ROUSSEAU

1712-1778.

It is impossible to imagine a character in stronger contrast with

Voltaire, than that of Rousseau. They possessed but one quality in

common. It is difficult to know what to call it. In ordinary men it

would be named egotism, or vanity. It is that lively and intimate

apprehension of their own individuality, sensations, and being, which

appears to be one of the elements of that order of minds which feel

impelled to express their thoughts and disseminate their views and

opinions through the medium of writing;--men of imagination, and

eloquence, and mental energy. This quality is good as long as it renders

an author diligent, earnest, and sincere; it is evil when it deprives

him of the power of justly appreciating his powers and position, and

causes him to fancy himself the centre, as it were, of the universe.

Rousseau was its victim; it was exaggerated till his mind became

diseased; and one false idea becoming fixed and absorbing, a sort of

madness ensued. He was too alive to the sense of his own actions and

feelings; and as he had committed many faults, not to say crimes, the

recollection of these, joined to his sincere love of virtue, produced a

struggle in his mind full, of misery and remorse.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva, on the 28th June, 1712. His

birth cost the life of his mother, and was, he says, "the first of his

misfortunes." His father was a watchmaker, and clever in his trade--it

was all he had to subsist upon. Jean Jacques was born weakly, and with

some organic defect, that rendered the rearing difficult and precarious.

A sister of his father devoted herself to him. According to his own

account, his childish years were happy. Loved and caressed by many

relations, and watched over by his aunt, he was indulged without being

spoiled. His father taught him to read, after the business of the day

was over. That his attention might be excited, the long romances of

Scudéri and the elder Crebillon were put into his hands. His father

shared the pleasure he took in this occupation, and parent and child

often sat up all night to indulge in it: a taste for the romantic, and a

precocious knowledge of the language of passion and sentiment, were thus

impressed upon the boy. When the collection of romances was ended, they

turned to other books. They had a good collection, being a portion of

the library of his mother's father, a minister of the church. The

"History of the Church and the Empire," by Le Seur; Bossuet's "Discourse

on Universal History;" Plutarch's "Lives;" Ovid's "Metamorphoses;" the

works of Molière, La Bruyère, and Fontenelle, were among them. The boy

read to his father as he sat at work.

[Sidenote: 1720.

Ætat.

8.]

"I thus," Rousseau writes "imbibed a singular taste, perhaps unexampled

at my age. Plutarch, above all, became my favourite reading, and the

pleasure I took in it cured me somewhat of my love for romances, and I

soon learnt to prefer Agesilas, Brutus, and Aristides, to Oorondates,

Artamenes, and Juba. These delightful books, and the conversations to

which they gave rise between my father and me, formed that independent

and republican spirit, that proud untameable character, impatient of

yoke and servitude, which has tormented me through life, in situations

ill adapted to foster it. "With my thoughts continually occupied by Rome

and Greece,--living, so to speak, with their great men, born myself the

citizen of a republic, and the son of a father whose strongest passion

was love of his country,--I warmed by his example--I fancied myself

Greek or Roman--I became the man whose life I read. The account of acts

of constancy and intrepidity which struck me caused my eyes to flash,

and gave expression to my voice. One day, as I was relating at table the

history of Scævola, the listeners were frightened to see me advance and

hold my hand above a brazier to represent his action."

These happy days, which, had they continued, might have blotted many

pages of error and suffering from Rousseau's life, ended too soon. The

darling of all, he lived in an atmosphere of love. He had one elder

brother, who, treated with negligence, ran away, and took refuge in

Germany. Not long after, his father had a quarrel with a French officer;

and rather than submit to the short, but, as it appeared to him, unjust,

imprisonment with which he was menaced in consequence, expatriated

himself, leaving his little son with his sister, who had married his

wife's brother; and the family was thus doubly related. Jean Jaques was

now sent, together with a young cousin, to board at Bossey, with a

minister named Lambercier. His life here was more pleasurable than

generally falls to the lot of childhood;--the boys had their hours of

tuition, and their hours of play--they quarrelled and made it up--they

had their childish schemes, their holidays,--they were happy. Rousseau,

in his "Confessions," well describes how these days of innocence and

childish enjoyment were disturbed by an unjust punishment. The injustice

sunk deep into the children's minds,--it despoiled their country home of

all its charm; and this circumstance deserves mention, as it will always

be found that the more children are treated with kindness and

familiarity, the more necessary it is to guard against the slightest

show of injustice. At a great school, accusation and punishment are

often the effect of accident, and the boys lay less store by them; they

are not pregnant with disgrace or shame,--many others, like themselves,

are subject to the like, and it appears simply as one of the common

hardships of life. But in domestic education they feel themselves to be

a portion of the whole; and if that whole be harmonious, a discord, an

act of tyranny, that falls peculiarly on themselves, makes a frightful

impression; it appears to enfranchise them from the tacit vow of

obedience under which they before lived, and causes them to regard their

elders as treacherous enemies.

Leaving their country pension, the boys continued to lead a happy life

at the house of Bernard, who was an engineer. He brought up his son to

the same profession, and Rousseau shared his cousin's lessons. At length

it was decided that he must adopt some calling, by which to earn his

livelihood: he was placed with a _greffier_, or attorney; but he

disliked the employment, and neglected his duties; he was dismissed, and

apprenticed to an engraver. Here he appears to have been neglected by

his relations; and the vulgarity and violence of his master had the

worst effect on his character. There was that in Rousseau, which is

often found in the early years of genius,--detestation of

control--rebellion against all forced application. Eager to occupy

himself, if allowed the choice of employment; revolting from a routine,

in which his own purposes and inclinations were not consulted; it is one

of the Sphinx's riddles, not yet divined, how to break in the daring and

aspiring spirit of youth to the necessities of life, without exciting

discontent and rebellion. The heart opening at that age more warmly to

the affections, nature seems to point out the way,--but who in society,

as it is formed, takes nature for a director?

Beaten, maltreated, hard worked, Rousseau became idle, timid, and lying.

