or taste. Jean Jacques was sufficiently ignorant of himself to be humiliated by the failure of this attempt, though afterwards he saw in providence the accident which deterred him from renewing it, and pointed out to him the mine where the golden treasure of his genius really lay. At the age of thirty-seven, in the summer of 1749, the son of the watchmaker went to visit his friend Diderot, imprisoned at Vincennes, on account of his "Lettres sur les Aveugles." In the Mercure he saw an announcement that the Academy of Dijon had proposed a question, "Whether the progress of the arts and sciences had tended to corrupt or to purify public manners?" If ever," says Rousseau, "an inspiration fell on any man it seemed at that moment to fall on me. A thousand colours seemed to play their dazzling beauty before my eyes; my brain swam as though swooning to the earth; my heart burned and beat, my whole frame trembled, and sinking down under a tree, I remained half an hour so subdued by these emotions, that when I rose I found I had sprinkled all my garments with tears." From this ecstasy he awoke, wrote in crayon the prosopopoeia of Fabricius, showed it to Diderot, and from him received encouragement to contend for the great prize. Rousseau took up his pen. He wrote that brilliant declamation which was as it were a challenge to the opinions of a whole age. It gained him the prize. From that hour his resolve was formed. He would have liberty; he would break the shackles of opinion, and as a prelude to the sacrifices called for from the pilgrims in such a crusade, he swept from his table the few luxuries that had found a place on it, and prepared to throw the sparks that should kindle a volcanic fire of revolution in France. He had gained employment as the cashier to an important firm, but this he renounced because the guardianship of a treasure disturbed him in his dreams. As a less troubling resource he announced that he would copy music at five pence a page. This excited such notice that he had speedily more offers of work than he could undertake, for he would not devote all his time to an occupation so poor and fruitless. A little play produced at Fontainbleau in 1752, enjoyed so brilliant a success, that his name began to pass through society, and the king of France himself desired to see him. But Rousseau was never like Voltaire. He would never stoop to act as the lettered lacquey of a prince. He fled from the importunity of the Court, though when the Academy of Dijon invited him to a second trial, he warmly applied himself to win again the approval of that learned body. The question was, "On the Origin of Inequality in the Condition of Men." To meditate in favourable solitude on this, Rousseau retired into a sequestered valley in the forest of St. Germain, there to trace the picture of those early times when manhood stood on a level; and tyranny on the one hand had not begun, and apathy on the other had not perpetuated a race of slaves. It is a sombre and violent satire on human society. The dedication is a masterpiece of style; but the essay is a compound of paradox and fantasia, with philosophy and learning. When Burke wrote in imitation of St. John his vehement tirade against civilization, he shadowed forth more truth than he pretended, or, perhaps, designed. When Rousseau composed his more theoretical attack, he lost sight of the truth, while he chased from point to point those fleeting shapes which appeared to him under its disguise. Plainly stated, the substance of the two pieces is this. The one showed that conquerors and kings have committed more murders than all the lions, tigers, hyenas, wolves, and jackals, that ever prowled about since aurochs disappeared from the primæval earth; and caused more misery than all the famines and plagues that nature ever sent to devastate the world. This was the theory announced through the trumpet of the Irish orator. The other sought to prove that rulers and nobles have robbed, plundered, and defrauded mankind with more flagrant and enormous villany than all the pirates, highwaymen, cut-purses, footpads, and forgers, that ever loaded or escaped the gallows, from Genesis to Jericho, and from Jericho to the New Jerusalem. This doctrine, in another phase, is developed in the declamation of the Genevese philosopher. A bold and staggering doctrine, upon the truth or falsity of which we make no argument, but leave it to the reflection of the reader. It was now, too, that Rousseau made late atonement for the apostacy of his earlier years. At Geneva he solemnly revoked the abjuration he had pro your use." book, it circulated with an expanding fame from the Alps to the Pyrenees. Next, he wrote the "Emile," which embodied his theories on education. It was directed to proclaim a religion without a formula, and a moral world without dogmatic laws, and constituted a calm but virulent attack on Christianity. This miserable blot defiles that which as a literary work is one of the most splendid monuments of the glory of Rousseau. In it he showed so many ideas of his own, and so beautifully construed the ideas of others, that it may be said to furnish a treasure of rhetorical gems. The philosophy of Locke is indeed adopted, but the rea sonings on education which in the one are full of force, are in the other irresistible. The ideal he conceived and realized came before the world, with a brilliance which drew all attention to the Genevese. The " Emile," printed in Holland in 1762, excited a fermentation that might have warned its author of the fate which now awaited him. nounced of the Protestant religion. Many of