Il6 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

lity, his reveries pictured castles and enamoured damsels,a fortune the gift of love, and lasting happiness theeffect.

Rousseau was unfortunate at the outset. He had wan-dered about till he found himself at Confignon , in Savoy,a place two leagues distant from Geneva . He paid thecurate, M. de Pontverre, a visit. His own account of hismotives is suspicious : he says that he was anxious to seethe descendant of men who figured in the history of therepublic ; that M. de Pontverre received him well, askedhim to dinner, and invited him to he converted to the Ro-man catholic religion ; and that he had not the heart tosay nay to his kind entertainer. There is—and therewas in those days still more—a great spirit of proselytismkept up among the priesthood of Savoy, hovering, asthey do, close to a nest of heresy. Still, we cannot helpimagining that the scheme was Rousseau ’s own, and thathe presented himself as a willing convert — expectingthus to be made much of, and introduced in triumphto the houses of the catholic nobility. At. any rate,M. de Pontverre behaved ill : he ought to have feltthat it was more for the youth’s permanent advantageto send him hack to his friends, mediate for his pardon,and exhort him to regular and virtuous courses ; andthat to make a proselyte of him, and thus renderhis relations entirely hostile, and him an object ofdisgrace in his native city, while it opened no futurecareer for earning an honest livelihood, was the worststep in the beginning of life that a young man couldtake. But M. de Pontverre, as a priest, thought differ-ently ; — if he did not invite the youth to abjure thereligion of his country, he facilitated a scheme thatsprang from any feeling rather than piety. Rousseau felthis pride fall, when his host told him that he would givehim a letter to a charitable lady living at Annecy , whowould forward his views. He saw, however, no otherresource against starvation ; and he yielded. Furnishedby the curate with a letter, he set out — his head fullof princesses, palaces, and castles, and in great hopes