ROUSSEAU.

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convenience, and when inconveniences arose from theI connection, he was disposed to get rid of them on the. easiest possible terms. Theresa was about to become a; mother. According to the profligate code of French' morals, this fact would dishonour her; though the illi-■ cit intercourse, if not openly acknowledged, did not.Si Rousseau did not like to multiply ties between himself^ and his mistress and her family: he was needy : hejj had heard young men of rank and fortune allude| vauntingly to the recourse they had had on such occa-I sions to the Foundling Hospital. He followed their? criminal example.

I He at first acted, he says, without serious examina-tion of the morality of his conduct; but when he com-menced author, he gave attentive consideration to the( point, and satisfied himself that he did right, and con-*, tinued his course of conduct. Five of his children were'? thus sent to a receptacle where few survive; and those( who do go through life are brutified by their situation,

1 or depressed by the burden, ever weighing at the heart,

1 that they have not inherited the commonest right ofhumanity, a parent’s care.

It is insulting the reader to dwell on the flagrancyI of this act. But it is a lesson that ought to teach ushumility. That a man as full of genius and aspirationafter virtue as Rousseau, should have failed in the. plainest dictates of nature and conscience, through theforce of example and circumstances, shows us how little: we can rely on our own judgment. It shows too, thatj a father is not to be trusted for natural instincts towards4 his offspring; for the mother wept, and it needed the■, control of her own mother, and strong necessity, to in-duce the weak-minded and misguided girl to consentto part with her offspring.

We say little of Rousseau’s vain excuses as to the, probable destiny of his children. They were better, he| says, brought up by the public, than rendered rogues byjp madame le Vasseur, or led into evil courses as depend-j ants on madame d’Epinay and the marechale de Luxem-k 2