the people there desired him to remain, but the neighbourhood of Voltaire deterred him, and to Paris he went once more. About this time Madame d'Espinay, who possessed near Montmorency the chateau de la Chevrette, built for him on a spot he loved, a little dwelling which she named the Hermitage. "In this, my dear," she said, "is your retreat. You have chosen it yourself, and friendship offers it to He accepted the proposal, and installed himself, with his two governesses, as he called two women, Madam and Mademoiselle Levasseur. The younger of these, whom he had become acquainted with at an inn, did not know the month of the year, and could not tell the figures on a clock, yet she domineered over the mind of Rousseau. If, in default of intelligence, she had been endowed with those natural instincts which nature gives to unreasoning brutes, she would, says a French writer, have spared the philosopher, whom she made a father and who afterwards mar- But, with his powerful friends, Rousried her, the reproach and the remorse seau imagined himself safe from perseof having abandoned his children to cution. He was wrong in imputing public charity. feebleness to the orthodoxy of France. Jean Jacques settled in the Her-News reached him that his arrest had mitage in 1756. It was there that he composed those famous works which place him in the first rank among modern writers. But amid the pleasant cares which theu occupied his days, a new unhappy passion again mingled bitterness with the reflections of his life. He could not see without loving the Countess of Houdetot, a relative of his protectress. The result of this mad amour was a rupture with Madame d'Espinay, with Diderot, and with almost all his friends. Accusing them of treachery, he quitted the seclusion that had been prepared for the labour of his prime, and took refuge in a ruin at Montmorency, where he shivered in the cold of winter. There the Marshal of Luxembourgh visited him, and, willing to conciliate so terrible an enemy of social privileges, invited him to his chateau, where he lived as he chose, and wrote as he desired. In three years the "Nouvelle Heloise" appeared. The sensation produced throughout France by this work, was such that it created, as it were, a new emotion in the heart of that country. Every one loved his Julie, every one was the friend of his Saint Preux; and though fierce critics rose up about the been ordered. He must escape. The Duke of Luxembourgh facilitated his flight. At first he thought he might hide in Switzerland, but at Geneva he found his book condemned to be burned by the common executioner, and his body under sentence of arrest. Menaced by the senators of Bern, he found an asylum in Neufchatel, where in a little village he abode for a while, living on a pension granted by some wealthy friend. There, obeying every fantastic impulse, he dressed him in the costume of an Armenian, gave up writing, took to making laces, and worked all day before his cottage-door, chatting with the girls as they went by. But as the archbishop of Paris was anathematising his 66 Emile," he could not but resume his pen for an hour, and wrote that lofty eloquent letter, which for style and logic was so remarkable that all the nobles and clergy of France began to fear him. Then came the "Letters from the Mountain," directed against the ministers of Geneva, which excited new tempests, brought down the curses of the church upon him, and so infuriated the populace of the place in which they resided, that they, hallooed on by their clergy, ap peared ready to tear him to pieces. Once man. December; but Rousseau never heard of it till he reached England, which he shortly did by the assistance of the historian, David Hume. After living two months, partly in London and partly in Chiswick, he went down to Wootton, in Derbyshire. There was, however, no tranquillity in store for him. The English press, which had, hitherto, been very favourable to his fame, now began in every way to revile him, and Jean Jacques saw, at first with surprise, but then with suspicion, that though Hume and his other "friends" were influential in the papers, not a libel was checked, nor was a pen employed to defend him. The effect of Walpole's forgery, also, was very striking. It roused the laughter of the people, and satire, that surest means of slander, ran high in all the literary circles of the capital. It was the belief of Rousseau, and it is ours, that Hume brought him over to complete a scheme he had formed for the shipwreck of his reputation. Sheer malignity alone could have prompted this design. It was not for the Scotch enemy of Christianity to avow himself the pious persecutor of the Genevese, who shared that false philosophy with him. Had he professed the excuse of bigotry, his conduct would have been contemptible, but it might not have been so contemptible as it was. This secret conspiracy ended in an open war, and all we need say is, that whatever Rousseau lost, David Hume gained nothing to his honest fame. And, when it is added, that to cover the perfidy of Hume, Horace Walpole condescended to a public lie, not that he loved the historian-whom he despised, but that he hated the philosopher-whom he feared, it becomes clear that we are tracing the sinuous labyrinths of a most disreputable transaction. Pelted with stones at Motiers, ignominiously hunted at Berne, turned to derision at Bienne, and expelled from his native soil, he lived for a while at Paris, known to and knowing nearly all the distinguished writers of the age. Among the zealous and hospitable friends, who professed their attachment to him, was Horace Walpole. This individual, I hope, will one day find his proper place in our literary history. He was a sort of pigmy Diogenes, and at the same time very like the nobleman whom Diogenes visited. He was a cynic in satin breeches, a quack in kid-gloves, a picture-dealer with a pedigree. If we like his manners, it is because they are amusing; if we read his letters, it is because they are useful; but for the man himself we never feel respect. Mr. Macaulay describes him as the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most capricious, and the most fastidious of men.