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ments, so many negative quantities, each | ravel, this Jean Jacques Rousseau. He of which taken away, would cause man to has left us a book of Confessions, which rise in the scale of being. The fine arts, seems to surpass in candour all the books he thought, were miserable things, for they that were ever published, and in which he took up time that might be better employ- seems most liberal in the proclamation of ed; science he detested, seeing in it no- his transgressions, decent and indecent; and thing more than a laborious occupation yet we have a kind of uneasy notion that with trifles; the advantages of machinery we have not quite got at the truth, and that he scorned, for he believed that the use of we know a deal more about many people these wheels and levers had deprived man who have not been half so frank, than we of confidence in his own arms and legs: all do about that confessing Genevese. He that renders humanity honourable in the tells us at the very commencement "Les eyes of modern Europe he abhorred, and the trumpet of the last judgment sound the value of mental qualifications he settled when it will, I will present myself before in one sentence, The man who meditates the sovereign Judge, with this book in my is a depraved animal.' Therefore to him hand, and I will say aloud, Here is what was a Chippewa Indian infinitely more re- I did, what I thought, and what I was.'" spectable than an astronomer, or a poet, or This sounds imposing: we ought to be a philosopher. And thus did our Rousseau, awe-struck, but we confess that we are not instead of being a teacher of sound doc- all-believing: no, not even when Madame trines, which he might have been had he re- Dudevant tells us that he is a father of the conciled the idea of humanity with the idea church to come. We cannot help thinking of progress, become an utterer of much that of an ugly old maxim of Rochfaucauld, to was useless; and, being a free man, advocat- the effect, that we prefer talking of our ed a reign of darkness, and a bigotry. He faults to not talking of ourselves at all; could not see in his age an imperfect stage of and when we look at these faults of Rousprogress to a better state of things; he could seau-wretched, disagreeable faults as they not take the good with the bad, and therefore are-in short, just those sort of faults that, he hated all together. The additions made above all others, we should keep to ourto man since he had left the savage state selves-we feel that they are somehow very were all deformed eccentricities, which, if dexterously tinselled over, and that if the they were not cut away, were only to be enormity be great, there is a good measure left, and lamented over, because they had of accounting cause and interesting repenttaken so deep a root. No intolerant ad- ance to overbalance its effect. We set mirer of feudal government or priestly in- aside all the statements let loose by the fluence ever preached against enlighten- professed enemies of Rousseau, all the hosment with more warmth than the Genevese tile histories; we take him as he shows Republican. himself, and we consent to disbelieve every other authority; but still we say, he is the most puzzling creature. What can we believe him to be? Shall we suppose him sincere? A host of little meannesses, and vanities, and timidities, a strange mixture of braggadocio and flinching, are at hand to shake our faith. Shall we believe him a mere vain man, whose only desire was for notoriety, who snarled at the world to make it frown upon him, and who ran away from it simply because he hoped it would follow him? If we turn to certain hostile anecdotes, we shall find reason for such belief: but then the earnestness, the truthfulness of 'Emile' rise in a sort of majesty before us, and will not allow us to think that all was a trick. Shall we believe, to account for his eccentricities, that he received some unlucky hurt in his infancy, which affected his brain? If we would foster such belief. there are accounts to support us: but there is abundance of quiet, calm, unenthusiastic sense to refute us: there is the 'Contrât Sociale, which, un

And what sort of man was he that spoke the strong word? He was, as Mr. Carlyle says in his lectures on 'Hero-worship,' not a strong man. Great was the speech that was uttered, small was the speaker. The age was vain; it was distinguished by an empty love of praise from small people; yet none were vainer, none had a more girlish fondness for landation, than Jean Jacques Rousseau. The age liked, as we have said, to deduce virtue from selfishness, and Rousseau hated that deduction yet where was creature more morbidly selfish? If egotism was the ignis fatuus that misled his contemporaries, with him it was more it was the disease that fed upon his vitals, that forbade him to have one healthy feeling. Nay, striking as were the truths which he uttered amid a maze of fallacy, so much does he exhibit of that egotism, that vanity, that love of notoriety, that we can hardly tell where the real thinker begins, and the lover of self-display leaves off. He is a difficult person to un

