sions" Rousseau blames himself for abandoning the children, but tries, nevertheless, to give some excuses for his conduct. In order to appreciate " Emile we must endeavor to forget Rousseau's utter lack of paternal feeling, for otherwise his character appears to us so repulsive that we can not see the beauties of his book.

It was only at the age of thirty-seven that Rousseau bécame a celebrated literary man, for his "Village Oracle" was produced after his famous discourses. The Academy of Dijon gave as a subject for a prize essay: "Has the Restoration of the Sciences Contributed to Purify or to Corrupt Morals? Rousseau took the pessimistic side of the question, and attacked with unsurpassed eloquence the society of his time and civilization itself. Three years later he wrote for the same academy another fiery essay on the subject: "What Is the Origin of Inequality Among Men, and Is It Authorized by Natural Law?" He won the prize for the first essay, but the second did not meet with the same success with the judges of the contest. Both discourses, however, made him celebrated, and threw him. with the greatest people of the time. He filled an office at M. de Fraucueil's, but he suddenly left his patron and determined to earn his living by copying music by the page. He took refuge in Madame d'Epinay's house in the country, wishing to live for the study of nature only, and yet compelled by an irresistible impulse to write for the world "La Nouvelle Héloïse," "Le Contrat Social" and "Emile."

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While at Madame d'Epinay's hermitage Rousseau fell madly in love with Madame d'Houdetot, who in her turn loved Saint-Lambert, the soldier poet. The hermit, the reformer of mankind, was thrown into paroxysms of grief, and his imagination was filled with visions of love. His sensual nature completely mastered him, and he threw

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upon paper the passionate letters of Julie and Saint Preux in "La Nouvelle Héloïse." This work had an immense success, for the style is entrancing and the story is interesting and pathetic; but, in spite of what the author says, it is an immoral book, and more dangerous than many coarse and obscene stories. Of his three great books The Social Contract" exerted, after a few years, the greatest influence in the eighteenth century. It became the gospel of the men of the revolution, and certainly hastened the great outbreak against tyranny. It is, however, very Utopian in its character and is now scarcely read. "Emile” is the most enduring of Rousseau's works. There are many paradoxes and Utopian ideas in the book, but it deserves the careful attention of all educators. It has one great quality-it leads us to think-and it has inspired to a great extent subsequent works on education.

Rousseau went from the Hermitage to Montmorency, but in order to escape persecution, after the publication of "Emile," he wandered from Yverdun to Neufchâtel; then to the island of St. Peter, in the Lake of Bienne; then to Wooton, in Derbyshire, where he accepted the hospitality of Hume, the historian. He soon quarreled with his protector and returned to France, where no one molested him. In 1770 we see him in Paris, his mind under a cloud, and producing those strange Dialogues "between Jean Jacques and Rousseau. He devoted the greater part of his time to botany, and was very poor and morose and gloomy. M. de Girardin offered him a home at Ermenonville, twenty miles from Paris, and there, on July 2, 1778, he died suddenly.

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Rousseau's character was a strange mixture of the good and the bad. We must praise many lofty sentiments in his works and his spirit of independence, but he committed many vile acts and gloried in them. We pity his misfor

tune, but we can not admire him as a man. As a writer we must give him the highest praise and say that this master of style deserves to be buried in the Pantheon, by the side of the greatest authors. His influence as an educator has been beneficial, but his influence on literature has been still more beneficial. He is the true founder of the romantic school, and his cries of anguish have been transformed into the soul-stirring and truly lyric songs of Hugo and Musset. ALCÉE FORTIER.

Tulane University.

SELECTED STUDIES.

Rousseau was the direct inspirer of the men who made the French Revolution. His fervid declamation about equality and brotherhood, and his sentimental republicanism, were seed as well suited to the soil in which they were sown as Montesquieu's reasoned constitutionalism was unsuited to it. Rousseau, indeed, if the proof of the excellence of preaching is in the practice of the hearers, was the greatest preacher of the century. He denounced the practice of putting infants out to nurse, and mothers began to suckle their own children; he recommended instruction in useful arts, and many an émigré noble had to thank Rousseau for being able to earn his bread in exile; he denounced speculative atheism, urging the undogmatic but emotional creed, and the first wave of the religious reaction was set going, to culminate in the catholic movement of Chateaubriand and Lamennais. But in literature itself his influence was quite as powerful. He was not, indeed, the founder of the school of analysis of feeling in the novel, but he was the popularizer of it. He was almost the founder of sentimentalism in general literature; and he was absolutely the first to make word-painting of nature an al

most indispensable element of all imaginative and fictitious writing both in prose and poetry.-SAINTSBURY.

Rousseau was essentially an idealist, but an idealist whose dreams and visions were inspired by the play of his sensibility upon his intellect and imagination, and therefore he was the least impersonal of thinkers. Generous of heart, he was filled with bitter suspicions; inordinately proud, he nursed his pride amid sordid realities; cherishing ideals of purity and innocence, he sank deep in the mire of imaginative sensuality; effeminate, he was also indomitable; an uncompromising optimist, he saw the whole world lying in wickedness; a passionate lover of freedom, he aimed at establishing the most unqualified of tyrannies; among the devout he was a free-thinker, among the philosophers he was the sentimentalist of theopathy. He stands apart from his contemporaries: they did homage to the understanding; he was the devotee of the heart: they belonged to a brilliant society; he was elated, suffered, brooded, dreamed in solitude: they were aristocratic, at least by virtue of the intellectual culture which they represented; he was plebeian in his origin and popular in his sympathies. He became a great writer comparatively late in life, under the compulsion of a ruling idea which lies at the center of all his more important works, excepting such as are apologetic and autobiographical. Nature has made man good and happy; society has made him evil and miserable. Are we, then, to return to a state of primitive savagery? No; society can not retrograde. But in many ways we can ameliorate human life by approximating to a natural condition.-EDWARD DOWDEN.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was a writer who marched under none of the recognized banners of the day. The encyclopædists had flattered themselves that they had tuned the opinion of all Europe to their philosophical strain, when suddenly they heard his discordant note. Without family, without friends, without home, wandering from place to place, from one condition in life to another, he conceived a species of revolt against society, and a feeling of bitterness against those civil organizations in which he could never find a suitable place. He combated the atheism.

of the encyclopædists, their materialism and contempt for moral virtue, for pure deism was his creed. He believed in a supreme being, a future state, and the excellence of virtue, but, denying all revealed religion, he would have men advance in the paths of virtue, freely and proudly, from love of virtue itself, and not from any sense of duty or obligation.-Botta.

Others have left works more perfect, and above all more beneficent, but I do not believe that in the whole history of literature there exists the man whose influence has been so decisive, so far-reaching, and upon whom it is so difficult to form a fair judgment. Measured from the point of view of to-day, this influence seems disproportioned to the genius which exercised it and to the value of the works of that genius. But the most perfect works do not necessarily count the most, and the keenest criticism can not always explain the mysterious affinities of genius, of thought, and of morals. It has been questioned whether this influence, the extent and duration of which are incontestable, has been a salutary one. We are not now to consider this. An alluring, an irresistible guide, Rousseau has not been an infallible one. Many have gone astray in following him. If he had a kind and feeling heart, he had not less a faulty intellect, and his paradoxes often paralyzed his good intention. The ability with which he followed them to their extreme conclusion, like the eloquence he employed in their service, only served to render them more dangerous. Therefore in penetrating so deeply the consciousness of the generations that followed him, Rousseau's thought has drawn upon them many ills. It has involved them in many gropings and errors, in many delusive visions and sufferings.-EDOUARD ROD.