~ Let me add that he was the most conceited, the most puerile, and as a critic the most ridiculous. Itwas this personage who now, while honeying his lips with the politest phrases, undertook to lampoon Rousseau. He forged a letter, purporting to be addressed to the Swiss philosopher from the King of Prussia, who was well known to affect, with a spurious enthusiasm, the society of men of genius. In this epistle, While these machinations of his eneworthy in its flimsy cunning of Sans mies embittered him against, at least, Souci, the mania of Rousseau for believ- the teachers of mankind, Rousseau ing himself an especial victim marked composed the early part of the "Conout for persecution by all the world, fessions," aided by the leisure which a was represented in the light calculated small pension from the English governto produce most ridicule. It was pub-ment allowed him. But the worst enemy lished by that Maccaroni, Horace Walpole, at the instigation of Madame Geoffrin, of Helvetius, and of the Duke de Nivernois,-persons whom Rousseau had never injured, but who seemed to be moved by an instinct of hatred against him. The letter appeared about the end of of his repose was Therese de Levasseur, who followed him from France to his Derbyshire retreat, where he was disturbed by her, as well as by the conspirators who plotted with David Hume. History, however, does not regret that the satirist of Hampden and the libeller of Cromwell should have been the asso ciate of Nivernois and the maligner of Rousseau. In 1767, after a sojourn of sixteen months, Jean Jacques quitted England. He had then no intention of going back to France, proposing a return to Venice, whose beauty still haunted his mind among the dearest memories of youth. But Mirabeau, then appealing to the reason of France against the corruptions of her oppressors, solicited him to remain on her soil, for a great work was at hand for the friends of freedom; and though Rousseau refused to adopt the economical theories of the orator, he was persuaded to instal himself in the Chateau de Tryes, under the protection of the Prince de Conti. His repose there, however, was not of long duration. Stewards and servants, the moment be arrived, punctiliously insulted him, and he left the place, where spies were planted in every corner, and proceeded to herbalise about Lyons, Grenoble, Chamberry, and, finally, Monguin, where, in 1768, he was married to Therese. This woman throws a shadow over his fame. She was long with him before she became his wife, and then he connived at her dishonour. She bore him children, and these he abandoned among the outcasts of the Foundling Hospital, because, he said, with dangerous sophistry, they should not be nurtured in that hatred of their father, with which his female relatives would surely seek to inspire them. There was a selfishness in this idea, which takes nothing from the flagitious character of the action which it suggested. Here, for twelve months, he stayed, pursued by fear, remorse, and unavailing sorrow, for he had no true friends; he had many irreconcileable enemies; he could not repose with an honourable conscience on the past; he could not look with eyes of confidence or hope to the future. He had wasted himself; he had spurned his own feelings; he had to repent the imbecility of his own resolves and the treachery of others. And this, perhaps, was a reflection rendered more bitter by the thought that he had found it easy to be magnanimous; that there were noble acts recorded of him; and that among all his foes, there was none who need have terrified him had he never been a foe to himself. At length a lull in the ferocity of the ruling faction permitted him to return to Paris. Not without danger, indeed, because no man of liberal opinions could live in that cloaca maxima of the monarchy, without the risk of being stifled by pestilent libellers, in the pay of the Court; but with comparative safety, especially as the welcome of the people was loud and cordial. His Considerations on the Government of Poland," were soon afterwards published; and this eloquent analysis was followed by the " Dialogues," in which, with a freshness of thought and a power of logic that seemed to grow more redundant with his increasing years, he pleads an apology for the various episodes of his life. Then came the Reveries," which are incomplete. They are classical in the language of France. The last of them is consecrated to the sad memory of Madame de Warens. It is a warm, pathetic picture of days which he still counted happy, for he chiefly remembered them with regret because they could return no more. Who that pauses over the musical periods of these records in memory of a guilty but only half-repented passage in the vicissitudes of Rousseau's career, will refuse to pity him for his misfortunes, if he must despise him for the moral imbecility which was their primal cause. Let it be repeated, that he was faithless to himself. It cannot be denied that the falsehood of almost all he