If he goes to the continent he will acquire a fondness for luxury and dissipation, he will contract a partiality for aristocracy and monarchy; he will soon be led to consider "fidelity to the marriage bed as an ungentlemanly practice." He will become denationalized and recollecting "the voluptuary dress and arts of the European women, will pity and despise the chaste affections and simplicity of those of his own country." He will return to America "a foreigner", speaking and writing his own tongue "like a foreigner", and therefore unqualified to obtain those distinctions, which eloquence of the pen and tongue ensures in a free country. There can be only one conclusion after such a fierce denunciation of Europe: It appears to me, then, that an American, coming to Europe for education, loses in his knowledge, in his morals, in his health, in his habits, and in his happiness. I had entertained only doubts on this head before I came to Europe: what I see and hear, since I came here proves more than I had expected. Cast your eye over America: who are the men of most learning, of most eloquence, most beloved by their countrymen and most trusted and promoted by them? They are those who have been educated among them, and whose manners, morals, and habits, are perfectly homogeneous with those of the country.[115] Very bold indeed would have been the American father who, with such a frightful picture before his eyes, would have sent his son to Europe. Thus we are led to a very unexpected conclusion. There is little doubt that Jefferson's democratic theories were confirmed and clarified by his prolonged stay in Europe. But this was not due to the lessons he received from the French philosophers. He had gone to France under the misapprehension that he would be considered there as a "savage from the mountains of America"; he had been dazzled at first by the splendor of the old world, but he had soon overcome his admiration and arrived at the conclusion that the game was not worth the candle. Life in Paris was very pleasant, but some one had to foot the bill, and the general fate of humanity was most deplorable in Europe. Such are the general impressions he sent to his friend Bellini one year after arriving in Paris: It is a true picture of that country to which they say we shall pass hereafter; and where we are to see God and his angels in splendor, and crowds of the damned trampled under their feet. The great mass of the people suffer under physical and moral oppression; but the condition of the great if more closely observed cannot compare with the degree of happiness which is enjoyed in America. Among them there is no family life, no conjugal love, no domestic happiness; intrigues of love occupy the young and those of ambition, the elder part of the great.