192 ROUSSEAU. 



contemplation all the faculties and all the feelings of 

 his own mind.* 



That with all his failings and all his faults, he could 

 win his way to many hearts, is easily to be understood ; 

 for, beside the genius, and latterly the fame, which 

 dazzled beholders, some of his weaknesses were of a 

 kind that interested benevolent natures, partly through 

 compassion, partly from the openness and infantine 

 simplicity with which they were attended ; and as long 

 as he did not conceive the suspicions which generally 

 broke out sooner or later, none of those weaknesses 

 were of a kind which offended others. The interest 

 which not only kindly natures, like that of the Lux- 

 embourgs, and such good-humoured companions as 

 David Hume, but such stern personages as St. Lambert, 

 St. Germain, Lord Mareschal, took in him and his 

 fortunes, is a sufficient illustration of these remarks ; 

 but it may be doubted if that interest could have sur- 

 vived such a full disclosure as we now have of his 

 defects since his death. 



In society he must have been, when his mind was 

 sound and his irritability calmed, and his painful con- 

 stitutional maladies soothed or intermitted, f a very 



* Perhaps the most extraordinary creation of fancy in which his 

 morbid vanity indulged, was his believing that he perceived a marked 

 increase of Hume's popularity at Paris in consequence of his having 

 asked Rousseau's company on his journey to London (CEuv., viii. 

 166, and again in his crazy letter to Hume himself, ib. 186), and 

 this while he was complaining of having no supporters, and of all 

 men being his enemies ! 



f He had not only a bladder complaint and a hemorrhoidal ma- 

 lady, but was for years supposed to have the stone. On his being 



