That the Hugo school has brought more nonsense with its mischief, is, I think, clear: but it is not impossible that this may act as an antidote to its own poison. It is a sort of humbug assumption of talent which will pass out of fashion as quickly as Morrison's pills. We have nothing quite so silly as this; but much I fear that, as it concerns our welfare as a nation, we have what is more deeply dangerous. As to what is moral and what is not so, plain as at first sight the question seems to be, there is much that is puzzling in it. In looking over a volume of "Adèle et Théodore" the other day,--a work written expressly "_sur l'éducation_," and by an author that we must presume meant honestly and spoke sincerely,--I found this passage:-- "Je ne connais que trois romans véritablement moraux;--Clarisse, le plus beau de tous; Grandison, et Pamela. Ma fille les lira en Anglais lorsqu'elle aura dix-huit ans." The venerable Grandison, though by no means _sans tache_, I will let pass: but that any mother should talk of letting her daughter of "dix-huit ans" read the others, is a mystery difficult to comprehend, especially in a country where the young girls are reared, fostered, and sheltered from every species of harm, with the most incessant and sedulous watchfulness. I presume that Madame de Genlis conceived that, as the object and moral purpose of these works were good, the revolting coarseness with which some of their most powerful passages are written could not lead to evil. But this is a bold and dangerous judgment to pass when the question relates to the studies of a young girl. I think we may see symptoms of the feeling which would produce such a judgment, in the tone of biting satire with which Molière attacks those who wished to banish what might "faire insulte à la pudeur des femmes." Spoken as he makes Philaminte speak it, we cannot fail to laugh at the notion: yet ridicule on the same subject would hardly be accepted, even from Sheridan, as jesting matter with us. "Mais le plus beau projet de notre académie, Une entreprise noble, et dont je suis ravie, Un dessein plein de gloire, et qui sera vanté Chez tous les beaux-esprits de la postérité, C'est le retranchement de ces syllabes sales Qui dans les plus beaux mots produisent des scandales; Ces jouets éternels des sots de tous les temps, Ces fades lieux communs de nos méchans plaisans; Ces sources d'un amas d'équivoques infâmes Dont on vient faire insulte à la pudeur des femmes." Such an academy might be a very comical institution, certainly; but the duties it would have to perform would not suffer a professor's place to become a sinecure in France. LETTER XXVII. Objections to quoting the names of private individuals.--Impossibility of avoiding Politics.--_Parceque_ and _Quoique_.--Soirée Antithestique.