met was more contemptible, though it need not have been so dangerous. This suggests the inquiry into that subject which has divided so strongly the critics of Rousseau. Was he mad when he supposed that the world was in a conspiracy against him? Or, rather, was this fixed idea of his mind a proof of his insanity? It may have brooded over his intellect so continually and so heavily that what was at first a reasonable conviction became a monomania; I think it did. But I do not think that there was any proof of a disorganized brain in his belief that mankind were leagued against him. He could only judge of mankind, in this respect, by that portion of it which came in contact with him. And when, or where, did he live without persecution? In Geneva, the blows of a cruel master; at Annecy, the hypocrisy of a bigoted priest; at Turin, the duplicity of a whole college of fanatics; at Charmettes, the dishonour of Eleonore; at Montmorency, the hostility of his old friends; in Paris, the ferocity of the Government; in Berne, the savage fury of the citizens; in Motier, the curses of the Church and the violence of the mob; in St. Pierre, the inhuman cruelty of his enemies; in England, the forgery of Horace Walpole, the perfidy of David Hume, and the calumnies of the whole press; in France, the industrious, incessant, and unmitigated malignity of an immense troop, composed of those who knew him, echoed by those who knew him not, and loudest from those who had professed their amity for him ;-all this, I say, to a vain, irritable, tender character like Rousseau, might well appear to indicate the existence of a universal conspiracy for his destruction. went out to observe the rising of the sun, and came, back to take coffee with his wife. At the moment when she was leaving the room, to occupy herself with the cares of the ménage, he requested her to pay a man who had been working for him, and, because he was an honest fellow, to deduct nothing from the bill. When she returned, she found him extended on a large couch, apparently in grievous suffering. "What is the matter with you, my friend?" she said. I feel a great pain," he answered. Therese, to avoid alarming him, pretended to be going on some errand, and sent for the people at the chateau. Some of them came, but Rousseau desired to be left alone with his wife. 66 It is true, on the other hand, that he could claim for himself little reverence, When the door had been shut, he and might have recalled acts of trea- asked her to sit down by him. "Well, chery equally base with those of the I have," she said, placing herself close maligners who pursued him. But these to the couch. "How are you now?" were the repented acts of his earlier " 'My suffering is very little," he anlife. He sought by his "Confessions" swered. "I pray open the window, that to make some atonement for them; and I may once more look out upon the whatever the value to morals of reve- green earth." "Mon bon ami," she relations such as he made, it is certain turned, "why do you say that?" "I that the memory of these crimes con- have always prayed to God," said Rousstituted the bitterest affliction of his seau, "that I may die without a malady maturer age. Besides, when men ima- and without a physician. You can close gine society to be in league against them, my eyes, and then my wishes are all they do not inquire whether they have fulfilled." After this, he asked her to provoked its hostility, nor have we, in pardon him for any wrongs he might a question of fact, to press the retort have done her; assured her that without upon them. However, though Rous- her consent his friends would never make seau might not have been insane, because any use of the papers he had confided he thought the world made him an Ish- to their hands; and recommended that maelite among the children of Israel, a formal medical inquiry should take his brain certainly became affected place into the mode and cause of his end. towards the close of his life. This was Meanwhile the last agony came on; attributable, I think, to a cause which his chest was, as it were, pierced by an may not here be discussed, as well as to indescribable physical anguish, his head the united influence of remorse and racked by pains, which blinded him as he sorrow preying upon his mind. lay trembling in the sufferings of death. In the beginning of the year 1778, this marvellous being, after a life of trouble, only varied by a few brief summer-dawns of peace, retired to Ermonville. Madame Rousseau was ill, and the salubrity of that place seemed likely to restore her health. On Friday, the 1st of July, he walked in the afternoon, as usual, with a young friend. It was very hot weather, and, contrary to his general habits, he paused several times for repose. Soon after, he complained of pains in his body, but these were soothed by the time that he returned to the chateau, and he sat down in comfort to supper Next morning he rose, according to his custom, His wife, fond of him, though she had contributed little to his prosperity in life, felt an unutterable misery in the sight of his affliction. Rousseau stifled the expression of his own sufferings to offer a balm to hers. Ah, then, my sweet friend," he said, "how can you love me, if you weep over my happiness? Behold, now the pure purpose of heaven. A gateway opens for me, and God waits within." With these words he fell with his head downwards, and was motionless. Therese sought to lift him up, but he was heavy and insensible. She shrieked; the door was burst open, friends came in, and the wife, covered with blood which was flowing from the |