ittle thing, and determines to nurse her next child herself.--It is
through these contrasts that Rousseau is strong. He revealed the dawn to
people who never got up until noon, the landscape to eyes that had thus
far rested only on palaces and drawing-rooms, a natural garden to men
who had never promenaded outside of clipped shrubs and rectilinear
borders, the country, the family, the people, simple and endearing
pleasures, to townsmen made weary by social avidity, by the excesses and
complications of luxury, by the uniform comedy which, in the glare of
hundreds of lighted candles, they played night after night in their own
and in the homes of others[4141]. An audience thus disposed makes no
clear distinction between pomp and sincerity, between sentiment and
sentimentality. They follow their author as one who makes a revelation,
as a prophet, even to the end of his ideal world, much more through his
exaggerations than through his discoveries, as far on the road to error
as on the pathway of truth.

These are the great literary powers of the century. With inferior
successes, and through various combinations, the elements which
contributed to the formation of the leading talents also form the
secondary talents, like those below Rousseau,--Bernardin de St. Pierre,
Raynal, Thomas, Marmontel, Mably, Florian, Dupaty, Mercier, Madame de
Stael; and below Voltaire,--the lively and piquant intellects of Duclos,
Piron, Galiani, President Des Brosses, Rivarol, Champfort, and to speak
with precision, all other talents. Whenever a vein of talent, however
meager, peers forth above the ground it is for the propagation and
carrying forward of the new doctrine; scarcely can we find two or three
little streams that run in a contrary direction, like the journal of
Freron, a comedy by Palissot, or a satire by Gilbert. Philosophy winds
through and overflows all channels public and private, through manuals
of impiety, like the "Theologies portatives," and in the lascivious
novels circulated secretly, through epigrams and songs, through daily
novelties, through the amusements of fairs,[4142] and the harangues of
the Academy, through tragedy and the opera, from the beginning to the
end of the century, from the "OEdipe" of Voltaire, to the "Tarare" of
Beaumarchais. It seems as if there was nothing else in the world. At
least it is found everywhere and it floods all literary efforts;
nobody cares whether it deforms them, content in making them ser