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LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

men should have so little real affection in their naturethat, for the sake of personal offences, real or imagined,they could at once throw off those whom they had loved, asthey pretended, so well and so long ; showing how muchmore deeply rooted and engrossing was self, than theinterests and intercourse of their friends. A few yearsafter, Diderot sought to he reconciled to his formerffriend ;he engaged a mutual acquaintance to mediate betweenthem. Rousseau declined his advances. He replied : —“ I do not see what M. Diderot, after seven years' silence,all at once demands of me. I ask nothing of him — I haveno disavowal to make. I am far from wishing him ill—and am yet further from doing or saying aught to in-jure him. I know how to respect the ties of an evenextinguished friendship to the end; but I never renewit—that is my inviolable maxim." Rousseau was inexile and misfortune when Diderot made this advance,which was honourable to him ; he was doubtless piquedby the refusal; but we cannot excuse him when, manyyears afterwards, after the death of his friend, he attackedhim in one of his works. It would have been better toforget. And gladly would we, in spite of the publicitygiven, have passed over these details — but that theyformed an intrinsic portion of the picture of Rousseau ’slife; and were the cause why, in after times, he becamesuspicious even to madness—miserable even to death.

With the new year, Rousseau , quitting the Hermit-age, began a new life ; as much as an entire castingaway of old friends, and seeking fresh ones, can changethe tenor of existence. But Rousseau was ever thesame. His passions, masked even to himself by theirintensity, ruled his destiny; and it was a miserable one.The semblance of tranquillity, however, awaited himat first; and he gave himself to study and authorshipuninterruptedly. The “ Encyclopaedia " undertaken byd’Alembert and Diderot engaged the attention of theliterary world: it was made the vehicle of their opi-nions, and the engine for propagating them. Voltaire was residing at the Delices. He was disgusted by the