It is strange, but true, how, in the little republic of Geneva, money is

perhaps more the main spring of existence than in larger states, and how

early the children of the artizans are subjected to the grinding evils

of penury. Brought up to earn their subsistence as soon as is

practicable, the parents are eager to cast them wholly on their own

exertions: and the numerous class of young people, male and female,

decently born and bred, who, in that city, live by attendance in shops,

by the needle, or the workman's tool, suffer much of the excess of

labour and poor living to which the inferior classes in our

manufacturing towns are subject.

Rousseau, timid of heart, but with an imagination that warmed him to

daring, was led into mischievous scrapes: the very ardour of his

disposition occasioned his faults: he was treated like a vulgar

apprentice, and he fell into the vices of such a position, without at

the same time blunting that eagerness and romance that formed the

essence of his character. In the midst of disgraceful scrapes, his love

of reading returned. He had none of those fixed principles which would

lead him to give due time to the work required of him by his master, and

his leisure to his books; a new volume in hand, every other occupation

was sacrificed to it;--he was beaten and ill-treated for his negligence;

he became obstinate and taciturn, but never gave up his point. His

books, and the day-dreams founded on them, which fabricated and painted

a thousand romantic scenes, filled his heart in solitude; real life was

replete with indignity and suffering; in reverie, he was enterprising,

noble, and free.

Sunday--the day of leisure and liberty--was spent in rambles and games

with his comrades. It is the law of Geneva to shut the gates early in

the evening, and they are not opened on any pretence for any one till

the following morning. The lad, once or twice too late, was punished

severely for his negligence. On the third occasion he resolved rather to

run away than to encounter the menaced chastisement. His last act was to

send for his cousin Bernard, to take leave of him: the boy did not press

him to stay--did not offer to mediate for him; he returned to his

parents, while Rousseau turned his steps from his native city--a vagrant

and a beggar.

No such aspect of things presented itself to the wanderer himself;--he

was in his own eyes a hero in search of adventures;--he dreamt of all of

brilliant and festive of which he had read in his romances, and while he

slept under the roofs of peasants with whom he was acquainted, and who

received him with cordial hospitality, his reveries pictured castles and

enamoured damsels, a fortune the gift of love, and lasting happiness the

effect.

Rousseau was unfortunate at the outset. He had wandered about till he

found himself at Confignon, in Savoy, a place two leagues distant from

Geneva. He paid the curate, M. de Pontverre, a visit. His own account of

his motives is suspicious: he says that he was anxious to see the

descendant of men who figured in the history of the republic; that M. de

Pontverre received him well, asked him to dinner, and invited him to be

converted to the Roman catholic religion; and that he had not the heart

to say nay to his kind entertainer. There is--and there was in those

days still more--a great spirit of proselytism kept up among the

priesthood of Savoy, hovering, as they do, close to a nest of heresy.

Still, we cannot help imagining that the scheme was Rousseau's own, and

that he presented himself as a willing convert--expecting thus to be

made much of, and introduced in triumph to the houses of the catholic

nobility. At any rate, M. de Pontverre behaved ill: he ought to have

felt that it was more for the youth's permanent advantage to send him

back to his friends, mediate for his pardon, and exhort him to regular

and virtuous courses; and that to make a proselyte of him, and thus

render his relations entirely hostile, and him an object of disgrace in

his native city, while it opened no future career for earning an honest

livelihood, was the worst step in the beginning of life that a young man

could take. But M. de Pontverre, as a priest, thought differently;--if

he did not invite the youth to abjure the religion of his country, he

facilitated a scheme that sprang from any feeling rather than piety.

Rousseau felt his pride fall, when his host told him that he would give

him a letter to a charitable lady living at Annecy, who would forward

his views. He saw, however, no other resource against starvation; and he

yielded. Furnished by the curate with a letter, he set out--his head

full of princesses, palaces, and castles, and in great hopes that some

fortunate adventure would present a more brilliant prospect than the one

before him. None occurred. He arrived at Annecy; he saw madame de

Warens; and in her and her kindness found embodied one of those romances

of real life, which, if of less fairy and glittering hue to the eye, are

equally magic-like to the heart, and do not less serve to alter the

course of existence, and to metamorphose the soul.

The comtesse de Warens was a native of Vevay, in the Pays de Vaud: she

had married when very young; and having no children, and not being happy

in her marriage, she took occasion, when the king of Savoy, Victor

Amadeo, was at Evian, to cross the lake, throw herself at his feet, and

claim his protection as a convert to Catholicism. The king, who was

zealous in the cause of his religion, received her graciously, and

settled on her a pension of 1500 Piedmontese livres. She was much loved

at Vevay, and there was some danger of her being rescued against her

will: to preserve his proselyte, the king was obliged to have her

escorted to Annecy by a detachment of guards; where, under the direction

of the titular bishop of Geneva, she abjured protestantism. She had

lived for six years at Annecy, and was eight and twenty, when Rousseau

first saw her. She was beautiful, and, above all, an expression of

angelic sweetness and benevolence beamed in her face, that inspired him

at once with hope, confidence, and gratitude. She felt the folly of the

step he had taken; but, surrounded by priests and spies, she feared to

show compassion, or to give him good advice; the few words she did say,

to induce him to return to his father, were of no avail. Yet it was not

easy to find the means of subsistence for him. At length one of her

guests proposed that he should go to Turin, and enter the hospital

established for the instruction of proselytes, where he could remain

until his abjuration, when it might be supposed some charitable person

would come forward to his assistance. Sad and humble was the prospect

held out; but there appeared to be no other resource except to return to

Geneva,--an alternative he obstinately rejected. Some respectable

persons were found who were going to Turin, and he accompanied them. The

journey was performed on foot, and lasted nine days--nine happy

days--when casting away all thought of the future, unincumbered by

luggage, his expenses attended to by others, he wandered among the

valleys of the Alps, crossed their summits, and beheld the happy garden

which Piedmont presents to the traveller, just emerging from the snows

of Savoy. The recollection of this delightful journey often made him

wish to renew it in after life--and a pedestrian tour always appeared to

him one of the chief happinesses of existence.

