480 



F O FT 8 S E A U. 



Uousseau, 



Jean 

 Jacques. 



The pleasures of solitude, and the pursuit.* of' botany, 

 seem to have soon lost their influence over Holism- m's 

 . mind, and we find him again in Paris in the year 1770. 

 There he appeared on the 1st of July, at the Regency 

 coffee-house, dressed in his usual simple garb, and en- 

 joying the acclamations and praises of a Parisian mob. 

 The sentence of imprisonment, passed on account of his 

 Emile, was still in force ; but his friends procured for 

 him the permission of residence, on condition that he 

 should neither write on religion nor politics. This 

 injunction he rigorously obeyed. His life run oh 

 with serene tranquillity ; and when the clouds of 

 religious and political controversy had passed from 

 his horizon, a burst of sunshine followed, which con- 

 tinued with more or less brightness to gild the remain- 

 der of his days. In May 1778, Rousseau and his wife 

 accepted of an invitation from the Marquis de Girardin, 

 to take up his residence in a small house near his beau- 

 tiful seat of Ermenonville, about ten leagues from Paris. 

 This elegant retirement he was not destined to enjoy. 

 On the 2d of July, 1778, he was carried off by a stroke 

 of apoplexy in the 66th year of his age. The Marquis 

 erected a monument to his memory in the Isle of Pop- 

 lars, in his pleasure grounds, with the following inscrip- 

 tion : 



1CI REPOSE 

 I/HOMME DE LA NATURE 



ET DE LA VERITE! 

 VITAM IMPENDERE VERO * 

 HIC JACENT OSSA J. J. ROUSSEAU. 



The relics of Rousseau were afterwards carried to 

 Paris; and in 1814, we saw the tomb with the above 

 inscription in the Pantheon of the French metropolis. 



After the death of Rousseau, there was found among 

 his manuscripts a work entitled his " Confessions," 

 which contains a particular account of all his vices and 

 virtues, of all indeed which befel him till the 30ch year 



of his age. This work was left to his friend Mr. M 



with instructions to publish it " after his death ;" in- 

 structions which were unfortunately complied with. 

 It is impossible to suppose that this work was the pro- 

 duction of a repentant spirit. Vanity alone must have 

 inspired it ; and it is mortifying to think, that our spe- 

 cies contained one individual who, in the hour of health, 

 could record such incidents ; and, in the hour of death, 

 bequeath to the public a record to disgrace his name, 

 and operate as a moral poison among his fellow crea- 

 tures. 



The following interesting account of Rousseau's Con- 

 fessions, and of his MSS. has oeen recently given by 

 M. Simonde, in the work already quoted. 



" Mr. M. son of the friend of Rousseau, to whom 



he left his MSS. and especially his Confessions, to be 

 published after his death, had the goodness to show 

 them to me. I observed a fair copy, written by him- 

 self in a small hand like print, very neat and correct, 

 not a blot, even an erasure, to be seen. The most cu- 

 rious of these papers were several sketch-books, or me- 

 moranda, half filled, where the same hand is no longer 

 discernible ; but the same genius, and the same way- 

 ward temper and perverse intellect, in every fugitive 

 thought recorded. Rousseau's composition, like Mon- 

 tesquieu'Sj was laborious and slow ; his ideas flowed 



i.-ipuiiy, but were not readily brought into proper or- K 

 der ; they do not appear to have come in consequence - Ican 

 of A previous plan, but the plan itself formed after- ' 

 wards came in aid of the ideas, and served as a sort of " 

 frame for them, instead of being a system to which they 

 were subservient. Very possibly some of the funda- 

 mental opinions he defended so earnestly, and for 

 which his disciples would willingly have suffered mar- 

 tyrdom, were originally adopted because a bright 

 thought, caught as it flew, was entered in his common- 

 place oook. .Those loose notes of Rousseau's afford a 

 carious insight into his mode of composition. You find 

 him perpetually retrenching epithets reducing his 

 thoughts to their complete expression, giving words a 

 peculiar energy by the new application of their origi- 

 nal meaning going back to the naivete- of old language, 

 and, in the artificial process of simplicity, carefully ef- 

 facing the trace of each laborious footstep as he advan- 

 ced; each idea, each image, coming out at last as if 

 cast entirely at a single throw, original, energetic, and 



clear. Although Mr. M. had promised that he 



would publish Rousseau's Confessions as they were, 

 yet he took upon himself to suppress a passage explain- 

 ing certain circumstances of his abjurations of Anneci, 

 affording a curias but frightfully disgusting picture 

 of monkish manners at that time. It is a pity that 



Mr. M did not break his word, in regard to some 



few more passages of this most admirable, most vile, of 

 all the productions of genius. 



" A copy of the first edition of Emile, with original 

 notes by Voltaire, is preserved in i.he library of Mr. 

 De C. . at St. Jean ; his family had much inter- 

 course with Voltaire, being near neighbours, and were 

 on an intimate footing with him. I shall only mention 

 one of the notes, by which the tone of the rest may be 

 estimated. Le miserable (Voltaire speaking of Rous- 

 seau,) ria de I'esprit que lorsqu'U parle centre la reli- 

 gion ! 



" A few Genevans remember having seen Rousseau 

 when he came, in 1754, to change back agrin from tke 

 Catholic to the Protestant communion. I was taken to 

 a confectioner's shop, the fourth house on the right go- 

 ing up the Rue de Coutance, where Rousseau frequent- 

 ly dined at that timo tete-a-tete with his friend the con- 

 fectioner, (a predecessor of the present occupier) in the 

 small back room serving as a kitchen. His nurse, then 

 an old woman, carried on some petty dealings of her 

 own in one of those booths in use at Geneva, outside of 

 the foot pavement in the lower streets. Rousseau used 

 to go before dinner and sit by her on a low stool, while 

 the people collected round to look at him, proud to 

 think he was one of them. Madame C. , then twelve 

 years old, remembers oeing raised on a chair, that she 

 might see the philosopher over people's heads, and his 

 figure and general appearance are still present to her 

 memory. A bob wig with a hat, pepper and salt coat, 

 waistcoat and breeches ; his right hand on the knee of 

 the old nurse ; a round face, with piercing black eyes 

 and pleasant smile. Notwithstanding his long absence 

 from Geneva, and his eloquence, he spoke broad St. Ger- 

 vais, and was not less dear to the people on that ac- 

 count. Forty years after this, in the fervour of the re- 

 volution, the street in which it was supposed Rousseau 

 was born received his name, and preserves it still ; but 

 though his father had at a later period lived there, it 



This was Rousseau's motto. 



