Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

88FOREIGN NURSES AND GOVERNESSES.

feel the effects of the rage for English nurses which

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has, among us, taken possession of all "fashionable " mothers.*

In France formerly, the first, and I believe the best French tutor, was the nurse. A man should study his native language throughout his whole life, but the child should not be formally taught it; he should receive it in the cradle, without study. Instead of this, our little Frenchmen of the present day lisp English. and stammer German from their birth, and are afterwards taught French as a foreign language.

Montaigne congratulated himself on having learned Latin previously to French. It is perhaps to the advantage in which the author of the Essays thus glories, that we owe the most pure and national style in our ancient literature ; he had a right to rejoice, for the Latin is the root of our language; but all purity and spontaneity of expression is lost among a people who do not respect the language of their fathers. Our children speak English, just as our footmen wear powder ! 1 am persuaded that the want of originality in modern Slavonian literature is attributable to the custom, which the Poles and Russians adopted during the eighteenth century, of introducing into their families foreign tutors and preceptors. When the Russians turn their thoughts again into their own language, they translate; and this borrowed style cheeks the flow of thought, at the same time that it destroys the simplicity of expression.

How is it that the Chinese have hitherto done more for the human race in literature, in philosophy,

* Les mèresfashionables.?-