when he was discovered. In vain does he lighted at the misfortune. This trait of tell his reader how, even at the time he writes levity at the downfall of the air-built castle is his 'Confessions,' his soul is torn by re- delicious. morse, in vain he tells him how the desire to get rid of the burning secret chiefly induced him to write that book,-in vain he attempts to comfort himself by saying that poor Marion has had avengers enough, in those who persecuted him, when he was innocent, during forty years, the reader cannot feel satisfied. What is even worse, the act is not quite isolated, but the motives that led to it still seem strong in after life.

Rousseau's only resource now was to return to the house of Madame de Warens, at Annecy, trusting in the kindness which he believed she entertained for him, and feeling for her something of the fondness of a child, and the passion of a lover. He was well received, was lodged in her house, and was afterwards placed by her with the music master of the cathedral, that he might study under him. This professor having involved Both he and the object of his accusation himself in a quarrel with his chapter fled to were sent out of the house together, and the France, and Rousseau was deputed to acyouth again saw the world open before him. company him. They had proceeded as far However, his acquaintance with a Savoyard as Lyons, when the poor master fell down in Abbé, named Gaime, whom he had met at a fit, a crowd collected, and Rousseau-left the house of Madame Vercellis, and whom he the helpless musician, and scampered back afterwards immortalized as the Vicaire of to Annecy, which, he found to his horror, Savoy,' led to an introduction to the house of Madame de Warens had left. the Count de Gouvon, who engaged him as a servant. In this respectable family fortune seemed to dawn upon him; his superiority to the station which he held was at once discerned, and he was treated accordingly; the Abbé de Gouvon, a younger son of the family, who had a great taste for literature, giving him instructions in the Latin an Italian languages. But it was impossible for Jean Jacques to pursue a career steadily; sometimes ill-fortune seemed to assist his own wrongheadedness in working his ruin, but on this occasion his do-no-good disposition operated quite alone. He took a violent fancy to a lubberly fellow named Bicle, who just had coarse wit enough to amuse him, and who was about to set off for Geneva. Nothing would suit him but to accompany this Bacle, and he had the ingratitude to quarrel with his benefactors on purpose to get out of the house. The project he had for obtaining a comfortable living, both for himself and his friend, was a beautiful specimen of the art of building castles in the air. The Abbé Gouvon had given him one of those hydraulic toys called Hiero's fountains,' and it was by showing this to the inhabitants of the villages through which they would pass, that the two wiseacres hoped to live in luxury. At every inn they could exhibit the hydraulic wonder, and of course no innkeeper who saw it in full action could think of charging for food and lodging. Their anticipations as to the interest their fountain would create, were in some measure realized, but not their hopes of profit. The hosts and hostesses were amused enough, but they never failed to make a regular charge. The unlucky fountain at last was broken, and the two adventurers, tired of carrying it, were heartily de

6

It is painful to go through such a number of meannesses committed by a man so distinguished. In all that regards character he seems to have been the very reverse of great. Excitable in the most morbid degree from his very childhood, he did not know what self-denial was. No matter how trifling the temptation, how frivolous the whim, that stirred him for the moment, there was no duty so sacred, no obligation so binding, that he would not break them through, without the slightest compunction. That he had no deliberate malice in his composition, that he would not have done any act deliberately wicked, may readily be admitted, but at the same time, there was no deed so base that it might not have resulted from his weakness. With a feverish anxiety for present enjoyment, with the most cowardly dread of present ill, he had constantly two weighty reasons for committing any crime whatever. The detestable act of false accusation, his ingratitude to the Gouvon family, this miserable desertion of the old musician, all proceeded from the want of determined character. Strange is the anomaly when the hero is no hero, when the battle is fought by the weak and pusillanimous.

The vagabond life recommenced after Rousseau's desertion of the professor: and to the interesting characteristics which had already distinguished him, he began to add those of a charlatan. At Lausanne, making an anagram of his name, and calling himself

