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Why, to be sure! Capital acquaintance for you. Lucky rascal, to have got into this house. Miss Hannaford, too, has points. Nothing so good at your age, my dear boy, as the habit of associating with intelligent girls and women. Emollit mores, and something more than that. An excellent influence every way. I'm no preacher, Piers, but I hold by morality; it's the salt of life the salt of life!"
Young ladies are a little ardent, you know a little one-sided, my dear. Fine art, poetry, that kind of thing, elevates a nation emollit mores you understand a little Latin now. But eh? what?" These interrogatives were addressed to the footman who had come in to say that the keeper had found one of Dagley's boys with a leveret in his hand just killed. "I'll come, I'll come.
"Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros." The negroes of Loanda struck me as unusually ill-favoured; short, "stumpy," and very dark, or tinged with unclean yellow. Lepers and hideous cripples thrust their sores and stumps in the face of charity.
It gave me great satisfaction to hear this character of them. I should put no value on any society in which the ladies did not hold their due place and perform their due parts, and this is never the case, except where they are properly respected. Gallantry has the same effect upon the manners which Ovid attributes to learning "Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros."
The epithet "liberal" is a fair translation of the Latin "ingenuus," which means "free-born;" thus Cicero speaks of the "artes ingenuæ," or the arts befitting a free-born man; and Ovid says in the well-known lines, "Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros," To have studied carefully the liberal arts refines the manners, and prevents us from being brutish.
Very much has, undoubtedly, been done in Boston to carry out that theory of Colonel Newcome's Emollit mores, by which the Colonel meant to signify his opinion that a competent knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic, with a taste for enjoying those accomplishments, goes very far toward the making of a man, and will by no means mar a gentleman.
This object of literary studies, the formation of a personality fitted for civilised life, may be summed up in the familiar graceful words of Ovid, who was thinking almost entirely of literature when he wrote ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros.
"Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes, Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros." A philosophic friend, well known for his philanthropy and general benignity, suggests that the subject chosen ought also to have a family of young children wholly dependent on his exertions, by way of deepening the pathos. And, undoubtedly, this is a judicious caution. Yet I would not insist too keenly on this condition.
Emollit mores. We quote here our old friend the colonel again. If a gentleman be compelled to confine his classical allusions to one quotation, he cannot do better than hang by that. But has education been so general, and has it had the desired result?
Said George sonorously: "Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros." Darrell drew Sophy's arm into his own. "Will you walk back to the lake with me," said he, "and help me to feed the swans? George, send your servant express for Sir Isaac. I am impatient to make his acquaintance." Sophy's hand involuntarily pressed Darrell's arm.
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