You, my dear Aristophilus, who by your pleasing manners are so well fitted for the very best society, could give interesting answers to the following questions: Have you never found it advisable to keep silence when your wealthy host was saying things against which you inwardly protested? Have you not sometimes gone a step further, and given a kind of assent to some opinion that was not your own? Have you not, by practice, attained the power of giving a still stronger and heartier assent to what seemed doubtful propositions? There is one form of this assent which is deeply damaging to character. Some great person, a great lady perhaps, unjustly condemns, in your presence, a public man for whom you have a sincere respect. Instead of boldly defending him, you remain silent and acquiescent. You are afraid to offend, afraid to lose favor, afraid that if you spoke openly you would not be invited to the great house any more. Sometimes not a single individual but a class is attacked at once. A great lady is reported to have said that she "had a deep objection to French literature in all its branches." Observe that this expression of opinion contains a severe censure on _all_ French authors and on all readers of French literature. Would you have ventured to say a word in their defence? Would you have dared to hint, for example, that a serious mind might be none the worse for some acquaintance with Montesquieu and De Tocqueville? No, sir, you would have bowed your head and put on a shocked expression of countenance. In this way, little by little, by successive abandonments of what we think, and abdications of what we know, we may arrive at a state of habitual and inane concession that softens every fibre of the mind. ESSAY XI. THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE. The greatest impediment to free intercourse between nations is neither distance nor the differences of mental habits, nor the opposition of national interests; it is simply the imperfect manner in which languages are usually acquired, and the lazy contentment of mankind with a low degree of attainment in a foreign tongue when a much higher degree of attainment would be necessary to any efficient interchange of ideas.