showers, and now again must have lost the sombre majesty of the pines of his valley dripping in torn edges of cloud, and all those other sights in landscape that touch subtler parts of us than comforted sense. One of his favourite journeys was to Colombier, the summer retreat of Lord Marischal. For him he rapidly conceived the same warm friendship which he felt for the Duke of Luxembourg, whom he had just left. And the sagacious, moderate, silent Scot had as warm a liking for the strange refugee who had come to him for shelter, or shall we call it a kind of shaggy compassion, as of a faithful inarticulate creature. His letters, which are numerous enough, abound in expressions of hearty good-will. These, if we reflect on the genuine worth, veracity, penetration, and experience of the old man who wrote them, may fairly be counted the best testimony that remains to the existence of something sterling at the bottom of Rousseau's character.1 It is here no insincere fine lady of the French court, but a homely and weather-beaten Scotchman, who speaks so often of his refugee's rectitude of heart and true sensibility.2 1 George Keith (1685-1778) was elder brother of Frederick's famous field-marshal, James Keith. They had taken part in the Jacobite rising of 1715, and fled abroad on its failure. James Keith brought his brother into the service of the King of Prussia, who sent him as ambassador to Paris (1751), afterwards made him Governor of Neuchâtel (1754), and eventually prevailed on the English Government to reinstate him in the rights which he had forfeited by his share in the rebellion (1763). 2 Streckeisen, ii. 98, etc. He insisted on being allowed to settle a small sum on Theresa, who had joined Rousseau at Motiers, and in other ways he showed a true solicitude and considerateness both for her and for him.1 It was his constant dream that on his return to Scotland, Jean Jacques should accompany him, and that with David. Hume, they would make a trio of philosophic hermits; that this was no mere cheery pleasantry is shown by the pains he took in settling the route for the journey.2 The plan only fell through in consequence of Frederick's cordial urgency that his friend should end his days with him; he returned to Prussia and lived at Sans Souci until the close, always retaining something of his good-will for "his excellent savage," as he called the author of the Discourses. They had some common antipathies, including the fundamental one of dislike to society, and especially to the society of the people of Neuchâtel, the Gascons of Switzerland. "Rousseau is gay in company," Lord Marischal wrote to Hume, “polite, and what the French call aimable, and gains 1 One of Rousseau's chief distresses hitherto arose from the indigence in which Theresa would be placed in case of his death. Rey, the bookseller, gave her an annuity of about £16 a year, and Lord Marischal's gift seems to have been 300 louis, the only money that Rousseau was ever induced to accept from any one in his life. See Streckeisen, ii. 99; Corr., iii. 336. The most delicate and sincere of the many offers to provide for Theresa was made by Madame de Verdelin (Streckeisen, ii. 506). The language in which Madame de Verdelin speaks of Theresa in all her letters is the best testimony to character that this much-abused creature has to produce. 2 Ib., 90, 92, etc. Summer of 1763. ground daily in the opinion of even the clergy here. His enemies elsewhere continue to persecute him, and he is pestered with anonymous letters."1 2 He Some of these were of a humour that disclosed the master hand. Voltaire had been universally suspected of stirring up the feeling of Geneva against its too famous citizen, though for a man of less energy the affair of the Calas, which he was now in the thick of, might have sufficed. Voltaire's letters at this time show how hard he found it in the case of Rousseau to exercise his usual pity for the unfortunate. could not forget that the man who was now tasting persecution had barked at philosophers and stage-plays; that he was a false brother, who had fatuously insulted the only men who could take his part; that he was a Judas who had betrayed the sacred cause. On the whole, however, we ought probably to accept his word, though not very categorically given, that he had nothing to do with the action taken against Rousseau. That action is quite adequately explained, first by the influence of the resident of France at Geneva, which we know to have been exerted against the two fatal books, and second by the anxiety of the oligarchic party to keep out of their town a man whose democratic tendencies they now knew so well and so justly 5 4 1 Burton's Life of Hume, ii. 105. Oct. 2, 1762. 3 2 The Confessions are not our only authority for this. See Streckeisen, ii. 64; also D'Alembert to Voltaire, Sept. 8, 1762. 3 Voltaire's Corr. Euv., lxvii. 458, 459, 485, etc. 4 To D'Alembert, Sept. 15, 1762. 5 Moultou to Rousseau, Streckeisen, i. 85, 87. VOL. II. dreaded.1 Moultou, a Genevese minister, in the full tide of devotion and enthusiasm for the author of Emilius, met Voltaire at the house of a lady in Geneva. All will turn out well, cried the patriarch; "the syndics will say M. Rousseau, you have done ill to write what you have written; promise for the future to respect the religion of your country. Jean Jacques will promise, and perhaps he will say that the printer took the liberty of adding a sheet or two to his book." "Never," cried the ardent Moultou; "Jean Jacques never puts his name to works to disown them after."2 Voltaire disowned his own books with intrepid and sustained mendacity, yet he bore no grudge to Moultou for his vehemence. He sent for him shortly afterwards, professed an extreme desire to be reconciled with Rousseau, and would talk of nothing else. 'I swear to you," wrote Moultou, "that I could not understand him the least in the world; he is a marvellous actor; I could have sworn that he loved you.' And there really was no acting in it. The serious Genevese did not see that he was dealing with " one all fire and fickleness, a child." Rousseau soon found out that he had excited not only the band of professed unbelievers, but also the tormenting wasps of orthodoxy. The doctors of the Sorbonne, not to be outdone in fervour for truth by the lawyers of the parliament, had condemned Emilius as a matter of course. In the same spirit of generous Moultou to Rousseau, Streckeisen, i. 85, 87. emulation, Christopher de Beaumont, "by the divine compassion archbishop of Paris, Duke of Saint Cloud, peer of France, commander of the order of the Holy Ghost," had issued (Aug. 20, 1762) one of those hateful documents in which bishops, Catholic and Protestant, have been wont for the last century and a half to hide with swollen bombastic phrase their dead and decomposing ideas. The windy folly of these poor pieces is usually in proportion to the hierarchic rank of those who promulgate them, and an archbishop owes it to himself to blaspheme against reason and freedom in superlatives of malignant unction. Rousseau's reply (Nov. 18, 1762) is a masterpiece of dignity and uprightness. Turning to it from the mandate which was its provocative, we seem to grasp the hand of a man, after being chased by a nightmare of masked figures. Rousseau never showed the substantial quality of his character more surely and unmistakably than in controversy. He had such gravity, such austere self-command, such closeness of grip. Most of us feel pleasure in reading the matchless banter with which Voltaire assailed his theological enemies. Reading Rousseau's letter to De Beaumont we realise the comparative lowness of the pleasure which Voltaire had given us. We understand how it was that Rousseau made fanatics, while Voltaire only made sceptics. At the very first words, the mitre, the crosier, the ring, fall into the dust; the Archbishop of Paris, the Duke of Saint Cloud, the peer of France, the commander of the Holy Ghost, is restored from |