sensual pleasures, but are manly, have earnest convictions, do not
think it beneath them to reverence sincerely what is noble and lofty?
What a melancholy contrast does France offer in all this? Having sneered
at everything, she has lost the faculty of respecting anything.
Virtue, family life, patriotism, honour, religion, are represented to a
frivolous generation as fitting subjects of ridicule. The theatres have
become schools of shamelessness and obscenity. Drop by drop, poison is
instilled into the very core of an ignorant and enervated society, which
has neither the insight nor the energy left to amend its institutions,
nor--which would be the most necessary step to take--become better
informed or more moral. One after the other the fine qualities of the
nation are dying out. Where is the generosity, the loyalty, the charm of
our ESPRIT, and our former elevation of soul? If this goes on, the
time will come when this noble race of France will be known only by its
faults. And France has no idea that while she is sinking, more earnest
nations are stealing the march upon her, are distancing her on the
road to progress, and are preparing for her a secondary position in the
world.

"I am afraid that these opinions will not be relished in France. However
correct, they differ too much from what is usually said and asserted at
home. I should wish some enlightened and unprejudiced Frenchmen to come
to Prussia and make this country their study. They would soon discover
that they were living in the midst of a strong, earnest, and intelligent
nation, entirely destitute, it is true, of noble and delicate feelings,
of all fascinating charms, but endowed with every solid virtue, and
alike distinguished for untiring industry, order, and economy, as well
as for patriotism, a strong sense of duty, and that consciousness of
personal dignity which in their case is so happily blended with respect
for authority and obedience to the law. They would see a country with
firm, sound, and moral institutions, whose upper classes are worthy of
their rank, and, by possessing the highest degree of culture,
devoting themselves to the service of the State, setting an example of
patriotism, and knowing how to preserve the influence legitimately their
own. They would find a State with an excellent administration where
everything is in its right place, and where the most admirable order
prevails in every branch of the social and political system. Pruss