to this; and often those children who at first are most difficult
to hear, become the noisiest when they begin to raise their voices.
But if I were to enter into all these details I should never make
an end; every sensible reader ought to see that defect and excess,
caused by the same abuse, are both corrected by my method. I regard
the two maxims as inseparable--always enough--never too much. When
the first ii well established, the latter necessarily follows on
it.]

As they grow older, the boys are supposed to be cured of this fault
at college, the girls in the convent schools; and indeed both usually
speak more clearly than children brought up entirely at home. But
they are prevented from acquiring as clear a pronunciation as the
peasants in this way--they are required to learn all sorts of things
by heart, and to repeat aloud what they have learnt; for when they
are studying they get into the way of gabbling and pronouncing
carelessly and ill; it is still worse when they repeat their lessons;
they cannot find the right words, they drag out their syllables.
This is only possible when the memory hesitates, the tongue does
not stammer of itself. Thus they acquire or continue habits of bad
pronunciation. Later on you will see that Emile does not acquire
such habits or at least not from this cause.

I grant you uneducated people and villagers often fall into the opposite
extreme. They almost always speak too loud; their pronunciation is
too exact, and leads to rough and coarse articulation; their accent
is too pronounced, they choose their expressions badly, etc.

But, to begin with, this extreme strikes me as much less dangerous
than the other, for the first law of speech is to make oneself