Once established in the hospital, he began to feel the importance of the

step he was about to take. His conscience told him that he was making a

traffic of religion, and he dimly appreciated the sin and disgrace of

such a proceeding. Brought up in a bigoted calvinist city, he had been

taught a holy horror for catholic ceremonies; still he fancied there was

no escape: false shame--fear of starvation--a determination not to

return to Geneva, caused him to silence his better thoughts. Yet he was

eager to delay the fatal act;--he argued with the priests employed to

teach him a new religion; and it was found necessary to provide one

especially, who was capable of mastering the catechumen's objections by

the arms of logic and learning. Finding that he could not answer the

priest's arguments, Rousseau began to think that he might be in the

right; and he yielded with good grace to the act of abjuration. After

being received into the catholic church--after being absolved by a

father inquisitor for the crime of heresy--twenty francs, collected at

the church door, were put into his hands; he was recommended to be

faithful to his new religion, and to lead a good life; and then he was

dismissed, and found himself--the doors of his late abode closed

behind--friendless and alone in the streets of Turin. Newly recovered

liberty, however, at first sufficed to inspire him with happy

sensations; and the very sight of the well-built and well-peopled

streets filled him with hopes for the future. Where there were so many

rich and great, there could not fail, he thought, to be found a thousand

eligible resources against want.

The resources he really found were in ill accord with the pictures his

imagination formed. He was obliged to hire himself as a servant. At

first he served a fair shopkeeper; and then became the attendant of an

old countess Vercelli, with whom he lived till her death, which occurred

only three months after. It was on this occasion that he committed that

fault, remorse for which pursued him till his death. During the illness

of his mistress he had abstracted a riband from her wardrobe, with the

intent of bestowing it on a maidservant of the house. The riband was

missed, sought for, and found on him. False shame led him to deny the

theft; and, when more closely questioned, he declared that the stolen

riband had been given to him by the very girl on whom he had intended to

bestow it. The two were confronted; the innocent servant implored him

with tears to retract his falsehood, but he resolutely maintained his

story. He was believed. He tells this tale in his "Confessions;" he

declares that the avowal cost him more pain than any other--that remorse

never ceased to pursue him--the image of the injured girl, reproaching

him for the wrong he had done her, often haunted his dreams--it weighed

on his conscience as the most atrocious crime. He had sought merely to

shelter himself, and false shame prevented his retracting the accusation

once made; but the thought of his victim driven to want and infamy by

his lie made him often look on his after sufferings as but the just

retribution of his crime. This is one of the laws of life. The shadows

of our past actions stalk beside us during our existence, and never

cease to torment or to soothe, according as they are ill or good, that

mysterious portion of mind termed conscience.

Rousseau was now again thrown back upon independent poverty. His time

was not all lost: he frequented the society of an excellent man, a

Savoyard abbé, M. Gaime, who enlightened his mind as to his real

duties, instructed him in the better part of religion, and corrected his

false estimate of society. These lessons were often forgotten, at least,

inasmuch as they ought to have served as guides for conduct; but they

were as dew upon a field; in due time, the hidden seeds of thought, then

sown, sprang up. While thus unemployed, and not looking beyond the hour,

the nephew of his late mistress sent for him, and told him that he had

found a situation: he was to become a domestic in a noble family of

Turin: this was a fall for the youth's pride, but he had no other

resource against want.

He was treated with infinite kindness by the various members of the

family: he distinguished himself by his intelligence; and the younger

son, who was destined for clerical honours, became interested for him:

he questioned him as to his acquirements; and, finding that he had

received the rudiments of education, undertook to teach him Latin. He

might now have been happy: had he shown himself steady, he would have

been advanced by his protectors. The Italians, satisfied with the

acknowledged distinctions of rank, have no ridiculous pride, and are

ready to treat inferiors on an equality, if their education raises them

to their mental level. Many careers, closed against the ignoble in

France, were open in Italy; and these were offered to Rousseau's view as

spurs to his ambition. He was won for a brief period; but, though he

dreamt of climbing, he did not like going up the ladder--and a caprice

ruined all. He fell in with a merry fellow, who had been his fellow

apprentice in Geneva, and who was about to return to that city.

Rousseau, charmed by his wild gay spirits--allured by the attractions of

a mountain journey made on foot, with the idea of madame de Warens in

the misty distance--threw up his situation with a careless show of

ingratitude that disgusted his protectors, and set out again a beggar,

but rendered wildly happy by the project of travelling among the valleys

and over the mountains of Savoy, with a little toy fountain as all his

treasure; round which he believed the peasants would gather, and pay for

their amusement by their hospitality. The fountain was soon spoiled; but

they had a little money, and enjoyed their rambles till the sight of

Annecy recalled Rousseau to the realities of life.

Madame de Warens had, however, none of that rigid uprightness which

thrusts the young into misery because their untaught impulses lead them

astray. She received the wanderer with simple kindness. "I feared you

were too young," she said, "for this journey; I am glad, however, that

it has not turned out as ill as I expected." She received him into her

house, and with maternal care sought to find some permanent occupation

for which he was fitted. For some time her endeavours were vain. He was

pronounced to be incapable of being able even to learn Latin enough for

a country curate. Her heart must have been indeed warm with natural

charity, not to have been chilled by these rebukes of any vanity she

might have felt in patronising the outcast. A taste which Rousseau

developed for music at length afforded her some hope. She placed him

with M. le Maître, music master to the cathedral choir.

[Sidenote: 1729.

Ætat.

17.]