Vaussore' instead of 'Rousseau,' he set up for a singing master, though he scarcely knew any thing about music, having profited little under the auspices of his late preceptor. But the master-piece of impudence was his composing a cantata for a full orchestra,

when he could not note down the most trifling | flowed before his mind as a beautiful object vaudeville. He copied out the different parts, at an unapproachable distance, were the same he distributed them with the utmost assur- as ever, and above all, the voice, the "silance to the musicians who were to play at very voice of youth," was unaltered. the private concert of a Lausanne amateur : Madame de Warens was mentally the indeed, that nothing might be wanted to chastest person in the world; the "icicle complete the 'swindle,' the concluding piece on Diana's temple" was not more cold; yet, was a tune commonly sung about the streets, strange to say, she allowed herself aberrawhich he boldly proclaimed to be his own. tions, from which a lady with less of the The concert must have been a brilliant Vestal disposition would have shrunk. In scene. The composer' attended and was her youth she had been seduced by her maimost erudite in explaining the style. and tre de philosophie, and from that time she character of his piece. Gravely did he beat always seems to have had a liaison of some time with a fine roll of paper. A pause, sort or other. During her widowhood she and the grand crash began. Never," "had her favorite resident with her, as consays Jean Jacques himself, "was such a stantly as an old empress of Russia. When charivari heard." Then, when the noble Rousseau first knew her, Claude Anet, her work had been played to the end, came the servant, was the happy man; and on this last ironical compliments, the assurances of a last-visit, Rousseau himself was raised to the exing immortality. The boldest impostor that alted position,-simply to keep him out of ever lived or was ever imagined-the august mischief. He was not the successor of Don Raphael himself could not exceed the Claude both were retained together. The cool effrontery of our modest friend in this worthy Claude, far from feeling any petty instance. Years afterwards Jean Jacques jealousy, looked upon his mistress and her looked back and marvelled at his own auda- younger lover with the indulgence he would city. He can only account for it as a tem- have bestowed on two children; for though porary delirium. Shall we accept this ex- he was not older than Madame de Warens, planation? It will be charitable at any rate. there was something grave and steady about The notable achievement rendered Lau- him. A highly respectable man was this sanne too hot to hold Rousseau, and he was glad Claude Anet! The lady herself riveted the enough to go elsewhere. He taught music friendship of her two lovers. Often with at Neufchâtel, and learned while teaching: tears did she make them embrace, saying visited Paris, where he was disgusted at the that both were necessary to the happiness of aspect of the city, from the circumstance of her life. Interesting confession! entering at the wrong end,-just as a stranger to England might be displeased on entering London by Whitechapel and after enduring great privations, returned once more to Madame Warens, who was at Chamberi, and invited him to join her.

We thus find our hero, who was in some instances almost a puritan in his notions, and in some a sensualist of the lowest kind, sunk into the deepest state of degradation. The life with Madame de Warens, though Rousseau has shown himself an artist in Hitherto his connexion with Madame describing it, coloring it so as to make it Warens had been purely of an innocent almost beautiful, reveals itself, on a mocharacter, and the lady and her protégé con-ment's reflection, as one of the most detestaducted themselves in perfect conformity to the names they gave each other of Maman and Petit. When first he saw her on the way to Turin, she was twenty-eight years of age, and he describes her as having a tender air, a soft glance, an angelic smile, a mouth the measure of his own, and beautiful hair. She was short in stature and thickset, though without detriment to her figure. A more beautiful head, more beautiful hands, more beautiful arms, than those of Madame de Warens, were not to be imagined. About six years had now elapsed since the time of that first interview, but the only change, at least in the eyes of Jean Jacques, was that her figure had become rounder. Otherwise the charms which had at first made such an impression on him, and which had constantly

ble states of existence that can be conceived. Jean Jacques may exhaust his stores of eloquence to make us think that Madame de Warens was a Lucretia in soul,-alas! we cannot consider the lady, who was always keeping some young man out of mischief, and who, when Claude was dead and Rousseau was absent, instantly supplied the place of the latter with a third, otherwise than as a Messalina on a small scale, whose only virtue was a sort of muddling good-nature. As for the two favorites, Claude Anet and himself, he may heighten the respectability of the former, and render his own peculiar person as interesting as he will, he still leaves us the question unanswered: "If one of two lovers kept simultaneously by a lady of small fortune (for we give all the circumstances) is

