ests of the natives as well as of the planters themselves.

As a study of humanity in some of its aspects, the Maori people offer much that is of interest, but the most beneficent work would be an investigation, by competent persons, into the causes that are leading to the gradual extinction of a race once prolific, hardy and adventurous, and still possessing many manly and valuable qualities. For hundreds of years they must have boldly wandered over this great ocean from the far Hawaiki, which all regard as their traditional home. Now that they are fading away, would it not be a great and useful work to discover what is wrong in their food, clothing, habits or

mode of life, or to trace the unseen biological causes of their decay? The inquiry need not be costly, for with a suitable selection of some small, central, well-peopled island, or group of islands, the result might reasonably be expected to apply to all the numerous archipelagoes of the Pacific in which the race is found. Many theories have been formed, but none based on the careful observation which competent scientific men alone can make. The English colonies are not yet prepared to undertake such an inquiry. Is there no Society in England, so full of men competent for the duty, that would undertake the task ?-Fortnightly Review.

A GREAT Frenchman has told us what a fascination there was for him in the title of an Italian book, Opinion, Queen of the World. A mighty queen she is, for her sway is almost universal; yet was ever another princess so fickle ? A century ago she told the world it was her pride to be the mistress of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Who will tell us how many lovers she has since favored ? And so many of them have been far less worthy! Yet Rousseau's life was not blameless. He has indeed been accused of nearly every vice of character; and, once the glory of France, he is to-day only a pathetic figure among the broken idols of our race.

Jean Jacques and his works occupy more than eighty pages in the catalogue of the library in the British Museum; surely, then, enough has now been said about him. Yet it is well to revise our literary judgments from time to time; moreover, a man of genius is so rare and so interesting, that we can hardly say too much about him, provided we can say it in the right way. Nor can we forget that Rousseau was one of the greatest powers in literature of the last hundred and fifty years.

A well informed little book on Rousseau, by M. Arthur Chuquet, was added some time ago to the series of French Great Writers; and it tempted us to trace in the Revue des Deux Mondes

and elsewhere the history of French opinion concerning Rousseau. The articles of George Sand, Sainte-Beuve and others are for the most part eulogistic of Rousseau's literary genius. But a later critic, M. Ferdinand Brunetière, has struck a different note; not only does M. Ferdinand Brunetière seem to regard Rousseau as a broken idol, but as one that should straightway be burnt. The opinions of so accomplished a critic command respect, and we must come back to M. Brunetière.

In a discourse at the inauguration of a statue to Rousseau in 1889 M. Jules Simon observed: "Of Rousseau it has been said that he formed a new social system, and a new order of men. This was the general opinion at the beginning of the century; and Napoleon expressed not merely his own thought, but the thought of France, when he said, "There would not have been a Revolution without Rousseau." Even if this be called an extreme view, the man's far-reaching influence is unquestionable. No doubt Napoleon, if he were alive to day, would admit that Rousseau, judged by our present standards, was only a moderate Radical in spite of all his wild paradoxes. Our contemporaries freely describe themselves in a manner that would have startled Voltaire or Rousseau. A muchadvertised Norwegian playwright, for

instance, has recently told us through a newspaper that he is "an anarchist and individualist." If a third term be required to complete the category, it was not for him to supply it. The great writers of the eighteenth century said many foolish things, but they never went the length of describing themselves in this unseemly way. But as an example of the admiration which Rousseau excited among his contemporaries, take the following portion of an epitaph: "Weep, passer-by; here lies the man in whom were united all the qualities that were most esteemed by ancient Greece and Rome, the severity of Cato with the eloquence of Demosthenes, Plato's sublimity of soul with the pride of Diogenes." The writer of epitaphs is privileged to give himself away. Rousseau had none of the stoic's severity, which was rooted in self-discipline and self-control; nor had he much of Plato's sublimity of soul. The eloquence of Demosthenes he had, and something of the pride of Diogenes. The philosopher of the barrel was not a man of mean powers, but he was none the better for copying so closely the habits and manners proper to the kennel. In this respect Jean Jacques occasionally imitated Diogenes, though he was otherwise free from the bitter humors of the cynic.

But for the moment let us put aside the question of public opinion respect ing Rousseau, and try to see the man

himself.

