ss left, so invariable was the assumption that it was the
nature of young girls to lie. I cannot imagine anything less likely to
create upright and noble character, in man or woman, than the systematic
application of the "European plan."

And that it produces just the results that might be feared, the whole tone
of European literature proves. Foreigners, no doubt, do habitual injustice
to the morality of French households; but it is impossible that fiction can
utterly misrepresent the community which produces and reads it. When one
thinks of the utter lightness of tone with which breaches, both of truth
and chastity, are treated even in the better class of French novels and
plays, it seems absurd to deny the correctness of the picture. Besides, it
is not merely a question of plays and novels. Consider, for instance, the
contempt with which Taine treats Thackeray for representing the mother of
Pendennis as suffering agonies when she thinks that her son has seduced a
young girl, a social inferior. Thackeray is not really considered a model
of elevated tone, as to such matters, among English writers; but the
Frenchman is simply amazed that the Englishman should describe even the
saintliest of mothers as attaching so much weight to such a small affair.

An able newspaper writer, quoted with apparent approval by the "Boston
Daily Advertiser," praises the supposed foreign method for the "habit of
dependence and deference" that it produces; and because it gives to a young
man a wife whose "habit of deference is established." But it must be
remembered, that, where this theory is established, the habit of deference
is logically carried much farther than mere conjugal convenience would take
it. Its natural outcome is the authority of the priest, not of the husband.
That domination of the women of France by the priesthood which forms even
now the chief peril of the republic--which is the strength of legitimism
and imperialism and all other conspiracies against the liberty of the
French people--is only the visible and inevitable result of this dangerous
docility.

One thing is certain, that the best preparation for freedom is freedom; and
that no young girls are so poorly prepared for American life as those whose
early years are passed in Europe. Some of the worst imprudences, the most
unmaidenly and offensive actions, that I have ever heard of in decent
society, have been on the part of young women educated abroad, who have
been