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ROUSSEAU. 



THE life of Rousseau neither requires so full a con- 

 sideration as that of Voltaire, nor affords the materials 

 for it. Mankind are not divided upon his character 

 and his merits, nor ever were. That he was a person 

 of rare genius within limited, nay, somewhat confined, 

 bounds, of a lively imagination, wholly deficient in 

 judgment, capable of great vices as well as virtues, and 

 of a mind so diseased that it may possibly be doubtful if 

 he was accountable for his actions, is the opinion which 

 his contemporaries formed of him during his life, 

 which has ever since prevailed, and which, indeed, was 

 confirmed by his own testimony, produced after his 

 decease, and calculated to show that he would not 

 have either dissented from the sentence or have hesi- 

 tated to join in pronouncing it. His history and his 

 writings are of a kind that unavoidably interest us ; 

 but the one affords too few events, the other too little 

 variety, to detain us very long in examining either. 



Jean Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva, on the 

 28th of June, 1712. His father was a watchmaker; 

 his mother the daughter of M. Bertrand, a Protestant 

 minister; and her brother, an engineer, married the 



* The edition of Rousseau referred to in the text is that of 

 Lefevre, Paris, 1839, in eight large volumes. 



