Beacon Lights of History, Volume 13 | Page 6

It was an earthly
paradise, given him by enthusiastic admirers of his genius and
conversation.
In this retreat, one of the most favored which a poor author ever had,
Rousseau, ever craving some outlet for his passionate sentiments,
created an ideal object of love. He wrote imaginary letters, dwelling
with equal rapture on those he wrote and those he fancied he received
in return, and which he read to his lady friends, after his rambles in the
forests and parks, during their reunions at the supper-table. Thus was
born the "Nouvelle Héloïse,"--a novel of immense fame, in which the
characters are invested with every earthly attraction, living in
voluptuous peace, yet giving vent to those passions which consume the
unsatisfied soul. It was the forerunner of "Corinne," "The Sorrows of
Werther," "Thaddeus of Warsaw," and all those sentimental romances
which amused our grandfathers and grandmothers, but which increased
the prejudice of religious people against novels. It was not until Sir
Walter Scott arose with his wholesome manliness that the embargo
against novels was removed.
The life which Rousseau lived at the Hermitage--reveries in the forest,
luxurious dinners, and sentimental friendships--led to a passionate
love-affair with the Comtesse d'Houdetot, a sister-in-law of his
patroness Madame d'Épinay,--a woman not only married, but who had
another lover besides. The result, of course, was miserable,--jealousies,
piques, humiliations, misunderstandings, and the sundering of the ties

of friendship, which led to the necessity of another retreat: a real home
the wretched man never had. This was furnished, still in the vicinity of
Montmorenci, by another aristocratic friend, the Maréchal de
Luxembourg, the fiscal agent of the Prince de Condé. And nothing to
me is stranger than that this wandering, morbid, irritable man, without
birth or fortune, the father of the wildest revolutionary and democratic
doctrines, and always hated both by the Court and the Church, should
have found his friends and warmest admirers and patrons in the highest
circles of social life. It can be explained only by the singular fascination
of his eloquence, and by the extreme stolidity of his worshippers in
appreciating his doctrines, and the state of society to which his
principles logically led.
In this second retreat Rousseau had the _entrée_ to the palace of the
Duke of Luxembourg, where he read to the friends assembled at its
banquets his new production, "Émile,"--a singular treatise on education,
not so faulty as his previous works, but still false in many of its
principles, especially in regard to religion. This book contained an
admirable and powerful impulse away from artificiality and towards
naturalness in education, which has exerted an immense influence for
good; we shall revert to it later.
A few months before the publication of "Émile," Rousseau had issued
"The Social Contract," the most revolutionary of all his works,
subversive of all precedents in politics, government, and the
organization of society, while also confounding Christianity with
ecclesiasticism and attacking its influence in the social order. All his
works obtained a wide fame before publication by reason of his habit of
reading them to enthusiastic and influential friends who made them
known.
"The Social Contract," however, dangerous as it was, did not when
published arouse so much opposition as "Émile." The latter book, as we
now see, contained much that was admirable; but its freedom and
looseness in religious discussion called down the wrath of the clergy,
excited the alarm of the government, and finally compelled the author
to fly for his life to Switzerland.

Rousseau is now regarded as an enemy to Christian doctrine, even as he
was a foe to the existing institutions of society. In Geneva his books are
publicly burned. Henceforth his life is embittered by constant
persecution. He flies from canton to canton in the freest country in
Europe, obnoxious not only for his opinions but for his habits of life.
He affectedly adopts the Armenian dress, with its big fur bonnet and
long girdled caftan, among the Swiss peasantry. He is as full of
personal eccentricities as he is of intellectual crotchets. He becomes a
sort of literary vagabond, with every man's hand against him. He now
writes a series of essays, called "Letters from the Mountain," full of
bitterness and anti-Christian sentiments. So incensed by these writings
are the country people among whom he dwells that he is again forced to
fly.
David Hume, regarding him as a mild, affectionate, and persecuted man,
gives Rousseau a shelter in England. The wretched man retires to
Derbyshire, and there writes his "Confessions,"--the most interesting
and most dangerous of his books, showing a diseased and irritable mind,
and most sophistical views on the immutable principles of both
morality and religion. A victim of mistrust and jealousy, he quarrels
with Hume, who learns to despise his character, while pitying the
sensitive sufferings of