not in a degraded position, who is?" Rather had a short fit of uneasiness as to his fate in should we have been pleased with him, had a future life; and he resolved the weightiest he boldly taken up the question, and thun- of all questions, by a method which is not dered forth a justification. But this glossing recognized by any church, but the principle of over the disgusting, this forcing forward the which many a superstitious clerk or apprentice amiable, this pretended deference for old applies in divining matters relating to his world morality, with a real worship of the worldly prosperity. Jean Jacques placed lowest vice, this is the worst part of the himself opposite a tree, and taking up a affair. Call good good, and evil evil, or evil stone, said: 'If I hit-sign of salvation; if good, and good evil, or give events just as I miss-sign of damnation.' And he did hit, they were, and we shall know what you for he had chosen a tree which was very mean, Jean Jacques: but this morality, which large and very near. From that time, quoth raises its voice so high, and yet allows the Rousseau at an advanced period of his life, I gratification of every possible desire, gene- never had a doubt of my salvation. Happy rates nothing but false positions. Mr. Car- Rousseau, so soon to solve all doubts! lyle has well said, that in these books of Strange mixture of seriousness and frivolity, Rousseau there is "not white sunlight which appears at every step of this interestsomething operatic, a kind of rose pink, arti- ing biography. There is a consistency of inficial bedizenment." consistency in all that relates to this remarkable man.

The celebrated Rameau with whom he had an interview made the really solid objection to the use of figures, and that was the objection we have already named.

an immense merit of his delicacy on the oc- such great wonder in the invention, nothing casion. The liaison with mamma' was thus which might not be hit on by any clever readily broken off, and with it terminates young man, who dabbled in a subject, and what Jean Jacques terms the period of his had a taste for innovation. He succeeded in youth: a period by no means reputable, but obtaining a hearing by the Academy; and on the whole tolerably happy: a period, by three savans, who knew (says Rousseau) no means indicative of any distinguished fu- every thing but music, were appointed to exturity, but nevertheless one the effects of amine the new system. The result of their which may clearly be traced in his after life. report to the Academy was a certificate diThis first period is the most interesting in rected to Rousseau to the effect that his plan the biography of the man. Afterwards we are was neither new nor useful. The charge of more concerned with the progress of the writer. want of novelty was owing to a discovery Madame de Warens was still willing to that a monk named Souhaitti had years beprotect him, but the new lover made her re- fore conceived a gamut written in figures. sidence unpleasant, and moreover her fortune Rousseau vows that he never heard of this was getting worse and worse. Accordingly monk or his discovery; and as his system is he set off for Paris, where he arrived in the so easy of invention that a thousand peoautumn of 1741, with sanguine hopes of ple might have conceived it without commaking his fortune. We have seen him munication, there is no reason to doubt the when almost a boy, possessed of a 'Hiero's truth either of the charge or the defence. fountain,' believing that in that toy he had the means of travelling all over Europe free of expense. The hopes that he now entertained of making a certain fortune at Paris were not a whit less extravagant, although he The visit to Paris did not answer the purhad nearly attained the age of thirty. He pose for which it was intended, but at any had discovered a new system of musical no- rate it procured him some influential friends, tation; which was to effect an entire revo- through whose exertions he became secretary lution, and to strike the whole world with to M. Montaigu, the French ambassador at surprise and wonder. Never did an invent- Venice. The services he rendered while in or's vanity so much induce him to overrate this situation to the French monarchy, he rethe work invented. There is some ingenuity presents, in his 'Confessions, 'as being of the in his scheme, and it presents some advan- most important kind, and he regards the contages; but as it is accompanied by cor- duct of the ambassador as one continuous responding disadvantages, it has never been effort to keep his merits in the background. adopted. The principle is the substitution There are accounts which are unfavorable of a row of figures, for the dots and lines em- to the belief of Rousseau's importance in his ployed in the received system of notation. situation at Venice, but whatever his exagThe key-note is always signified by number gerations may have been, this much is cerone; and the other figures, as high as seven, tain, that there is a healthiness in the part of readily express the different intervals; while his memoirs relating to this short period of a dot, over or under the figure, marks an his life, which we do not find elsewhere. Ococtave above or below. The advantage of cupation seems to have suited him; he seems the plan, independently of its saving the ex- in active life to have attained a degree of pense of musical engraving, and allowing happiness which he did not know at any music to be printed in mere common type- other period; he met with a wholesome inan advantage urged by Rousseau-is that it terruption to his habits of indulging in feversaves all trouble in transposition. The singer ish hopes, or still more morbid dependency. or player has only to vary the signification of However, as every situation which promised number one, and all the other figures will comfort and steady occupation to Jean Jacadopt themselves to the new key without the ques was destined to endure but a short time, expenditure of a thought. The great disad- this was lost by a quarrel with M. Montaigu, vantage is, that the figures being written in a and Rousseau was once more in Paris. Then straight line, the notion of ascending and de- he made acquaintance with Diderot and scending passages is not conveyed at once to Grimm, and became almost one of the the eye, as by the received system. Hence, clique of the philosophes. About the same although it might be employed in slow or time he formed a liaison with the well-known very simple melodies, its use in a series of Therese Levasseur, whom he met in the carapid passages would be found exceedingly pacity of servant to a kind of tavern, who embarrassing. Even if the plan had been lived with him as his mistress till, when quite free from this fatal objection, there was no an old man, he married her, and who bore

