Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

Nor was his tragedy his only subject of anxiety. He was told that Louis XVI. had asked, on hearing of his arrival, if the interdiction to his residence in Paris had ever been taken off. A question which seemed to show his disapprobation; but the young queen and her friends, and the count d'Artois, were borne away by the stream of fashion and friendlily inclined. A few days after his arrival he fell ill. His mode of life in Paris was very different from that which he led at Ferney; there he was subject to none of the calls of society; he saw few visitors, and left madame Denis to do the honours of the house--enjoying in his own person the most entire liberty, passing the greater part of his day in bed, or in study; at other times walking in his grounds and over his estate, directing the improvements and enjoying the pleasure of creating his colony, and witnessing its prosperity. His new mode of life deranged his health, a vomiting of blood came on, and his life was in danger. The vivacity of the French disposition was shown at this moment. All Paris was in alarm. The priests gathered round--Voltaire thought it right to quiet them by making a profession of faith. How far the all-seeing and infinitely pure Being can be propitiated by a falsehood on the lips of a dying man, may be considered doubtful; but the clergy thought more of their own temporal victory than the higher questions of religion and morality. These might have been satisfied by a declaration given by Voltaire to a friend, which said, "I die worshipping God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition." Nor was this the only disquiet that attended his sick-bed: his friends quarrelled round it concerning the physicians who attended, and wrangling and dissension--the fruits of the vanity, not the affection, of his friends--disturbed the peace necessary for his convalescence.

The vital principle was still strong, and he recovered. He made use of his renewed strength to visit the academy, and to be present at the representation of his tragedy. The enthusiasm was at its height. He was almost crushed to death both at the Louvre and the theatre, notwithstanding the exertions of the soldiers to keep a passage clear. The academicians received him rather as the sovereign of literature than as an equal. At the theatre his reception was still more flattering. His bust was crowned on the stage, and the audience were in a transport of delight; tears of enthusiasm and joy marked the feeling of the spectators, who saw his attenuated figure with sorrow, and every one was eager to offer him assistance when he left the theatre. His triumph failed only in that the court still looked askance on him; and his very presence in Paris was rather connived at than permitted. Still the manifestations of public favour might satisfy a man even insatiable of applause. He was deeply touched. "They wish to smother me with roses," he exclaimed, as he felt his feeble frame sink from exhaustion.

At this moment, at the very zenith of human glory,--when the whole population of the then most civilised capital in the world seemed to breathe his name only, to see him only in the world, to crowd round him in admiration and triumph,--and while their cry, "There is the saviour of the Calas," rewarded him for his benevolent exertions,--then, had he retired to his tranquil seclusion at Ferney, he might have prolonged his existence. But this he was not permitted to do. Madame Denis was heartily tired of the mountain solitude, which, as Voltaire grew older and more averse to show himself, became a complete seclusion. He earnestly desired to return; but, day after day, the solicitations of his friends induced him to prolong his stay. His secretary, Wagner, gives a lively picture of the struggles between him and his niece. The physician, Tronchin, had begged Voltaire to return to Ferney. "You must feel," he said, "that a tree transplanted at eighty-four years of age must perish." "Am I able to support the journey?" asked the old man. "Yes, I answer for it on my head," said Tronchin; and Voltaire, charmed with the prospect, gave instant orders for his departure. Madame Denis argued against it. "I must return," he replied. "I adore the country; it gives me new life. You, who detest it, can remain here, and amuse yourself." "Who told you that I hated it?" asked his niece. "My experience," he replied quickly and sternly.

The cabals which formed the spirit of French society in those days multiplied to keep the old man in Paris. He was induced to buy a house; but he made the purchase more for madame Denis than himself, and said "that instead of a dwelling he had bought a tomb." He still persisted, while he was in Paris, in attending the academy, where he wished to introduce the plan of a new dictionary, and in interesting himself with theatrical concerns. He drank coffee to support himself when he felt his strength failing; and this producing fever and pain, he took opium to procure calm. Soon his illness took a dangerous turn, and no remedies could alleviate it; a mortification came on, which caused him unspeakable agonies. At length, he fell into a state of exhaustion and torpor, and died on the 30th of May, 1778.

According to the scandalous custom of the French clergy, impediments were raised to his decent interment. To baffle these, his death was kept secret for several days. A grave was denied him in the parish where he died, and the body was transported to the Abbey de Scellieres, in the diocese of Troyes, belonging to his nephew, and buried in the church. A stone was placed above, bearing the words, only--"CI-GIT VOLTAIRE." At the same time orders were issued by the government forbidding the newspapers to comment on his death either for praise or blame; the actors to represent his plays; and the masters of schools to allow their pupils to learn his verses. Such arbitrary and puerile acts always destroy themselves, and add to, instead of detract from, the reputation of the man against whom they are levelled.

