I will go still further in order to keep his taste pure and wholesome.  In the tumult of dissipation I shall find opportunities for useful conversation with him; and while these conversations are always about things in which he takes a delight, I shall take care to make them as amusing as they are instructive.  Now is the time to read pleasant books; now is the time to teach him to analyse speech and to appreciate all the beauties of eloquence and diction.  It is a small matter to learn languages, they are less useful than people think; but the study of languages leads us on to that of grammar in general.  We must learn Latin if we would have a thorough knowledge of French; these two languages must be studied and compared if we would understand the rules of the art of speaking.

There is, moreover, a certain simplicity of taste which goes straight to the heart; and this is only to be found in the classics.  In oratory, poetry, and every kind of literature, Emile will find the classical authors as he found them in history, full of matter and sober in their judgment.  The authors of our own time, on the contrary, say little and talk much.  To take their judgment as our constant law is not the way to form our own judgment.  These differences of taste make themselves felt in all that is left of classical times and even on their tombs.  Our monuments are covered with praises, theirs recorded facts.

     “Sta, viator; heroem calcas.”

If I had found this epitaph on an ancient monument, I should at once have guessed it was modern; for there is nothing so common among us as heroes, but among the ancients they were rare.  Instead of saying a man was a hero, they would have said what he had done to gain that name.  With the epitaph of this hero compare that of the effeminate Sardanapalus—­

     “Tarsus and Anchiales I built in a day, and now I am dead.”

Which do you think says most?  Our inflated monumental style is only fit to trumpet forth the praises of pygmies.  The ancients showed men as they were, and it was plain that they were men indeed.  Xenophon did honour to the memory of some warriors who were slain by treason during the retreat of the Ten Thousand.  “They died,” said he, “without stain in war and in love.”  That is all, but think how full was the heart of the author of this short and simple elegy.  Woe to him who fails to perceive its charm.  The following words were engraved on a tomb at Thermopylae—­

“Go, Traveller, tell Sparta that here we fell in obedience to her laws.”

It is pretty clear that this was not the work of the Academy of Inscriptions.

If I am not mistaken, the attention of my pupil, who sets so small value upon words, will be directed in the first place to these differences, and they will affect his choice in his reading.  He will be carried away by the manly eloquence of Demosthenes, and will say, “This is an orator;” but when he reads Cicero, he will say, “This is a lawyer.”