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268 OUR FRENCH CORRESPONDENT.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Ladies, Paris, November 20, 1861.
attributed to the Emperor , of creating lialf a dozen , comtes and dues , or tlie report of M . Fould projecting a tax upon pianosand would
, very properly _Tbe set down as equivalent to an announcement that no language whatever , mother tongue included , was properly taught .
In consequence of all this , none of the French satirists—whatever they may denounce in the -way of young ladies' powers of endurance
Ibeing tried Try the penitential regime and absence of all comfort under which they are placed during their school-daysor the very
questionable morality directly inculcated by a well , -organized system of spyingand the open habit from the directress to her
, youngest pupil of another nameless thing that rhymes to it , — can ever exercise their pens as did Thomas Hood upon boarding
schools , or , in genteel parlance , _" young ladies' seminaries , which in England are rarely mentioned in mixed society _without provoking
a , smile , whereas in Paris there is nothing ridiculous in the association of ideas awakened by doing so . Perhaps there may have
been before professors wearing red rosettes at their button-holes _liabitually taught in them , although , if we read the memoirs of
Madame Campan , and the description of her " Institution" at St . Oermains-en-Layewhere the accomplished Queen Hortensethe
true-, , Jiearted Madame Lavalette , and the talented Aglaie Merominel , were brought up , we are inclined to think otherwise . But still the cry
exists , and , when judged in an absolute sense , it is a reasonable one , that secondary female education in France is lamentably insufficient to
accomplish its chief end , and enable women to go through life "with dignity , usefulness , and independence ; that the thinking powers are
not sufficiently developed ; that an initiation into the every-day affairs of life is utterly neglected j that the moral powers are entirely weakened
by a system of surveillance , never for a moment concealed from the object of its eternal spyingswho losesin feeling herself continually
_, , suspected , and treated as if incapable of being trusted with a moment ' s libertyevery sentiment of self-respect or sensitive care for the
, preservation of a good name , so as to become as untrustworthy as she has from , infancy been presumed to be .
The subject to which the opening" paragraph of this letter is devoted is not only at frequently-recurring periods the theme for
leaders in the liberal and ably-conducted Siecle , and in the Reviews , niore especially Le Revue des JEconomistswhich hands it over to
the able pen of Madame Meunier ; a-propos , of divers newly-issued books ; but appears in the opening speeches which were made at the
opening of the Law Courts . The latter is an entirely new phase for the question the French to language pass throug as h , much and took by surprise the whole at Paris world , as , _^ it as would expressed at Lon by
-, don were some English judge or one of our most eminent serjeantsat-law to select the same subject for an , address to * his brother
barristers on the opening day of the term succeeding the long vacation ,. The spirit of red tape would look aghast in the Court where poor
Mrs . Cobbet in . vain , pleads for her husband amidst tho uamean . r
268 Our French Correspondent.
268 OUR FRENCH CORRESPONDENT .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Dec. 1, 1861, page 268, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01121861/page/52/
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