Other governments showed more liberality. Catherine of Russia, who had corresponded with him, and whom he had held up to the admiration of the world, openly mourned his death. His old friend Frederic of Prussia caused his academy to hold a meeting in his honour, during which an elaborate eulogium, written by himself, was pronounced.

The character of Voltaire is displayed in the preceding pages. He was a zealous, a warm, and constant friend. When Thiriot acted weakly and injuriously--sending to Frederic of Prussia the libels published against his friend--madame du Châtelet and others implored him to renounce him; but Voltaire, while he reproved, let no word of unkindness escape. In later days, d'Alembert wrote to tell him that the duke de Richelieu was acting a false part by him, and prevented his plays from being acted. Voltaire could not be touched in a more sensitive place; but he replied, "that such might be true, but that he could not quarrel with a friend whom he had known for fifty years." He was, it is true, a rancorous enemy--never pardoning, but visiting any injury done him with the severest retaliation of sarcasm and ridicule. He was singularly benevolent and generous. His letters are crowded with instances. His exertions in favour of the oppressed have been partly recorded in the preceding pages; it would require many more to commemorate every instance of his active and enlightened benevolence. When, on the death of Louis XV., he thought he could get annulled the sentence against the chevalier d'Etallonde, he procured his leave of absence from the king of Prussia, supplied him with money for his journey to Ferney, and kept him there a year, while he vainly exerted his utmost influence in his favour. He bitterly deplored his failure. The spectacle of injustice filled him with anguish. His mind endured torture from the sense of injury done others, and he felt it imperative to prevent or repair crime. The sight, the idea only, of a triumphant or unpunished oppressor, excited the liveliest emotions of compassion and indignation in his sensitive and proud spirit. His private benevolence was not less active. The bookseller Jore, whose imprudence and want of fidelity had endangered his liberty, applied to him in distress, and was relieved, with expressions of kindness. A friend died in Paris; his wife, who had been living separate from him, seized on all he left, and an old and faithful servant was left destitute. Voltaire instantly made her an allowance. We might multiply such instances; and while this sad world is filled with the needy, the afflicted, and the oppressed, it is impossible not warmly to admire a man who sympathises in the necessities of his fellow-creatures and alleviates their sufferings.

The great and lasting blame attached to him arises from the inveterate and bitter hostility he expressed to Christianity. The texture of his mind partly occasioned this. He was incapable of understanding or feeling the sublime, the simple, and the pure. The poetry of the Bible was a dead letter to him; and this may be the more readily accounted for, as the living French poet, La Martine, whose nature is pious and reverential, mentions that he never felt its sublimity till a few years ago, when translated by his friend M. de Genoude. Impurity and grossness was also a part of Voltaire's nature; and these led him to depreciate the beauty of the Saviour's character, and the morality of the gospel.

The French clergy of those days must bear, however, much of the blame. Voltaire ardently desired to crush a church which, in power, showed itself utterly devoid of the principles of Christianity. Arnaud, Fénélon, the recluses of Port Royal, and the Quietists, had been its victims. Racine, Boileau, men of highly moral and pious characters, were injured and calumniated; and this because they did not belong to the reigning party in the church. What wonder, then, that Voltaire and his friends were led to despise men who made their religion the pretence for indulging their worst passions, and were even induced to think ill of the system of which they proclaimed themselves the sole fitting supports. Let Christians be real disciples of the Gospel, and men like Voltaire will neither have the power nor the will to injure the religion they profess.

We have no space for elaborate criticism of Voltaire's works. We have alluded to many in the progress of this biography. His "Historical Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations," in spite of its mistakes in facts and errors of opinion, is a monument of vast genius. His "Age of Louis XIV." is a beautiful work, though we are not sure that his mode of dividing the subject is the best. Many long chapters, devoted to the narration of wars, unmixed by the detail of individual passions or public struggles, which are thrown into separate portions of the work, break and weaken the interest.

His plays have not the loftiness of Corneille, nor the soft tenderness of Racine; but many of them possess much passion and power. His poetic faculties, such as they were, decayed soonest; his latter tragedies are weak and poor compositions. As a didactic poet, he ranks low; as an epic, he is not considered in these days to take any rank at all; as a burlesque, grossness and indelicacy occasion his verses to be read only by those whose praise is not worth having; as a critic, he was unfair and uncourteous, always ready to make ridicule stand for argument, and not unwilling to advance what was false, when the truth did not sufficiently support him. Thus he could translate a speech of Falstaff, declaring that it was meant to be tragic, because it occurred in a tragedy. His lighter productions are among his best, and, though sullied by his peculiar defects, are full of genius. The great characteristic of Voltaire is, that he scarcely ever penned a line that is not instinct with spirit and life and genius. If you open by chance any volume of his works, you will be struck at once by the strength and felicity of his expressions--the vivacity of the sentiment--the penetration with which he detects the false--the wit which gives sparkle and point to all he says. He was, it is true, of the second order of minds, but first among the second; and such was his perfection in his art, as far as it went, that he contrived, while living, to fill a first place, and will always receive a larger share of attention and praise than his intrinsic merits deserve.