Jean Jacques was born at Geneva on the 28th of June, 1712. His father was a weak man who loved fine phrases, and from him, no doubt, the son inherited his fondness for melodramatic effect. His mother died in giving life to the child. Born in the city of Calvin, he had by nature something of the Calvinist's intensity, but none of his feeling for right conduct. His surroundings were plebeian; his meagre education was irregular, and suited to the son of a "man of sentiment." it count as a virtue that in his boyhood he loved Plutarch.

Let

He was apprenticed at thirteen to a notary, but was soon declared to be in capable. Other callings were tried with little better result. The young Rousseau was not industrious; he was a

His

dreamer, acutely sensitive, easily led, and without any true strength or elevation of character. Later in life his keen, overstrained sensibility marked him off from other men; but in his youth this sensibility can have seemed nothing but a fatal weakness. father had left Geneva, in circumstances not entirely creditable to him, when his son was only ten years old; and the boy was then taken in charge by one relative after another, until at sixteen he in his turn ran away from Geneva, and began that vagrant, aimless life which was to last so many years. He has described this early life fully (in a great number of instances too fully) in the Confessions. In that singular autobiography he is guilty of all sorts of exaggeration, but notwithstanding this, he has given a truer picture of himself than any one else has given of him.

At Turin in 1728 he became a convert to the Church of Rome without any seriousness of purpose, which made it easy for him in the course of years (when convenience pointed that way) to change his religion a second time. After the first change, he alternated between the parts of lackey and vagabond until in 1731 he went to Annecy, to the house of Mme. de Warens. They were already known to each other, for she had acted as spiritual directress to the youth prior to the affair at Turin. He lived in her house many years, and all through life kept a warm affection for her. It was a strange household! Mme. de Warens was not without charm or intelligence, but she had no principles and no delicacy. Jean Jacques was kept at her expense; and after a time he had the footing of a lover. Other needy adventurers who lived upon this frail, good-natured woman, had the same footing. It is a vulgar drama, in which the actors strain overmuch one's spirit of indulgence too far; they were a rascally crew.

The house of Mme. de Warens, first at Annecy, then at Les Charmettes, may be described as Rousseau's home for about nine years. There was a break now and then, but the youth was glad to be back again, for he had known hunger away from this singular home. He had no duties, though he sometimes amused himself, and helped to

keep the world going, by sorting plants or watering the garden; for the rest, he read with little system, and played with the subject of music. The life of the galley-slave would have been better! Let us, however, be just, and state that during the last year of his life at Les Charmettes he studied seriously, and thought deeply about many things; also he shook off his old lightheartedness, and yielded somewhat to a spirit of brooding, which in later years easily developed into a whining misanthropy.

In 1741, when he was in his twentyeighth year, he went to Paris, and the Swiss vagabond must henceforth be reckoned a Frenchman. As this is his first important appearance in the great world, we may here fitly glance at the man apart from his surroundings.

He was not uncomely, for he had good features and brilliant eyes, a face full of intelligence and sensibility. In the engraving of the pastel by Latour, prefixed to M. Chuquet's book, there is a great want of refinement about the lower part of the face, but this may be in some degree the fault of the engraver; it is not so pronounced in any other engraving we have seen of that portrait. To a man like Rousseau, who was always pining for the love of women, a good presence was not a drawback; but in other respects the poor fellow was ill-equipped for the warfare of life. He was twenty-eight years old and without a calling, without money also, or powerful friends. A brave man would find here nothing insuperable, but Rousseau was not brave. Picture the man, and say whether courage usually goes with such qualities: a sensibility so keen that in poet or artist you look in vain for the like; an intellect certainly acute, but untrained and incapable of continuous thought; an imagination powerful but disordered, and seeming with the intellect to work only at the call of passion,-what we may call a sensual intellect, a sensual imagination; an almost total lack of will, a morbid self-consciousness, and an enormous vanity; without tact, awkward, ingenuous, provincial ;-what an outfit for a man at the start of life! If he had been wicked, there is always the

possibility of repentance; but Rousseau was a weak man, not strictly a bad one. Add to what has just been said a still worse weakness; an order of thought cankered at the source, introspective, making healthy activity impossible, and fatal to true nobleness of character. Who would venture to predict that any intellectual or moral order could be evolved out of elements such as these?

