170 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

contemplated the fair scene spread around, the shad ygardens and serene sky, while he bade a calm adieu tolife.

The cause of his suicide, if he really committed it,must be found in his perpetual physical sufferings, inhis weariness of life, and in the accesses of insanity withwhich he was certainly sometimes visited : to this M. deCorancez adds a discovery of the worthless character ofTherese. The last is merely conjecture. She marrieda groom of M. Girardin, a year after her husband’sdeath ; and he gives her credit for a criminal intercoursewith this man, discovered by Rousseau , during his life.

His existence had become a dream of bodily andmental suffering; and whether the disease that preyedon him affected his brain with death, or excited him toarm himself against his own life, is a secret difficult topenetrate. The latter seems most probable. He diedpeacefully, and the heart that had beat so wildly, andthe brain pregnant with an ardent love of truth, andwith so many wild delusions, were delivered over to thepeace of the grave.

As a protestant he could not be buried in sacredground, he was therefore interred in the island of Poplars,in the gardens of Ermenonville . The funeral took placein the evening. The solitary spot shadowed over by trees,through whose foliage the moon shone, the calm of theevening hour, and the lonely grave, were in accordancewith the singular but noble character of the man.

On his tomb was inscribed—

Ioi REPOSE

L’Homme de la Nature

ET DE LA VERITE.

Vitam impendere vero.

These last words he had adopted as his device. Hisgrave ought to have been held sacred ; but, in the ragefor desecration that possessed the French at the periodof the revolution, the body was exhumed and placed inthe Pantheon. When the allies invaded France , out of