Here he remained for a year studying the art. M. le Maître, however,

had a quarrel with a canon of the cathedral; and, to revenge himself,

absconded with his case of music on the eve of the holy week, when his

services were most wanted. Unable to dissuade him from this folly,

madame de Warens permitted Rousseau to aid and accompany him in his

flight. He did not go far: at Lyons poor Le Maître fell into an

epileptic fit; and Rousseau, frightened, hastily gave him in charge to

the bystanders, made his own escape, and returned to Annecy. This, he

says, is his "second painful confession." It is here mentioned, as well

as his first, to show--as in the more heinous one that follows--that

Rousseau's real defect was a want of moral courage to meet any menacing

and uncertain evil, and absence of fixed principle to enable him to

conquer this defect, and to recognise the omnipotent claims of duty. He

returned to Annecy, and found that madame de Warens had departed for

Paris. Thrown on his own resources, he felt uncertain as to the means of

gaining his bread. He was asked by madame de Warens' maid-servant to

accompany her to Fribourg, her native place; she also being left without

explanation by her mistress. A wandering life of some years commenced

with this journey. In writing this portion of Rousseau's biography, we

labour under the disadvantage, that we but abridge details, which he

gives with all the glow and charm of romance and the interest of

reality--while, limited in space, we can scarcely do more than mark

epochs;--we pass over, therefore, the history of his adventure at

Lausanne, where he pretended to furnish a concert of musicians with a

piece of music of his own composition, although ignorant of the first

principles of the art. Still he had studied music for some time, and had

a taste for it,--and this led him to endeavour to earn his livelihood by

teaching it. He remained for nearly two years at Neufchâtel, exercising

the calling of music master: the temptation held out by a sort of Greek

swindler led him to give up his career: he engaged himself to this man

as interpreter, but was rescued out of his hands by M. de Bonac, the

French ambassador, who treated him with great kindness, and gave him an

introduction at Paris to be tutor to a young gentleman who had just

entered the army. This scheme did not succeed. Rousseau was disgusted by

the treatment he met; he left his employer, and returned to Savoy on

foot: he had reached Paris in a similar manner.

[Sidenote: 1733.

Ætat.

21.]

Arriving at Chambery, he found madame de Warens returned. She presented

him on the instant to the intendant-general of the province, who gave

him employment as clerk, or, as he was styled, secretary, in an office

instituted to make a census of the estates of the nobles of the country.

And thus, he says, after five years, which had elapsed since his flight

from Geneva--after many follies and many sufferings, for the first time

he began to earn his livelihood in a creditable situation. He was still

a mere boy--or rather, had just arrived at that age where boyhood ceases

and manhood begins.--He had led a precarious life. The kindness of

madame de Warens was all in which he could put his trust; and that had

failed him during the space of nearly two years. Want had frequently

stared him in the face. He could gain bare necessaries only by his own

exertions. Of a romantic unsteady disposition, any stable position,

holding out positive remuneration and demanding regular conduct, was

swiftly abandoned; while he also, through some strange conformation of

mind, appeared incapable of using the genius then in embryo within him,

for the acquirement of such knowledge as would have insured him an

honourable position. Thus the precious years of youth wasted away

imperceptibly, and all that he gained, apparently, as of account for

future years, was a knowledge of music. It may be that this wandering,

desultory, precarious existence, fed by romantic dreams and burning

affections, was best adapted to develope his peculiar talents--but it

certainly was not such as to form habits of mind conducive to happiness.

It engendered a sort of bold and restless self-confidence, founded

rather on that which he could do without, than on that which he could

attain it inspired mistrust or disdain for the assistance of others as

being of no ultimate avail to his welfare; he acquired through it a

capacity of living for the present day, without care for the coming one;

and an inability to endure restraint, even when restraint was an

imperious duty;--in short, a restless sense of unused liberty.

Independence is assuredly the basis of true genius--but then it is that

which holds fast by duty;--this last better portion was not developed in

Rousseau till a later day--and then in so imperfect a manner, and

tainted by so much, first of whim, and lastly of madness, that he reaped

little benefit from the lessons of experience.

He continued to fulfil his duties as secretary for two years; and showed

his aptitude for things beyond, by making a study at the same time of

arithmetic and geometry. But his steady course of life was suddenly

interrupted. An illness confined him to his chamber, and during this

time Rameau's treatise on harmony fell into his hands. It served still

more to develope a passion for music of which he had already given many

tokens. He prevailed on madame de Warens to give a weekly concert; he

became absorbed in the art--neglected his office--and at length proposed

to his protectress to give up his situation, that he might devote

himself entirely to the study of composition. She struggled against a

scheme which offered little prospect of future good, and was to be

followed by the immediate sacrifice of a respectable position and habits

of sober industry.

[Sidenote: 1735.

Ætat.

23.]

Rousseau's ardour caused him to prevail; and he became music master at

Chambery, that he might earn a livelihood while he prosecuted his

studies. He was thus thrown among the best society of the town; and

found it far more agreeable to teach well-born and agreeable young

ladies, than to spend eight hours a day in a close dark office, in

company with under-bred uncombed clerks. Fortunately, where the salt of

intellect prevails, nothing but absolute slavery of mind to an absorbing

and uninstructive pursuit can prevent a man of talent from turning the

various events of life to profit. Among his pupils was a M. de

Conzié--a man of some talent, but with no real taste for the art which

Rousseau was to teach: conversation was therefore usually substituted

for the lesson; and Rousseau, led by him to read Voltaire's works,

acquired something of the tone of the literature of the day, and felt

himself rapidly carried away into the very heart of philosophical

discussions;--he himself began to desire to write with elegance, charmed

by the brilliant style of his great contemporary.

It is impossible to dwell upon the minutia of his life for the five

following years; they were important--they led him through early

manhood, and during their course he developed his taste for the

acquirement of knowledge--educating himself intellectually and morally,

as well as he could, by the light of little else than his own natural

reason.

At first, his head was perpetually full of projects for advancement. He

made many little journeys to Lyons, Geneva, and Niort, for the sake of

prosecuting schemes, which he believed to be fraught with advantages;

but which failing each in turn, he returned penniless to his home with

madame de Warens. By degrees, however, he fell into a bad state of

health. Feeling an inexplicable weakness pervade his frame, he believed

he had but a short time to live, and lost his desire for advancement in

the languor and bodily inaction produced by disease. His protectress,

for the sake of securing a friend at the court of Savoy, rented a house

of a Piedmontese noble at Chambery, which no one else would take, being

close and damp. In the summer, she escaped from this species of prison

to a small country house. Les Charmettes, near Chambery. There, in

solitude and tranquillity, Rousseau gave himself up to study.

Mathematics and Latin were his principal occupations: he worked hard:

there was an inaptitude to remember in him which made knowledge

difficult to acquire; but he acquired the power of reflection--he learnt

to distinguish his ideas--he recognised moral principles and

philosophical truths--he penetrated deeply into the secret springs of

human action. Man's nature was often exposed as a map before him--and he

knew its various bearings and powers--although he was ill able then, as

ever, to control its impulses as they existed within himself.

