STUDY VII. 121 



to form friend (hips with ftrangers, pregnant witii 

 regret and repentance ; and there he muft learn 

 to extinguifh the natural affedions of brother, of 

 lifter, of father, of mother, which are the moft 

 powerful, and the fweeteft chains by which Nature 

 attaches us to our Country. 



After this firft horrid outrage committed on his 

 young heart, others equally violent are offered to 

 his underftanding. His tender memory muft be 

 loaded with ablatives, with conjundions, with 

 conjugations. The bloffom of human life is fa- 

 crificed to the metaphyfical jargon of a dead lan- 

 guage. What Frenchman could fubmit to the 

 torture of learning his own in that manner ? And 

 if there bethofewho have exercifed fuch laborious 

 patience, do they fpeak better than perfons who 

 have never endured fuch drudgery ? Who writes 

 beft, a lady of the Court, or a pedantic gramma- 

 rian ? Momagne, fo repleniflied with the ancient 

 beauties of the Latin tongue, and who has given 

 io much energy to our own, congratulates himfelf 

 en never having under Jlood what the zvord vocative 

 iueant. To learn to fpeak by grammar rules, is 

 the fame thing with learning to walk by the laws 

 of equilibrium. It is pradice that teaches the 

 grammar of a language, and the paffions are our 

 beft inftrudors in the rhetoric of it. It is only 

 at the age, and in places where they expand, that 



the 



