ted with the privileges of the European
aristocrats, and sees, with abhorrence, the lovely equality which the
poor enjoy with the rich in his own country; he contracts a partiality
for aristocracy or monarchy; he forms foreign friendships which will
never be useful to him, and loses the season of life for forming in
his own country those friendships, which, of all others, are the most
faithful and permanent; he is led by the strongest of all the human
passions into a spirit for female intrigue, destructive of his own and
others' happiness, or a passion for whores, destructive of his health,
and in both cases, learns to consider fidelity to the marriage bed as an
ungentlemanly practice, and inconsistent with happiness; he recollects
the voluptuary dress and arts of the European women, and pities and
despises the chaste affections and simplicity of those of his own
country; he retains, through life, a fond recollection, and a hankering
after those places, which were the scenes of his first pleasures and
of his first connections; he returns to his own country a foreigner,
unacquainted with the practices of domestic economy necessary to
preserve him from ruin, speaking and writing his native tongue as a
foreigner, and therefore unqualified to obtain those distinctions, which
eloquence of the pen and tongue ensures in a free country; for, I would
observe to you, that what is called style in writing or speaking,
is formed very early in life, while the imagination is warm, and
impressions are permanent. I am of opinion, that there never was an
instance of a man's writing or speaking his native tongue with elegance,
who passed from fifteen to twenty years of age out of the country
where it was spoken. Thus, no instance exists of a person's writing two
languages perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language,
which was most familiar to him in his youth. It appears to me then, that
an American coming to Europe for education, loses in his knowledge, in
his morals, in his health, in his habits, and in his happiness. I had
entertained only doubts on this head, before I came to Europe: what I
see and hear, since I came here, proves more than I had even suspected.
Cast your eye over America: who are the men of most learning, of most
eloquence, most beloved by their countrymen, and most trusted and
promoted by them? They are those who have been educated among them, and
whose manners, morals, and habits, are perfectly homoge