The confidential domestic of madame de Warens died; and Rousseau, in

some sort fulfilling his avocations, discovered the ruin into which his

protectress was plunged, through her love of scheming, and the ready ear

she gave to every quack and swindler who sought her for the sake of

plunder. It became his desire to save her; and, if that were impossible,

to make such a fortune as would enable him to be of use to her in his

turn.

It is not our intention to enter into the details of Rousseau's

connection with this lady. To any one who loves to make a study of human

nature, the "Confessions" are an invaluable book, and disclose the

secret of many hearts to those who have courage to penetrate into the

recesses of their own. But, to be useful, they must be read as they are,

with the author's observations and minute anatomy of motive; and a mere

abridgment would disgust without advantage. It is not to-day that we

have learnt, that it is not true, that when a woman loses one virtue she

loses all. The true distinctive virtue of woman's nature is her

promptitude to self-sacrifice, and a capacity to bind up her existence

in the happiness and well-being of the objects of her attachment.

Experience shows us, that as far as a woman does this, and is neither

worldly nor depraved, she preserves, in spite of error, the more lovely

qualities of her nature. Personal fidelity is the purifier and preserver

of the affections; and whoso fails in this, either man or woman,

degrades human nature--the glory of which is to ally the sensations of

love to the emotions of the heart and the passions of the soul. If we

examine the conduct of madame de Warens by this rule, we find her

wanting; and whether she be a real personage, and did and felt as

Rousseau describes, or an imaginary being, we may pass judgment on her,

and assert that the event proves that depravity of conduct led her to

fail in fulfilling the duties which the affections impose.

Rousseau, having somewhat recovered his health, returned to his projects

for worldly advancement, and his journeys that carried him hither and

thither in search of it. On one occasion he visited Montpellier for the

sake of consulting a physician; he returned--his hopes of renovated

health gone, his resolve to dedicate himself to his benefactress

strengthened. He returned, to find another in his place--his friend's

heart changed--the paradise he cherished desecrated. He did not the less

resolve to serve her. "Reduced," he writes, "to form a fate for myself

independent of her, and not being able even to imagine such, I sought it

wholly in herself--and I did this so entirely, that I succeeded in

almost forgetting myself. The ardent desire of seeing her happy absorbed

all my affections. In vain did she separate her happiness from mine; I

saw it in hers, in spite of her. Thus the virtues whose seed were in my

soul, and which study had matured, began to germinate with my

misfortunes, and waited but for the operation of adversity to bud

forth." This exalted state of mind, however, could not last. Finding his

rival totally unworthy of his attempts to educate him, and that he was

plunging the unfortunate madame de Warens deeper in inevitable ruin, he

hurried from the scene. The employment of tutor to the children of M. de

Mabli, at Lyons, was offered him; he undertook it; but soon became

disgusted. At a distance, the tranquil happiness of Les Charmettes

recurred to his memory; he began to fancy that he was in fault--that he

had but to return to find love and peace. He did return, and the

illusion was dispelled for ever. For a short time he gave himself up to

study, while he revolved a thousand projects for his future life. Music

was still a favourite pursuit. He had invented a method of noting music

which he considered more facile and perfect than the one in use. He

believed that, if known, it would be generally adopted; and that, if he

took it to Paris and showed it to the professors, they would at once

perceive its advantages, and his fortune would be made. His imagination

speedily warmed with the idea, and he hurried to execute it. "I had

brought," he writes, "some money with me from Lyons; I sold my books to

acquire a sum sufficient for my journey. My design was taken and

executed within the space of fifteen days. In short, full of magnificent

ideas--and ever the same in all times--I left Savoy with my system of

music, as before I had quitted Turin with my toy fountain."

Rousseau pauses--his biographers usually pause--at this epoch, when he

was about to enter on a new life,--leaving the country and solitude for

the busy capital of France. He was nine and twenty; his character was

formed. The love of adventure, which had first caused his flight from

Geneva, had turned into a love of scheming. While censuring madame de

Warens for this turn of mind; he little felt how entirely--he

participated in it. His life was made up of schemes; which his ardent

disposition exalted into passions. The genuine impulses of his soul

were; his genius, developed in authorship; his passionate heart; which

wasted its fondest impulses on one (madame d'Houdetot) who loved

another. These were not schemes; but his stoicism--his hermitism (if

this word he allowed)--his independence carried to an extravagant pitch;

were all schemes; and succeeded; consequently; as ill as possible. "With

this scheming head; a heart yet full of romance; and a mind stored

beyond his own knowledge with observation and sagacity; he left every

old friend; every old association; and plunged; poor and unknown; into a

new life, in the most civilised and most profligate city in the world.

[Sidenote: 1741.

Ætat.

29.]

Rousseau entered Paris this time, as it appeared to him, under good

auspices. He found a friendly and cordial welcome from several French

ladies, to whom he had letters of introduction. His system of noting

music was examined, eulogised, and neglected by the Academy; and Rameau

detecting a radical defect, its inventor cast it aside; but he found

employment as secretary to madame Dupin and M. Franceuil; and better

prospects opened themselves when he was appointed secretary to M. de

Montaigu, ambassador to Venice.

[Sidenote: 1743.

Ætat.

31.]

Here the influence of an evil destiny was manifest. Had the ambassador

been a man of honour and sense, Rousseau might have passed a happy life,

fulfilling an honourable career; but M. de Montaigu was avaricious to a

degree that made him sacrifice propriety as well as dignity to his

saving propensities. "The character of this ambassador," says Bernardin

de Saint Pierre, "is well known. I have heard from good authority

several traits of his avarice. 'Three shoes,' he often said, 'are

equivalent to two pair, because one is sooner worn out than the other;'

and he therefore always had three shoes made at a time." This man,

silly, insolent, and grasping, crushed the last ambition of Rousseau. He

treated him with such indignity that he was forced to leave him.

Plundered and ill treated, while every one at Venice at the time was

eager to furnish testimonials of his excellent conduct--and his

dispatches had merited high praise--he received no compensation from the

court he served. The iniquitous maxim of the French government, never

publicly to acknowledge the misconduct of those whom it employed, joined

to the circumstance that Rousseau was not a Frenchman, sufficed to

render his representations of no avail. This thoroughly, and with

reason, disgusted him from seeking employment under a system where all

worth was trampled on by rank and wealth.

