equality which the poor enjoy with the rich in his own country; he contracts a partiality for aristocracy or monarchy; he forms foreign friendships which will never be useful to him, and loses the season of life for forming in his own country those friendships, which, of all others, are the most faithful and permanent; he is led by the strongest of all the human passions into a spirit for female intrigue, destructive of his own and others’ happiness, or a passion for whores, destructive of his health, and in both cases, learns to consider fidelity to the marriage bed as an ungentlemanly practice, and inconsistent with happiness; he recollects the voluptuary dress and arts of the European women, and pities and despises the chaste affections and simplicity of those of his own country; he retains, through life, a fond recollection, and a hankering after those places, which were the scenes of his first pleasures and of his first connections; he returns to his own country a foreigner, unacquainted with the practices of domestic economy necessary to preserve him from ruin, speaking and writing his native tongue as a foreigner, and therefore unqualified to obtain those distinctions, which eloquence of the pen and tongue ensures in a free country; for, I would observe to you, that what is called style in writing or speaking, is formed very early in life, while the imagination is warm, and impressions are permanent.  I am of opinion, that there never was an instance of a man’s writing or speaking his native tongue with elegance, who passed from fifteen to twenty years of age out of the country where it was spoken.  Thus, no instance exists of a person’s writing two languages perfectly.  That will always appear to be his native language, which was most familiar to him in his youth.  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 even suspected.  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.

Did you expect by so short a question, to draw such a sermon on yourself?  I daresay you did not.  But the consequences of foreign education are alarming to me, as an American.  I sin, therefore, through zeal, whenever I enter on the subject.  You are sufficiently American to pardon me for it.  Let me hear of your health, and be assured of the esteem with which I am, Dear Sir,

your friend and servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXXIX.—­TO MR. CARMICHAEL, October 18, 1785

TO MR. CARMICHAEL.