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

CONFUSION OF TONGUES.89

in morals and in legislation than the Russians ? It is, perhaps, because these men have not ceased to entertain a strong affection for their primitive dialect.

The confusion of languages does not injure mediocre minds ; on the contrary, it aids them in their efforts. Superficial instruction, the only kind which is suited to such minds, is facilitated by a study, equally superficial, of the living languages — an easy study, or rather a mental recreation perfectly suited to indolent faculties, or to faculties devoted to material aims. But whenever, by mischance, this system is applied to the education of superior talent, it checks the work of nature, leads genius astray, and prepares for it either a future source of fruitless regrets,— or efforts which few even of the most distinguished men have the leisure or the courage, after the period of early youth is passed, to undertake. All great writers are not Rousseaus. Rousseau studied our language as a foreigner, and it woidd require his genius of expression and his susceptibility of imagination, joined to his tenacity of character, and also his isolation in society, in order to learn French as he learned it. Still the French of the Grenevese is less at variance with that of Fénélon, than the jargon, mixed with English and German, which is now taught in Paris to the children of the highest classes. Perhaps the laboured artifices that too often appear in the sentences of Rousseau would not have existed, if the great writer had been born in France at a time when (as was then the case) the children spoke French.

The study of the ancient languages, then in vogue, far from being attended with a mischievous result,