PAGES CHOISIES DES MÉMOIRES DU DUC DE SAINT-SIMON. EDITED AND ANNOTATED BY A. N. VAN DAELL, LATE DIRECTOR OF MODERN LANGUAGES IN THE BOSTON HIGH BOSTON, U.S.A.: PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY. 1889. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1889, by in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. CUSHING & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A. PRESSWORK BY GINN & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A. PREFACE. I WISH to address in this preface not only the teachers of French (in that case I would not presume to write in any language but my own), but others also who as principals or in any different capacity have something to do with the choice of text-books. The study of a foreign language ought to bring students in contact with the master-minds of foreign nations. Students ought to grasp ideas and feelings with which the writers of their own nationality cannot make them acquainted. Unless this result be obtained, it seems to me that the time given to French or German is wasted, or that it could surely be employed in a more profitable manner. Not that Americans ought to become imitation Frenchmen; no one, more than I, would deprecate any attempt in that direction. But few minds are large enough by nature not to need the broadening influence of some foreign culture; and it has always seemed to me that the English and French literatures are particularly well fitted to balance each other. I shall not discuss the idle question which one of the two stands foremost; I simply mean that to a Frenchman nothing could be mentally more useful than the study of English literature, and conversely, to an English or American youth nothing could be more useful than the study of the great writers of France. And yet wide gaps exist among the books easily available to the mass of American students of French. It is one of these gaps that I have attempted to fill. |