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BR UNE TIERE 4 1 5
ing for success and influence, the French would seem to live
only to gratify this craving; and inasmuch as a nation cannot
have been given a mission without the means of fulfilling
it,
the French have been given this means in their language,
by which they rule much more effectually than by their arms,
though their arms have shaken the world." This praise,
possibly the highest the French language has ever received,
cannot be said to emanate from one who was an entire foreigner:
he was a native of Savoy, and everybody knows what
affection, frequently chiding and captious, the Savoyards,
from Vaugelas to Francois Buloz, have shown toward the
French language. On the other hand, it can hardly be
called the utterance of a Frenchman, coming
as it
does from
Joseph de Maistre, ambassador from his Majesty the King
of Sardinia to his Majesty the Tsar of all the Russias: and
that is
why I venture to quote it. There are things that
modesty forbids us to say ourselves, but which we have the
right to appropriate when others have said them, especially
when their way of saying them makes us feel that there is a
little jealousy mingled with the genuineness of their admiration.
This same Joseph de Maistre writes furthermore: " I
recollect having read formerly a letter of the famous architect
Christopher Wren, in which he discusses the right dimcr
for a church. He fixes upon them solely
with reference to
the carrying power of the human voice, and he sets the limits
beyond which the voice for any English ear becomes inaudible;
' but, 1 '
he says on this point, a French orator would
make himself heard farther away, his pronunciation bcin^
firmer and more distinct.' And '
finally, de Maistre adds
ay of comment on this ([notation:
" What Wren has
f oral speech appears to me still truer of that far more
:
rating speech heard in hook-. The speech of Frenchmen
vays audible farther away." Let u> take his word for it.