He is the spiritual father of the Hamlet, the Master of Ravenswood, of our century, that type of mind which in the character of René has been fixed by the genius of Chateaubriand. Here we have Hamlet with a complicated form of mental disease; we shall not explain it by saying the will-power is weak, and the thinking power in excess. René, like the others, is in the grip of fate, but he has a blight more deadly than theirs; and worst of all the wretch is full of self-pity! This frame of mind. has given itself various names since Rousseau's day, and it is still among us, with a new and foolish name. René-ism many years ago; it is fin-desiècle-ism now. What is it but the soul's Augean stable? If the gods. would send us a spiritual Hercules to clear it, we would thank them night and day.

It was

Rousseau, father of this sickly family, regards himself as the stricken darling of fate; not once will he see that destiny is to be won over by the strong man, and made into a pleasant yokefellow. The inner peace and breadth and serenity of the great spirits will never be his; in lieu of this he will (after death) help to "make history" in a very tragical manner.

In Paris he rented a garret and tried to live by teaching music, in the meantime struggling hard to earn a reputation as a man of original musical genius. He was at Venice for a while as secretary to the French ambassador there; and soon after his return to Paris he took Theresa Le Vasseur for a mistress. She, not liking to come empty-handed, brought her family to live upon the foolish Jean Jacques. We cannot write. the name Le Vasseur without thinking of a word that was used much too often, and sometimes cruelly, by the ruling

class a century ago-canaille; what other word would so justly describe them?

It was not until 1750 that he became famous by the publication of his Discourse on Arts and Sciences. His earlier performances, whether musical or literary, had not been of much importance; and he had earned bread for himself, Theresa, and other Le Vasseurs, by acting as secretary to M. Franceuil, and by teaching or copying music. It was about this time he first gave himself the airs of a misanthrope, forced, he thought, to do so as a logical consequence of his churlish attitude toward society, set forth in the Discourse aforesaid. But he continued to seek fame both as a musician and a writer of prose. His Village Sorcerer in 1753 added to his reputation, and brought him money; it would have secured him a pension, if he had not taken fright at the thought of an interview with the King. In addition to his performance in music, he wrote some articles for the Encyclopadia; and in 1754 he published his first well-written work, the Discourse on Inequality.

In April, 1756, through the kindness of Mme. d'Epinay, he took possession of the Hermitage, near the woods of Montmorency, where he lived about two years. This period was chiefly remarkable for his violent and unrequited passion for Mme. d'Houdetot, a relative of his protectress, who had already a lover in St. Lambert. Rousseau has told us that he had no regard for the women of his own class,-he "sighed for ladies"; yet he was never the lover of a woman of quality. Shall it be said that all is contradiction in the life of this man? He pined to be the lover of a countess; yet within his circle of conquest you see only-Theresa le Vasseur! The sojourn at the Hermitage came to an end with much bitterness of feeling on the part of both Mme. d'Epinay and Jean Jacques. He was suspicious, exacting, ungrateful :- What can you do with a self-torturer? This was at the end of 1757; he then went to live at Montmorency, and during the first weeks of his residence there he wrote the Letter to M. d'Alembert. It is a condemnation of the theatre, admirably written, partial, austere. Rousseau

himself was a disappointed playwright, do you say? Yes, but this letter is more than a veiled expression of disappointment; the half-developed side of Rousseau, the Hebrew in him, here finds a voice.

At Montmorency he gained the friendship of the Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg, and he soon became their guest. It is astonishing that this underbred man of genius should have received such kindness from the proud aristocracy of that period. From this place he sent to the press that strange, fascinating, unwholesome book, The New Héloïse, soon followed by The Social Contract and by Emile. The New Héloïse was one of the greatest literary successes of the age, and gave Jean Jacques a place beside the envied Voltaire.

