xt relation which they regenerate by their statues to Rousseau is
that which is next in sanctity to that of a father. They differ from
those old-fashioned thinkers who considered pedagogues as sober and
venerable characters, and allied to the parental. The moralists of the
dark times _praeceptorem sancti voluere parentis esse loco_. In this age
of light they teach the people that preceptors ought to be in the place
of gallants. They systematically corrupt a very corruptible race, (for
some time a growing nuisance amongst you,)--a set of pert, petulant
literators, to whom, instead of their proper, but severe, unostentatious
duties, they assign the brilliant part of men of wit and pleasure, of
gay, young, military sparks, and danglers at toilets. They call on the
rising generation in France to take a sympathy in the adventures and
fortunes, and they endeavor to engage their sensibility on the side, of
pedagogues who betray the most awful family trusts and vitiate their
female pupils. They teach the people that the debauchers of virgins,
almost in the arms of their parents, may be safe inmates in their house,
and even fit guardians of the honor of those husbands who succeed
legally to the office which the young literators had preoccupied
without asking leave of law or conscience.

Thus they dispose of all the family relations of parents and children,
husbands and wives. Through this same instructor, by whom they corrupt
the morals, they corrupt the taste. Taste and elegance, though they are
reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean
importance in the regulation of life. A moral taste is not of force to
turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the
blandishments of pleasure, and it infinitely abates the evils of vice.
Rousseau, a writer of great force and vivacity, is totally destitute of
taste in any sense of the word. Your masters, who are his scholars,
conceive that all refinement has an aristocratic character. The last age
had exhausted all its powers in giving a grace and nobleness to our
natural appetites, and in raising them into a higher class and order
than seemed justly to belong to them. Through Rousseau, your masters are
resolved to destroy these aristocratic prejudices. The passion called
love has so general and powerful an influence, it makes so much of the
entertainment, and indeed so much the occupation, of that part of life
which decides the character f