[Footnote 1: His own high opinion of the "Henriade" is manifested in certain verses he wrote on the subject, which may be mentioned as proof, at once, of his vanity and his entire inability to understand and appreciate poetry. These verses, indeed, only embody, in a few lines, his "Essay on Epic Poetry," in which he proves that absence of imagination is the chief merit of a poet.]

[Footnote 2: That we may be impartial, we quote the opinion expressed of this poem by a modern French critic. Barante, in his "Essay on French Literature of the Eighteenth Century," remarks, "Voltaire has most fallen in his reputation as an epic poet. He flattered himself in vain that he had bestowed an epic on France. Such a work could not be produced in the times in which he lived, nor with a character like his. For epic poetry we need the lively and free imagination of the first ages: knowledge must not have weakened faith, enthusiasm of feeling, nor the variety and vigour of character. . . . . By a serious and melancholy character, and pure and true feelings, and the memory of adversity brooded over in solitude, an epic might be rendered as touching as it has been rendered sublime, and interest might stand in place of imagination. But if Virgil secluded himself from the influence of the court of Augustus, Voltaire was far from avoiding that of the court of the regent. He composed an epic poem with the same degree of interest as would have sufficed to enable him to write an epistle in verse. He fancied that an epic consisted in certain forms agreed upon, in prescribed supernatural agency. He fulfilled these rules, and believed that he had achieved a great work. He was not aware that it is not a dream, a recital, and the introduction of divinities, that constitutes an epic poem; but an elevated and solemn imagination; and, above all, simplicity and truth, under whatever form. The Iliad does not resemble the Odyssey in the arrangement of its parts: these poems have nothing in common, except the epic spirit." So far the enlightened critic speaks. Then, to soothe ruffled French vanity, he adds, "Nevertheless, it cannot by denied that the 'Henriade' contains great beauties; the poetry is not epic, but is sometimes elevated and pathetic."]

[Footnote 3: The love of scandal, which belongs to humanity, always busies itself in exaggerations. In a virtuous and primitive state of society, slight peccadilloes serve the turn of the backbiter; the inventions grow with the necessity of surpassing the fact. If the regent had been a Quaker, he would have been accused of kissing any favoured lady by stealth: being unfortunately a profligate, he was accused of incest; the next step beyond the fact which it was necessary for slander to make.]

[Footnote 4: Mémoires de Longchamp.]

[Footnote 5: It is difficult to decide on madame du Châtelet's character. With regard to the immorality of her liaison with Voltaire, we will merely refer to the clever preface of the English editor to madame du Duffand's correspondence with Horace Walpole, in which the stale of society in that age is so well described; and only remark, that such was the system, that a devoted and enduring friendship for so great a man was considered highly respectable, even though that friendship militated against our stricter notions of social duties; it not being considered the business of any one to inquire into, or concern themselves with, a question that related only to the persons immediately implicated. With regard to madame du Châtelet's general character, she was unpopular through the vehemence of her temper, and even the ardour with which she devoted herself to study. She had several of the faults attributed to literary women, which arise from their not having the physical strength to go through great intellectual labour without suffering from nervous irritation In other respects she was evidently generous and sincere. Her judgment was sound; her common sense clear and steady. She was witty and vivacious, and had as much to bear from Voltaire's petulance, whimsicalness, and vehemence, as he from her more imperious temper.]

[Footnote 6: When the correspondence was renewed between Frederic and Voltaire, they could not help alluding to the past, and their expressions show that each thought himself in the right. Voltaire says, "I am unutterably surprised when you write that I have spoken harshly to you. For twenty years you were my idol, '_je l'ai dit à la terre, au ciel, à Guzman même_;' but your trade of hero, and your situation of king, do not render the disposition tender: it is a pity, for your heart was made for kindness; and were it not for heroism and a throne, you would have been the most amiable man in the world." Frederic replied, with greater force, "I well know that I adored you as long as I thought you neither mischievous nor malicious: but you have played me so many tricks, of all kinds. Let us say no more; I have pardoned you. After all, you have done me more good than ill. I am more amused by your works, than hurt by your scratches."]

[Footnote 7: Lettres de Madame du Deffand à Horace Walpole, vol. II.]

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.