He returned to Paris, and was kindly received by all his friends, with

one exception only, of a highborn lady, who could not imagine that a

_roturier_ had any right to quarrel with a noble. His friends madame

Dupin and M. Franceuil continued their employment; the latter

subsequently endeavoured to place him advantageously as cashier in his

office, he being farmer-general; but Rousseau could neither rest nor

sleep while the money-chest was under his care; and falling ill in

consequence, gave up his situation. M. de Franceuil was somewhat

alienated by this act; he began to think that there were no means of

befriending a man who shrunk from a lucrative and easy employment.

On his first arrival from Venice, Rousseau enjoyed the intimate

friendship of an enlightened Spaniard, a man of noble nature and great

powers of mind. They agreed to live under the same roof, and allied

themselves in the closest friendship. D'Alcuna was recalled to his

native country, and Rousseau felt the void. He had been accustomed to

domestic society, and in addition he felt that he needed the kind

attentions of a woman, and this want led to the fatal act from which

sprung so many of his misfortunes.

In his native country, or in England, Rousseau would, under the

influence of public opinion, probably have married. He would not have

been content in forming so solemn a tie without being satisfied with the

connections of her who hereafter was to share his life; he would have

desired still more to assure himself of the qualities of her heart and

mind. Unfortunately his residence in Savoy and in Paris had deprived him

of all primitive simplicity in his principles of moral conduct; and he

had none of that fastidious taste that made him shrink from the society

of the vicious. For purposes of economy he dined at a sort of

table-d'hôte frequented by persons lost to all sense of decency;

refinement was out of the question. He found a poor girl there, who was

too modest for the depraved and brutalised men who frequented the house.

Rousseau took her part, ties of kindness were formed between them, and

it appearing a matter of convenience to himself, he induced her to

become his mistress.

Therese le Vasseur was not an ill-conducted girl on certain points; she

was always faithful, as far as is known, to her tie to Rousseau; but she

was not only ignorant and illiterate, but wanting in common

understanding. Rousseau boasts that she could give excellent advice on

emergencies; but this common sense did not lead her to resist the

influence of her mother, a low cunning woman; while Rousseau, not liking

to have the burden of her destiny, future as well as present, thrown

wholly on himself, felt no inclination, at the commencement of their

intercourse, when alone it was possible, to separate her from

association with her family, which tended to keep her vulgar-minded and

artful.

Even in his Confessions, where Rousseau discloses his secret errors, he

by no means appreciates the real extent of his misconduct on this

occasion. He allied himself to a girl whom he despised too much to allow

her at first even to share his home; he took her as a sort of

convenience, and when inconveniences arose from the connection, he was

disposed to get rid of them on the easiest possible terms. Theresa was

about to become a mother. According to the profligate code of French

morals, this fact would dishonour her; though the illicit intercourse,

if not openly acknowledged, did not. Rousseau did not like to multiply

ties between himself and his mistress and her family: he was needy: he

had heard young men of rank and fortune allude vauntingly to the

recourse they had had on such occasions to the Foundling Hospital. He

followed their criminal example.

He at first acted, he says, without serious examination of the morality

of his conduct; but when he commenced author, he gave attentive

consideration to the point, and satisfied himself that he did right, and

continued his course of conduct. Five of his children were thus sent to

a receptacle where few survive; and those who do go through life are

brutified by their situation, or depressed by the burden, ever weighing

at the heart, that they have not inherited the commonest right of

humanity, a parent's care.

It is insulting the reader to dwell on the flagrancy of this act. But it

is a lesson that ought to teach us humility. That a man as full of

genius and aspiration after virtue as Rousseau, should have failed in

the plainest dictates of nature and conscience, through the force of

example and circumstances, shows us how little we can rely on our own

judgment. It shows too, that a father is not to be trusted for natural

instincts towards his offspring; for the mother wept, and it needed the

control of her own mother, and strong necessity, to induce the

weak-minded and misguided girl to consent to part with her offspring.

We say little of Rousseau's vain excuses as to the probable destiny of

his children. They were better, he says, brought up by the public, than

rendered rogues by madame le Vasseur, or led into evil courses as

dependants on madame d'Epinay and the maréchale de Luxembourg. This

futile reasoning does not need elaborate refutation. Rousseau talks of

public care, as if that were, in such a place as a Parisian foundling

hospital, aught else but public desertion. The poor children in all

probability died in their infancy.

Rousseau was indeed short-sighted. Brought up in virtue and honour, as a

man of his talents ought to have brought up his offspring,--or genius

were a vainer gift even than it is,--these children might have clustered

round him in his days of desolation, have cheered his house with smiles,

and been a help and support in his age. He would not have felt

friendless, nor been driven to suicide by the sense of abandonment and

treachery. He indeed sowed the wind, and reaped the whirlwind. France

was on the eve of a sanguinary revolution. The social state of things

was about wholly to change. Who knows of what use Rousseau's sons might

have been to check barbarous outrages, to teach justice, or display

fortitude? Such ideas are vain, but will present themselves. Our first

duty is to render those to whom we give birth, wise, virtuous, and

happy, as far as in us lies. Rousseau failed in this,--can we wonder

that his after course was replete with sorrow? The distortion of

intellect that blinded him to the first duties of life, we are inclined

to believe to be allied to that vein of insanity, that made him an

example among men for self-inflicted sufferings. We now dismiss this

subject. It was necessary to bring it so far forward as to show the evil

effects of so bad a cause; it is too painful to dwell further upon.

By degrees Rousseau overcame his dislike to its being known to his

friends that he had formed this sort of connection with Theresa, and he

made common household with her. This species of intercourse was looked

upon in a different light in France than in England. She was regarded as

Rousseau's housekeeper, and respected as such; and no one thought that

they had a right to scrutinise their real relations, or to censure them.

This had been praiseworthy as a proceeding founded on tolerant and

charitable principles; but when we find that this kindly-seeming society

was a Moloch, whom to pacify, little children were ruthlessly

sacrificed, the whole system takes a revolting and criminal aspect from

which we turn with loathing.

However, to go back to narrative. Rousseau instituted Theresa his

housekeeper, assisted in the maintenance of her relatives, and found, in

the convenience and attention which these domestic arrangements brought

with them, a great alleviation to his physical sufferings.

