Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/357

 Rise of Russia and Prussia 319 It is, alas, but too plain that since the French devil has 357. French come to rule the Germans we have so changed in our way manners in of life, manners, and customs that we deserve to be called, i n the e a r i y if not naturalized Frenchmen, at least a strange new French- eighteenth ified people. In the past, Frenchmen have not been greatly centur y- esteemed in Germany, but nowadays we cannot live without them ; everything must be French, — French speech, French clothes, French music, French diseases, and I fear we '11 come to a French death, for our sins deserve no other. Most of the German courts are ordered on the French plan, and no one can hope to be of any importance in them unless he knows French and especially unless he has been in Paris, that university for the study of every sort of frivolity. . . . Before our children have mastered any sort of speech, when they are but four or five years old, they are offered up to the French Moloch, introduced to French galantries, and the parents must see about a French teacher and dancing master. In France no one speaks German unless it be some few Germans among themselves ; but here with us the use of the French language has become so common that in many places it is even used by the shoemakers and tailors, the servants and the children. . . . As to clothes, I venture to say that in France itself things are not so bad as here in Germany. The plain truth is that even in Paris I have never seen such variety and frequent changes of fashion in clothes as in Germany. . . . The French cannot devise anything so absurd that the Germans, in imitating it, will not make it still more ridiculous. V. Frederick the Great and his Father Frederick the Great's father gave the following in- structions for the education of his son. . . . Above all else, it is important that his character — and it is character which governs all human action — should be, from earliest youth, so formed that he will love and de- light in virtue and feel horror and disgust for vice. Nothing 358. In- structions of Frederick William I for the education of his son. (Condensed.)