Fashion dominates in this, as in other things. Of late its dictation has
been to cradle children in French; often, even to prohibit English in
the nursery and school-room; and, frequently, at a later time, to detach
our youth from their own country, for the sake of forwarding the same
object in foreign _pensions_, or schools. We have seen this fashion
extending itself to more mature life; and serious and discreet men,
senators and judges, toiling painfully through elements, vocabularies,
and rules of pronunciation, to acquire an amount of speech sufficient to
attract ridicule, and produce inconvenience, but very inadequate to any
useful or ornamental purpose.--_Ibid._
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