Your letters, my dear Baron, equally interest and instruct me; you are educating your son, I am bringing up a Prince, born to be a Sovereign. The desire of being useful to the Public, can alone engage me to undertake this noble, but difficult employment. But the reflections of a good father, and such a man as you are, will be of great use to me; for paternal love must be the most enlightened upon all these matters.

Yes, my dear Baron, I have read all the books that have been written on the subject of Education in general, and that of Princes in particular; and since you desire to know my sentiments, I will tell you them with my usual sincerity. Rousseau is indebted to Seneca, to Montaigne, to Locke, and to Mons. de Fenelon, for every thing that is truly useful in his book, except one important truth, which he has had the merit of discovering first; it is, ‘That the greatest fault we can commit in education, is that of being too hasty, and of sacrificing every thing to the desire of making our scholars appear brilliant.’

It is painful to reflect, that, after giving advice so useful and so wise, Rousseau should not feel the inconvenience of falling into the opposite extreme. He will neither have Emilius taught to read, nor to write; and he proposes, on the contrary, a plan of education as defective, as the one he objects to. As to the rest, his Work is filled with pieces of sublime eloquence, declamations in a bad taste, and containing dangerous principles, failing both in interest and in action; and he offers almost in every page opposite inferences. But we ought without doubt to forget his faults, on account of the superior beauties which are to be found in his book. However, it is to the Ladies that the Author of Emilius owes his great success; for they in general praise him with enthusiasm, although no Author treats them with less respect.