[Sidenote: 1749.

Ætat.

37.]

This same year was memorable on another and important score. Among his

Parisian friends, there was none to whom he was more attached than

Diderot, a man of an amiable disposition, and possessed of greater

abilities in the eyes of those who personally knew him, than he has

developed in his writings. Some people in power were displeased at

certain personal allusions in his "Letter on the Blind." According to

the nefarious system of the old regime, the result was, a _lettre de

cachet_, and his being imprisoned in the keep of the castle of

Vincennes. Rousseau was penetrated by indignation and anguish. He

fancied that his friend would never be liberated; he figured to himself

all that a man of ardent and yet feeble temperament would suffer in

solitary confinement. He wrote to implore madame de Pompadour to exert

her influence, either to procure his liberation, or to admit of him,

Rousseau, being shut up with him. On all occasions he was energetic in

representing the unmerited sufferings to which his friend was exposed.

After a period, the confinement of Diderot was mitigated. The castle and

park of Vincennes, on parole, were given him for a prison, with liberty

to see his friends. Rousseau hastened to avail himself of this

permission, and frequently walked to Vincennes to pass the afternoons in

relieving the solitude of his friend. The way was long, the summer

sultry, his pace slow. He read as he walked along; and once took with

him the "Mercure de France" to beguile the way; as he looked it over, he

fell upon the question proposed by the Academy of Dijon, as the subject

for the prize of the following year--"Whether the progress of the arts

and sciences had tended to corrupt or purify the manners of men." The

words touched a chord that revealed a power, latent in his heart,

undreamt of before. The scroll of society unrolled itself before him,

such as he found it, blotted and tainted, in the city of the earth that

boasted to be the most advanced in the cultivation of the arts and

sciences. And beside it he placed a picture of pristine innocence,--of

man enjoying the full development of his physical powers; living for the

day as it rose, untouched by care, unbewildered by intellectual

speculations,--by vanity, emulation, or pride;--man liberated from the

control of opinion and the tyranny of his own unreasonable desires.

Words descriptive of such a state poured into his mind; expressions of

burning eloquence seemed to cluster on his lips, and to demand a voice.

Before he could transfer his thoughts to paper, much was lost; but

enough remained to gain for him the reputation of being one of the most

eloquent authors that ever lived.[8]

The eloquence with which he represented the evils of civilisation, and

the blessings of a state of nature, as he called it, fascinated every

reader. The freshness and energy of his style charmed; the heart he put

into his arguments served instead of reason, and convinced. The

opponents of his system were sufficiently in the wrong, to make him

appear absolutely in the right. Yet, in point of fact, nothing can be

more unnatural than his natural man. The most characteristic part of

man's nature is his affections. The protection he affords to woman--the

cares required by children; yet Rousseau describes his natural man as

satisfying his desires by chance,--leaving the woman on the instant;

while she, on her side, goes through child-bearing, child-birth, and

child-nurture alone. Much may be granted to the strength that human

beings enjoy in savage life; much to the little needed by the

inhabitants of those happy isles where food grows beneath their feet;

but, in all, man has ever been found (except in one or two cases, where

the human animal descends below brutes), the protector of women, and the

source of his children's subsistence; and among all societies, however

barbarously constituted, the gentler and nobler individuals among them

have loved their wives and their offspring with constant and

self-sacrificing passion. Let us advance civilisation to its highest

pitch, or retrograde to its origin,--and let both bring freedom from

political and social slavery; but in all let us hold fast by the

affections: the cultivation of these ought to be the scope of every

teacher of morality, every well-wisher to the improvement of the human

race. Poor Rousseau, who had thrust his offspring from parental care to

the niggard benevolence of a public charity, found some balm to the

remorse that now and then stung him, by rejecting the affections out of

his scheme of the state of natural man.

His work had a sudden and prodigious success; and as the ideas that

inspired it disclosed a new and intellectual world to him, so did the

favour of the public open a new scene of life. It was soon after writing

this essay, that M. de Franceuil offered him the place of cashier. The

uneasiness he felt, and other circumstances, combined to give him a fit

of illness. During the delirium of fever, and during the reveries of

convalescence, he formed a plan for securing his independence. He

believed that he had but a few years to live; and he saw no prudence in

working for a fortune he could never enjoy. He resolved therefore to

renounce his place of cashier, to give up that of secretary to madame

Dupin, and to gain his subsistence by copying music. In Paris, men of

letters, frequenting the highest society, often live in the most frugal

manner, and need only the wherewithal to buy their daily bread. Rousseau

determined to reduce himself to this situation, to limit his expenses to

bare necessities, and to guard the independence he coveted, by

decreasing his wants. His friends heard of his resolution with

incredulity, surprise, and subsequent disapprobation. The family of

Therese le Vasseur were dependent on him, and he thus condemned them

also to indigence. Rousseau was not to be moved. His new reputation as

an author caused him to be sought by the most chosen societies of Paris;

his idea of adapting his manners and life to his theories gave piquancé

to his appearance and society. "I avow," he says, in his second letter

to M. de Malesherbes, "that the name I acquired by my writings greatly

facilitated the plan I adopted. It was necessary that I should be

thought a good author, to become with impunity a bad copyist, and to

find work notwithstanding; without the first title, I might have been

disregarded in the other; and though I can easily brave ridicule, I

should have supported contempt with difficulty." As it was, all he did

seemed to increase his reputation. He was considered eccentric,--but he

was sought as a man of genius.

[Sidenote: 1750.

Ætat.

38.]

Another circumstance concurred to raise him to the pinacle of fashion.

This was the success of the "Divin du Village." He had before composed

an opera; but the envy of Rameau had robbed him of the fame: the "Divin

du Village" was all his own. It was represented at Versailles before the

king and assembled court, and received with enthusiasm. It became the

topic of conversation in Paris; he was invited to be presented to Louis

XV.; and it was supposed that a pension would be conferred on him.

Independence, pride, false shame, all concurred to make him renounce the

intended honour and emolument: his friends reproved him severely, but he

was not to be shaken. Still he made a few hundred louis by the piece,

and was thus, with his frugal habits, placed above want for several

years to come.

