294 
“ Botany seems to have been his most favourite 
amusement in the latter part of life; and his feel- 
ings with respect to this pursuit are expressed with 
that energy and grace so peculiarly his own, in 
his letter to Linneus*, the original of which I 
preserve as an inestimable relic. I need offer no 
apology to the candid and well-informed reader for 
this minuteness of anecdote concerning so cele- 
brated a character. Those who have only partial 
notions of Rousseau, may perhaps wonder to hear 
that his memory is cherished by any well-disposed 
minds. To such I beg leave to observe, that I hold 
in a very subordinate light that beauty of style and 
language, those golden passages, which will immor- 
talize his writings; and a faint resemblance of which 
is the only merit of some of his enemies. I respect 
him as a writer eminently favourable on the whole 
to the interests of humanity, reason, and religion. | 
Wherever he goes counter to any of these, I as 
freely dissent from him; but do not on that account 
throw all his works into the fire. As the best and 
most religious persons of my acquaintance are 
among his warmest admirers, I may perhaps be 
biassed in my judgement ; but it is certainly more 
amiable to be misled by the fair parts of a charac- 
ter, than to make its imperfections a pretence for 
not admiring or profiting by its beauties. Nor can 
any defects or inconsistencies in the private charac- 
ter of Rousseau depreciate the refined moral and 
religious principles with which his works abound. 
* Published in the “Selection of the Correspondence of Lin- 
nus.” 
