fellows. All languages more or less retain
some of these defects; they are all irregular lands from which the hand
of the adroit artist knows how to derive advantage.

Other defects which make a nation's character evident always slip into
languages. In France there are fashions in expressions as in ways of
doing the hair. A fashionable invalid or doctor will take it into his
head to say that he has had a _soupcon_ of fever to signify that he has
had a slight attack; soon the whole nation has _soupcons_ of colics,
_soupcons_ of hatred, love, ridicule. Preachers in the pulpit tell you
that you must have at least a _soupcon_ of God's love. After a few
months this fashion gives place to another.

What does most harm to the nobility of the language is not this passing
fashion with which people are soon disgusted, not the solecisms of
fashionable people into which good authors do not fall, but the
affectation of mediocre authors in speaking of serious things in a
conversational style. Everything conspires to corrupt a language that is
rather widely diffused; authors who spoil the style by affectation;
those who write to foreign countries, and who almost always mingle
foreign expressions with their natural tongue; merchants who introduce
into conversation their business terms.

All languages being imperfect, it does not follow that one should change
them. One must adhere absolutely to the manner in which the good authors
have spoken them; and when one has a sufficient number of approved
authors, a language is fixed. Thus one can no longer change anything in
Italian, Spanish, English, French, without corrupting them; the reason
is clear: it is that one would soon render unintelligible the books
which provide the instruction and the pleasure of the nations.

_LAWS_

Sheep live very placidly in community, they are considered very
easy-going, because we do not see the prodigious quantity of animals
they devour. It is even to be believed that they eat them innocently and
without knowing it, like us when we eat a Sassenage cheese. The republic
of the sheep is a faithful representation of the golden age.

A chicken-run is visibly the most perfect monarchic state. There is no
king comparable to a cock. If he marches proudly in the midst of his
people, it is not out of vanity. If the enemy approaches, he does not
give orders to his subjects to go to kill themselves for him by virtue
of his certain knowledge and plenary p