ROUSSEAU. 189 



and trumpery persecutions ! The least sagacity is 

 enough to pierce through this flimsy veil of hypocriti- 

 cal cant. Every one sees that he was unwilling to in- 

 terrupt his own enjoyments by the sight of her misery, 

 and therefore did not repair to Chambery that he 

 was unwilling to interrupt his walks, or his readings, 

 or his writings, or his musings, and therefore did not 

 write letters that might have led to asking assistance 

 which he did not choose to give. 



The sentiment of religion, if not its principles, was 

 deeply impressed on his mind ; he never could endure 

 the infidelity of the d'Holbach circle, nor even the 

 modified infidelity of Voltaire. It is indeed made the 

 main ground of his charges against him. Though he 

 himself aimed deadly blows, and with malice afore- 

 thought, at Revelation, he was as intolerant of Vol- 

 taire's sneers and scoffs as if he had been the most pious 

 of men ; and as if of too pure eyes to behold such ini- 

 quity, he refused even to read ' Candide,' though he says 

 it was written in answer to his own ' Letter on Evil.' 

 To trifle with so sacred a subject, therefore, was in 

 his eyes a crime of a deep dye. To shelter himself 

 from temporal power by spiritual, to make a gain by 

 belief, was to him a vice of a more vile and sordid 

 aspect still. Yet did he, with his eyes open and his 

 understanding uncontrolled, change his religion twice 

 becoming a Catholic for the hope of an income, a 

 Protestant for the rank of a burgess, when probably he 

 neither at the one change nor the other was a Christian 

 at all ; and at a subsequent period, long after he had 

 proclaimed his unbelief to the world, he went through 

 the mockery of taking the sacrament in the hope of 





