a tramp of a rather more civilized kind, having neither ties nor sympathies nor obligations, nothing to give, and more inclined to take than to receive.  To create ties, sympathies, and obligations in the mental life, is a grace belonging to the study of languages, and makes it possible to give and receive hospitality on the best terms with the minds of those of other nations than our own.  This is particularly a gift for the education of girls, since all graces of hospitality ought to be peculiarly theirs.  To lift them above prejudices, to make them love other beauties than those of their own mental kindred, to afford them a wider possibility of giving happiness to others, and of making themselves at home in many countries, is to give them a power over the conditions of life which reaches very far into their own mental well-being and that of others, and makes them in the best meaning of the word cosmopolitan.

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