The academy of Dijon proposing another question--the Origin of

Inequality among Men. Rousseau seized the opportunity of further

developing his opinions, and of asserting still more boldly the

superiority of what he termed the natural man over the nurslings of

civilisation.

[Sidenote: 1754.

Ætat.

42.]

He soon after visited his native town. He dwells slightly on the motives

of this journey: a wish to revisit the scenes which he had quitted a

penniless adventurer, and to enter Geneva attended by the celebrity he

had already gained, were no doubt principal motives. Theresa and his

friend Gauffecourt accompanied him. He saw madame de Warens sunk in a

low abyss of poverty; he implored her to leave Savoy, and to take up her

abode with him in Paris; she refused, and he left her, never to see her

more. While at Geneva he abjured the Roman catholic religion, and

entered again the protestant church. The pedantic clergy of Geneva were

very desirous that he should make a speech on the occasion; Rousseau

would not have been sorry to comply, but he broke down at the outset. He

was treated with great distinction by the most distinguished of his

fellow citizens, and the design soon suggested itself of his

establishing himself entirely among them; a place of librarian, worth

about 50_l_, a year, was offered him, to secure the respectability of

his situation.

After some time spent in revisiting scenes dear through youthful

association, and of entrancing beauty in themselves, he returned to

Paris; and here he was assailed by many doubts as to his plans for the

future. The idea of residing an honoured and distinguished citizen in

his native town, so flattering at first, began to lose its charm. In his

heart he doubtless felt that the sort of inquisitorial and pedantic tone

that reigned in Geneva, clothed in the garb of virtue and reason, was

more likely to shackle the free expression of his genius than the

versatile society of Paris. Voltaire also had just taken up his

residence at les Delices. Without any taint of envy, Rousseau might

naturally shrink from living under his shadow. Older than him, rich, of

established reputation, arrogant beneath all his playfulness, and so

mischievously meddling, that even the king of Prussia found him a

troublesome inmate, a very little knowledge of the world would have told

Rousseau that they could only agree, when in vicinity, through continual

deference on his part; and the views they took of the social system were

so different, and both were by disposition so eager to disseminate their

respective opinions, that deference was out of the question, and open

hostilities must have been the consequence.

Still Rousseau doubted, and was disturbed. Madame d'Epinay relates the

nature of his deliberations, which betray great foresight and prudence.

"Rousseau is perplexed," she says; "nor am I less, with regard to the

advice that he asks of me. He has received letters pressing him warmly

to return and live in his native country. 'What ought I to do?' he said,

'I neither can nor will reside in Paris, I am too miserable. I should be

glad to visit and to pass several months in my republic; but the

propositions made me are of a nature to fix me there; and if I accept

them, I must remain. I have some acquaintance, but no friends. These

people scarcely know me, and they write to me as a brother; this I am

aware is the result of the republican spirit, but I distrust such warm

friends. On the other hand, my heart warms at the idea, that my country

invites me; but how quit Grimm, Diderot, and yourself?'"

Madame d'Epinay was, when left to herself, a woman of generous impulses

and an affectionate heart. She conceived a method of cutting the gordian

knot, and acted on it at once. At the entrance of the forest of

Montmorenci, there was a small house belonging to M. d'Epinay, called

the Hermitage. M. d'Epinay was adding a new wing to the chateau; his

wife persuaded him to allow some of the workmen to enlarge and fit up

this house: all was executed with zealous speed. She then offered

Rousseau the dwelling with all the grace a woman puts into an obligation

she confers; she was desirous, at the same time, of adding to his

income; but he at once refused the latter proposition, while he accepted

the first. He could not help being deeply touched by so kind and tender

a mark of affection. The active attention she paid to the details of his

removal, when all was arranged, taking him and his two gouvernantes in

her carriage, and herself giving them possession, were marks of real

attachment and sympathy.

[Sidenote: 1756.

Ætat.

44.]

Rousseau found the spot exactly calculated to please him: however much

the society of Paris might be necessary at times to entertain, he had

been bred in the country; his young and happy days had been passed

there, and he could not view a secluded abode in the midst of forest

glades, and the advance of spring, as it clothed the landscape with

verdure, without a burst of transport. The house was small, but neat and

comfortable; and that all was the gift of friendship rendered it

inestimable in his eyes.

It is difficult not to dwell, as he has done, on the delight he

experienced during the commencement of his abode at the Hermitage. At

first he could only enjoy the woodland walks; the budding of the trees;

the balmy winds of opening spring; the aspect of nature. He deliberated

as to his occupations; he arranged his papers. He still considered

copying music as the calling by which he was to gain his bread; but he

revolved many literary projects. The editing the manuscripts of the

Abbé de Saint Pierre; an original work he named "Les Institutions

Politiques;" a metaphysical discussion on the effects of external

circumstances on the human mind; and, to crown all, a system of

education, on which he had been requested to occupy himself, by a lady

to whose sons he had at one time acted as tutor;--such were his

schemes--the subject of his meditations during his walks. These

meditations were, however, soon merged into reveries and day-dreams,

that absorbed his heart and soul. The long summer days passed beneath

the shades of the forest, recalled the wanderings of his youth, and the

passions that had warmed his young heart.--A settled life with Theresa;

the cares and discontents he had endured in Paris, his literary

occupations and theories, engrossing his thoughts, had banished love.

Now, in his solitary rambles, as his memory reverted to the illusions of

bygone years, his imagination fired, his heart swelled, his being became

absorbed. No real object presenting itself, he created chimerical

beings, on whom he exhausted the most passionate sentiments, the most

brilliant imaginations. His day-dreams became extatic: he was drunk with

an abstract love for one who lived only as he painted her, in the form

most delightful to his thoughts: he charmed himself by figuring various

situations--by addressing letters to her--by fancying those he received

in return. He checked himself in his vague reveries, and gave a form and

place, a name and a habitation to his creations: the lover and beloved,

and the friend dear to both, were imaged and placed in a spot carefully

selected as beautiful in itself, and associated with his fondest

recollections. Julie, Claire, and Saint Preux, lived and loved at Vevay,

beside his native lake, in the midst of the most majestic and lovely

scenes that exist on earth.