Now came the foolish quarrel with Voltaire. The poem on the earthquake at Lisbon had filled Rousseau with indignation, and he wrote to defend Providence against the attacks of the sceptical Voltaire. Whatever we may feel as to the literary merit of that poem, it is impossible to forget that the subject is not poetical. Moreover, the man who has accepted in the clearness of day a theory of the universe that gives him a living faith, and sustains him in the conflicts of life, will not be forever distressed by an earthquake; and if nothing less will move him to deal with the question of moral evil, that terrible problem will not occupy him long. The deep thinker does not wait for an earthquake. Voltaire had too keen an interest in literature and stock-jobbing to suffer long from any of the worst forms of despair; while Rousseau's apology for Providence is frenzied in tone and greatly below its theme. Jean Jacques ended a second letter to Voltaire with

an

over emphasized passage not free from insolence; and henceforth the two men, rivals already in literature, were rivals also in the art of abuse. Voltaire in one letter calls Rousseau "a lackey of Diogenes," "an utter fool," "a ferocious wild beast that should be seen only through the bars of a cage, and touched only with a pole." Such are the amenities of literature!

Voltaire was ill when Rousseau's letter reached him, and he sent only a

66

note to acknowledge it, promising to reply later on. Since that time," says Jean Jacques in the Confessions, "Voltaire has published the answer he promised me, which I did not receive. This is the story Candide, of which I am unable to speak, as I have not read it." He thus missed reading the wittiest of books, if his statement be correct, and there is no reason to doubt it. He has himself told us (what certainly was true) that he was indifferent to ridicule, but could not endure scorn. It has been said that Rousseau had no sufficient ground for believing his letter to Voltaire on the earthquake gave birth to Candide. Mr. John Morley, in his able work on Rousseau, expresses this opinion. We do not share it; indeed we are convinced that Pangloss is Rousseau; the date of the publication of Candide alone would justify this view, if other circumstances did not favor it. The character of Pangloss is plainly suggested in Rousseau's letter of 1757. If this did not give Voltaire the idea, where else did he get it? Voltaire did not write satires that had no special application.

Emile was published in May, 1762, and within a month it was publicly burnt, and the author was to have been arrested. Fortunately through the assistance of his friends he was able to leave Montmorency, and take refuge at Yverdun in Switzerland. The orthodox Swiss, however, who found a home for Voltaire, would not give a home to their countryman who had written Emile. He therefore went to Motiers, a short distance from Yverdun, which brought him within the jurisdiction of Prussia. The letter in which he announced this to Frederick is eminently characteristic of Rousseau; it is not a courtier's letter, yet few courtiers could have flattered so adroitly. "Much evil have I spoken of you; I may yet speak more. In spite of this,-driven from France and Geneva, and from the Canton of Berne-I come for shelter to your states. Was I wrong in not doing this at first? It may be; you are not unworthy of the eulogy. Sire, I deserve no favor at your hands, and I seek none; but it seems right to tell your Majesty that I am in your power, and NEW SERIES.-VOL. LIX., No. 2.

by my own act. Do with me as shall seem good to your Majesty."

At Motiers he had the good fortune to win the friendship of George Keith, Earl Marischal of Scotland; and it is to Rousseau's credit that he always remembered with gratitude the kindness he received from this generous man. At this place he wrote his Letter to the Archbishop of Paris, in reply to the condemnation of Emile which that ecclesiastic had published. The archbishop was within his rights in condemning the pamphlet; but he was not wise in matching himself against such an antagonist. At Motiers, where he assumed the Armenian dress, Rousseau lived for a little more than three years, and he would have remained there longer if the populace had not risen against him. It was not a noble concern for piety that led the mob to persecute Rousseau; mobs are not usually swayed by motives of that kind. Rousseau was unpopular because he had in his Letters from the Mountains spoken disrespectfully of the Swiss; Voltaire maliciously helped to brew the tempest, and the clergy did the rest.

Jean Jacques left Motiers in terror, and went to the Isle of St. Peter in the Lake of Bienne. Here he lived less than two months, the happiness of which he has described in a noble piece of prose, and then the powers at Berne commanded him to quit their territory. The poor hunted man in his despair begged them to give him for the rest of his life the shelter of a prison! A few months later, at the invitation of Hume, he came to London. The sixteen months of his stay in England (first in London, then at Wootton in Derbyshire) were not happy. He disliked our climate, which in itself is not an evidence of eccentricity; he was wildly suspicious, and sometimes halfinsane. In writing at Wootton the first part of his Confessions, he no doubt found pleasure, for he loved to dwell upon the memories of his youth; and he hoped (foolish man!) that this book would put him right with the world. At length came the quarrel with Hume, and literary Europe was filled with the reports of it. Rousseau was half mad, and Hume (like his century) had

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