him the children whom, immediately after and whom he believed to be involved in the birth, he despatched to the foundling hos-conspiracy' against him, he perfectly depital. Like the unlucky story of the ribbon, tested; yet was that Therese ever with him; this foundling affair is one of those indelible nowhere could he go, without her as a comblots on the character of Jean Jacques which panion. The fickle, wayward Rousseau, no sentimentality can erase, and which no who was always dissatisfied with what he sophistry can justify. Arduous as was the possessed, and thirsting for what he had not, battle in which he afterwards engaged, there was ruled by that same stupid woman, as he stands constantly before us, as one who mistress and wife, to the day of his death: had not the least hardihood in conquering a shortly after which, herself being old, she propensity, or in enduring even an incon- married a stable-boy. venience. Having put five successive children in an asylum, which prevented even recognition, he has the still greater meanness of endeavoring to excuse himself, by the plea that he thus placed them in the road to become honest artisans, rather than adventurers and miserable literati. Plato, with his sheep-pens for new-born infants, erected in his imaginary republic for the purpose of preventing his recognition of children by parents, is at least tolerable, however disagreeable his doctrine; but Jean Jacques, the great champion of natural affection, the asserter of the extreme doctrine that none but a parent ought to superintend the education of a child, becomes absolutely disgusting, when he attempts to apologize for his miserable act. Would that we could find an excuse by believing that the desertion having preceded his vigorous advocacy of natural affection, he had at the time of that advocacy become an altered man. Alas! when years afterwards Madame de Luxembourg endeavored to find his children, he was not sorry at the ill success of the attempt: so much would he have been annoyed if any child had been brought home, by the suspicion that after all it might be another's. A touch of delicacy-a well-turned sentiment-any thing, that he might but escape from the application of his own broad principles.

The influence that Therese Levasseur had over his mind must have been most remarkable. She is more striking from what he does not say of her, than from what he communicates. Throughout the remainder of his life does she appear as a kind of adjunct to his existence, and yet she never appears as a heroine of the story. Sometimes we forget her altogether we see him consumed by a passion for another, and the image of Thérese fades from our mind. But the object of adoration passes away-the feeling of devotion was but transient-and the eternal gouvernante-as Therese aptly enough was called-is again before us. He tells us that he never loved her; he says she was so stupid he never could hammer a notion into her head; her mother, who preyed upon him,

There are few literary men who have made their début in that character so late in life as Rousseau. If we except his papers on the new system of notation, it was not till he was about thirty-eight years of age, that he appeared before the public as an author. The Academy of Dijon had offered a prize for the best discourse in answer to the question"Has the progress of arts and sciences contributed to the corruption or to the purification of morals?" Rousseau's discourse, written on account of this offer, and deciding that the arts and sciences had had a corrupting effect, gained the prize, and had a most important effect on the career of its author. Looking at it now, one is astonished at the noise it occasioned at its time. It is clever certainly, but the cleverness is precisely that of a smart youth in his teens, who aptly brings forward his reasons in support of a thesis he has chosen, and uses for his purpose the little learning he has at his command. Nothing, it would seem now, could be more easy than to take up a Cato-the-Censor sort of position; to declaim in high-sounding terms about abstract virtue; and to protest against literature and science, as effeminating the mind and occupying the time which might be more properly devoted to the service of the republic. There were the early Romans, with their barbarous victories, to be exalted; there was the good word in honor of Lycurgus and the old Spartans; and a due share of reproach against the Athenians. There was also reflection on the dangers of philosophy in shaking the credence in existing institutions. This was a trick eminently Rousseauish: whenever the Genevese begun his work of destruction, he always threw out a hook or two, in the hope of catching one or two of what may be called the "conservative" party. And at the end of the essay there was a trick even more Rousseau-ish. After proving, in his fashion, that mankind had necessarily deteriorated as the arts advanced, the author argues that the mischief being once done, the arts are to be encouraged to fill up the time of the corrupt beings who inhabit the earth, and prevent them from doing further mischief. The meaning of this is, that Rousseau