174 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

brings its own necessities and lessons with it: the chiefcare devolving on the master, to prevent the elder andstronger from domineering over the young and weak.

He perverts virtue and vice in the “ Heloise ” stillmore glaringly, and clashes against the prejudices ofevery country. In France , the fault of an unmarriedgirl was regarded as peculiarly degrading and evenridiculous, and the early error of Julie therefore couldfind little sympathy in that country. In ours we com-miserate such; hut we turn disgusted from her weddinganother man; and the marriage with the elderly Wolmar,which Rousseau makes the crown of her virtue, is tous the seal of her degradation. His ideas also of aperfect life are singularly faulty. It includes no in-struction, no endeavours to acquire knowledge andrefine the soul by study; but is contracted to meredomestic avocations, and to association with servants andlabourers, on their own footing of ignorance, thoughsuch must lead to mean and trivial occupations andthoughts.

No author knows better than Rousseau how to spreada charm over the internal movements of the mind,over the struggles of passion, over romantic reveriesthat absorb the soul, abstracting it from real life andour fellow-creatures, and causing it to find its joys initself. No author is more eloquent in paradox, and noman more sublime in inculcating virtue. While Vol-taire taints and degrades all that is sacred and lovely bythe grossness of his, imagination, Rousseau embellisheseven the impure, by painung it in colours that hide itsreal nature; and imparts to the emotions of sense allthe elevation and intensity of delicate and exaltedpassion.