As there is a fitting age for the study of the sciences, so there is a fitting age for the study of the ways of the world.  Those who learn these too soon, follow them throughout life, without choice or consideration, and although they follow them fairly well they never really know what they are about.  But he who studies the ways of the world and sees the reason for them, follows them with more insight, and therefore more exactly and gracefully.  Give me a child of twelve who knows nothing at all; at fifteen I will restore him to you knowing as much as those who have been under instruction from infancy; with this difference, that your scholars only know things by heart, while mine knows how to use his knowledge.  In the same way plunge a young man of twenty into society; under good guidance, in a year’s time, he will be more charming and more truly polite than one brought up in society from childhood.  For the former is able to perceive the reasons for all the proceedings relating to age, position, and sex, on which the customs of society depend, and can reduce them to general principles, and apply them to unforeseen emergencies; while the latter, who is guided solely by habit, is at a loss when habit fails him.

Young French ladies are all brought up in convents till they are married.  Do they seem to find any difficulty in acquiring the ways which are so new to them, and is it possible to accuse the ladies of Paris of awkward and embarrassed manners or of ignorance of the ways of society, because they have not acquired them in infancy!  This is the prejudice of men of the world, who know nothing of more importance than this trifling science, and wrongly imagine that you cannot begin to acquire it too soon.

On the other hand, it is quite true that we must not wait too long.  Any one who has spent the whole of his youth far from the great world is all his life long awkward, constrained, out of place; his manners will be heavy and clumsy, no amount of practice will get rid of this, and he will only make himself more ridiculous by trying to do so.  There is a time for every kind of teaching and we ought to recognise it, and each has its own dangers to be avoided.  At this age there are more dangers than at any other; but I do not expose my pupil to them without safeguards.

When my method succeeds completely in attaining one object, and when in avoiding one difficulty it also provides against another, I then consider that it is a good method, and that I am on the right track.  This seems to be the case with regard to the expedient suggested by me in the present case.  If I desire to be stern and cold towards my pupil, I shall lose his confidence, and he will soon conceal himself from me.  If I wish to be easy and complaisant, to shut my eyes, what good does it do him to be under my care?  I only give my authority to his excesses, and relieve his conscience at the expense of my own.  If I introduce him into society with no object but