orever, that the mode and the principles on
which it engages the sympathy and strikes the imagination become of the
utmost importance to the morals and manners of every society. Your
rulers were well aware of this; and in their system of changing your
manners to accommodate them to their politics, they found nothing so
convenient as Rousseau. Through him they teach men to love after the
fashion of philosophers: that is, they teach to men, to Frenchmen, a
love without gallantry,--a love without anything of that fine flower of
youthfulness 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