Again, it is to be remembered that the whole "European plan," so far as it
is applied on the continent of Europe, is a plan based upon utter distrust
and suspicion, not only as to chastity, but as to all other virtues. It is
applied among the higher classes almost as consistently to boys as to
girls. In every school under church auspices, it is the French theory that
boys are never to be left unwatched for a moment; and it is as steadily
assumed that girls will be untruthful if left to themselves, as that they
will do every other wrong. This to the Anglo-Saxon race seems very
demoralizing. "Suspicion," said Sir Philip Sidney, "is the way to lose that
which we fear to lose." Readers of the Bronte novels will remember the
disgust of the English pupils and teachers in French schools at the
constant espionage around them; and I have more than once heard young girls
who had been trained at such institutions say that it was a wonder if they
had any truthfulness left, so invariable was the assumption that it was the
nature of young girls to lie. I cannot imagine anything less likely to
create upright and noble character, in man or woman, than the systematic
application of the "European plan."

And that it produces just the results that might be feared, the whole tone
of European literature proves. Foreigners, no doubt, do habitual injustice
to the morality of French households; but it is impossible that fiction can
utterly misrepresent the community which produces and reads it. When one
thinks of the utter lightness of tone with which breaches, both of truth
and chastity, are treated even in the better class of French novels and
plays, it seems absurd to deny the correctness of the picture. Besides, it
is not merely a question of plays and novels. Consider, for instance, the
contempt with which Taine treats Thackeray for representing the mother of
Pendennis as suffering agonies when she thinks that her son has seduced a
young girl, a social inferior. Thackeray is not really considered a model