parts.  He is generally too much on the stretch, and his manner has little variety.  We cannot rest upon, any of his works, though they contain observations which occasionally discover a considerable insight into human nature.  But his doctrines, on the whole, are so inapplicable to real life and manners, that we never dream of drawing from them any rule for laws or conduct, or for fortifying or illustrating anything by a reference to his opinions.  They have with us the fate of older paradoxes:—­

    Cum ventum ad verum est, sensus moresque repugnant,
    Atque ipsa utilitas, justi prope mater et aequi.