pleasant as its doctrines may be to some, include the great warriors, the great statesis a fine specimen of logical deduction from men, even the great manufacturers, men assumed premises. Nay, in his entire who do brilliant deeds, and have brilliant works there is a sort of consistency, as if successes. Voltaire, Diderot, and the nethe thinker never changed, though the man gative philosophers of the last century, with might occasionally waver: and yet-and whom Rousseau could never amalgamate, yet there come the signs of weakness, of but whom he approached only to fly off the being not strong,' that make us hesi- again, leaving a feeling of contempt on one tate. Perhaps, after all, it is we ourselves side, and loathing on the other, belong to who are unjust to this Genevese, in wishing the class of 'hommes forts. They sapped to pin him to some well-defined category. the foundations of established things, they Perhaps it is on account of the great quan- shook creeds, they disorganized society, tity of accurate information concerning him, but they had no view of the far distant., It that we think we know so little. Maybe was because they were of the present, that we know too much. The artistical bio- they could attack it so vigorously. These grapher may remove this deformity, and hommes forts' are, according to George heighten that perfection, and we shall have Sand, the sappers and miners of the moving a very conceivable sort of personage. But phalanx of humanity; they clear the road, when the very man is revealed, may he not they break down rocks, they penetrate foralways seem inexplicable, and may we not ests. The 'hommes grands,' on the other ascribe to his want of candour, what is our hand, are not versed in the science of preown dimness of perception? May not all sent facts; they find themselves in a strange present the same want of harmony between region-too strange to allow of their acting, theory and practice, between thoughts and and they therefore occupy their minds with actions, as poor Jean Jacques?-Reader, uneasy meditations. A pure ideal is before if thou be a writer also, think within thy-them, with which nothing that surrounds self if this is not possible. them will accord. Hating the present,

To the new edition of Rousseau's 'Con- they may seek their ideal in the past or the fessions,' which forms the head of this arti- future; they may look forward to the time cle, Madame Dudevant (George Sand) has when man shall have reached his perfecwritten a very pleasant and ingenious pre- tion, or they may sigh over a golden age. face, with only the fault of soaring a little Rousseau, who belongs to this category of too far into the regions of mysterious signi-hommes grands,' not having faith in the fication. Thus, having settled that Jean future, was one of the sighers over the past; Jacques is to be a saint of the future, she though, nevertheless, he had an instinctive bids us observe how completely the work feeling of progress, as he showed by writing more immediately before us, is one of pri- 'Emile' and the Contrât Sociale." These mitive Christianity-namely, the publica- two classes of the 'forts' and the 'grands' tion of a confession. A truly agreeable and are perpetually at war with each other, algood-natured turn to give to an act in which though they are more really allied than they disappointment, and vanity, and egotism think, and are both equally necessary to the had so large a share! George Sand is advancement of mankind. The 'forts' willing to admit the many faults of the working by corrupt means in a corrupt reSaint, but he may take his place by the gion, become necessarily corrupted, and 'publican Matthew' and the persecutor hence they do not satisfy the purity of the Paul!' Nay, the time is not far distant grands.' The latter, contemplating their when Saint Rousseau' shall be no more ideal, have too exalted notions to admit of tried at the bar of opinion than Saint Au- their acting with force on the bad men of gustin. All this is meant to sound won- their age. They are therefore despised by derfully fine, but nevertheless, the words the 'forts' as mere dreamers-empty theoSaint Rousseau' will not ring musically in rists, who have no genius for practice, but who pass a life completely useless to themTo assign to Jean Jacques a place more selves and others. Nevertheless, these definite than that of mere saintship, Ma-grands' are the 'creators,' the originators dame Dudevant with much acuteness di- of all actions, although they seem but mere vides the eminent men of an age into two dreamers in their lifetime. For the mediclasses, the strong men' (les hommes forts) tators of one age strike out thoughts which and the 'great men' (les hommes grands). are realized by the 'forts' in the next, The former men are those who belong to these thoughts having now become a solid the present, and who act in the present. basis for practice. The circumstance that Their feet are set firmly on stable ground, the 'grands' can only create without acting, and they can strike out with vigour. They while the 'forts' can only act without creat

our ears.

