The choice of languages to be learnt must depend upon many considerations, but the widest good for English girls, though not the most easy to attain, is to give them perfect French. German is easier to learn from its kinship with our own language, but its grammar is of less educational value than French, and it does not help as French does to the acquirement of the most attractive of other European languages. As a second language, however, and for a great deal that is not otherwise attainable, German is in general the best that can be chosen. Italian and Spanish have their special claims, but at present in England their appeal is not to the many. German gives the feeling of kindred minds near to us, ourselves yet not ourselves; with primitive Teutonic strength and directness, with a sweet freshness of spring in its more delicate poetry, and both of these elements blended at times in an atmosphere as of German forests in June. In some writers the flicker of French brilliancy illumines the depth of these Teutonic woods, producing a German which, in spite of the condemnation of the Emperor, we should like to write ourselves if the choice were offered to us. But, notwithstanding the depth and strength of German, it is generally agreed that as an instrument of thought French prose in a master-hand is unrivalled, by its subtlety and precision, and its epigrammatic force. Every one knows and laments the decadent style which is eating into it; and every one knows that the deplorable tone of much of its contemporary literature makes discernment in French reading a matter not only of education but of conscience and sanity; but this does not make the danger to be inherent in the French language; obliging translators are ready to furnish us, in our own language and according to taste, with the very worst taken, from everywhere. And these faults do not affect the beauty of the instrument, nor its marvellous aptitude for training the mind to precision of expression. The logical bent of the French mind, its love of rule, the elaborateness of its conventions in literature, its ceremonial observances dating from by-gone times, the custom of giving account of everything, of letting no nuance pass unchallenged or uncommented, have given it a power of expression and definiteness which holds together as a complete code of written and unwritten laws, and makes a perfect instrument of its kind. But the very completeness of it has seemed to some writers a fetter, and when they revolt against and break through it, their extravagance passes beyond all ordinary bounds. French represents the two extremes, unheard-of goodness, unequalled perfection, or indescribable badness and unrestraint. Unfortunately the unrestraint is making its way, and as with ourselves in England, the magazine literature in France grows more and more undesirable.