ing, of itself explains their mutual utility teem. He was a shuffling, unsatisfactory and their mutual dislike. When a better sort of a boy, who seemed destined not to age than the present shall come, the distinc- thrive. Bind him to one trade, and he tion between the 'forts' and the grands' would fancy another, with a still greater will vanish as, mankind having become predilection for doing nothing at all: these purer, there will be no longer any need of amiable propensities being accompanied by a semi-vicious agent to carry out good a most unlucky taste for petty larceny. Mothoughts, but the 'grands' will see their ney, it is true, he did not love to steal, there plans accepted by society, and the forts,' was something too commercial and businessnot being so completely involved in a fierce like in having to lay it out. He liked imstruggle, will have room for meditation. mediate enjoyment. Spartan in contriTill then the homme grand' must consent vance, epicurean in luxury, the ripe fruit, to be a sort of martyr. the glittering bauble, were for him the tempting baits. He had every 'sneaking' vice, with little of ill-nature or malice : and these characteristics of his juvenile years, however he might afterwards affect the bearish misanthrope, seem to have cleaved to him pretty firmly during nearly the whole of his life. His mother died at his birth : he was the idol of his father, a Geneva clockmaker, and of the neighbours, who looked upon him as an infant prodigy. With reading of all sorts, ecclesiastical history, Plutarch, La Bruyère, and the old ponderous romances, did the youthful republican store his mind, and his parent gazed on him with admiring horror when he saw him put his hand over a chafingdish to imitate Mutius Scævola.

Such is George Sand's classification of the hommes grands' and the hommes forts. There is a great deal of truth in this division, considered in the abstract; but whether it is quite right to place Jean Jacques in the category of the grands,' as distinguished from the 'forts,' is another matter. He had indeed that restless dislike of the present, the longing after something distant-he scarcely knew what, and therefore placed it in primitive America-which are the marks of the 'grands;' but certainly he acted immediately, both in and on the present, and therefore though not a strong man in an English sense of the word, he was most assuredly a 'homme fort' in the Dudevant phraseology. Let us turn over the whole works of Voltaire, with all their scoffs and wicked pleasantries, and we doubt whether we shall find a harder hit at existing creeds than the 'Profession of faith of the Vicaire of Savoy,' though the latter is written by Rousseau with all the show of diffidence, and a pretended veneration for every description of church. True, our Genevese did not take his mace in his hand, and thunder away at all institutions like the Robber Moor: true, he rather whined than bawled his sentiments: but he was an eminently practical man in his way notwithstanding.

Happy were the first years of Jean Jacques Rousseau, when all caressed, and none opposed, and when the dreams of futurity, nurtured by a warm imagination, only gave an additional zest to the enjoy ment of the present. He tells us himself, he was idolized' by all around, yet never spoiled.'-Is not this a distinction without a difference, Jean Jacques? And were you not in infancy nurtured in all that love of having your own way, in all that waywardness, in all that effeminate sensitiveness, which were so conspicuous in your Let us look at him a little closer. Jean future career, and which, perhaps, were the Jacques is more alluded to in general terms origin of all your-greatness? Well,than surveyed minutely now-a-days, and it thus did childhood pass pleasantly; but diwill be not altogether lost time to follow rectly it was gone, and there was a neces(briefly, of course) the career of a man who sity for the youth adopting some means of made so great a noise in his epoch, and getting a living, then came the disagreewhose influence is likely to be more perma-ables of life. This business would not nent than most of his contemporaries. Rousseau had a positive side; be had a constructive as well as a destructive theory; and therefore does he rightly belong to the Dudevant category of grand,' as an originator, although we would not, on that account, exclude him from the predicament of 'fort.'

Jean Jacques Rousseau, citizen of Geneva, born in the year 1712, was in his youth one of those persons, whom godfathers and godmothers do not highly es

suit, and that master was too cross; and, one night, stopping out beyond the walls after the gate was shut, and dreading harsh treatment from the engraver to whom he was apprentice, he ran away altogether. His father, having got into a scrape, had been obliged to leave Geneva long before, and poor Jean Jacques, at the age of sixteen, set out on a long walk from his native town, without any visible means of finding a place of rest. Fortunately there is no evil in the world without a corresponding