. Soon, however, his old hallucinations acquired
strength, and Rousseau convinced himself that enemies were bent upon his
capture, if not his death. In June, 1766, he wrote a violent letter to
Hume, calling him "one of the worst of men." Literary Paris had combined
with Hume and the English Government to surround him--as he supposed
--with guards and spies; he revolved in his troubled mind all the reports
and rumours he had heard for months and years; Walpole's forged letter
rankled in his bosom; and in the spring of 1767 he fled; first to
Spalding, in Lincolnshire, and subsequently to Calais, where he landed in
May.

On his arrival in France his restless and wandering disposition forced
him continually to change his residence, and acquired for him the title
of "Voyageur Perpetuel." While at Trye, in Gisors, in 1767--8, he wrote
the second part of the Confessions. He had assumed the surname of Renou,
and about this time he declared before two witnesses that Therese was his
wife--a proceeding to which he attached the sanctity of marriage. In
1770 he took up his abode in Paris, where he lived continuously for seven
years, in a street which now bears his name, and gained a living by
copying music. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the author of 'Paul and
Virginia', who became acquainted with him in 1772, has left some
interesting particulars of Rousseau's daily mode of life at this period.
Monsieur de Girardin having offered him an asylum at Ermemonville in the
spring of 1778, he and Therese went thither to reside, but for no long
time. On the 3d of July, in the same year, this perturbed spirit at last
found rest, stricken by apoplexy. A rumor that he had committed suicide
was circulated, but the evidence of trustworthy witnesses, including a
physician, effectually contradicts this accusation. His remains, first
interred in the Ile des Peupliers, were, after the Revolution, removed to
the Pantheon. In later times the Government of Geneva made some
reparation for their harsh treatment of a famous citizen, and erected his
statue, modelled by his compatriot, Pradier, on an island in the Rhone.

"See nations, slowly wise and meanly just,
To buried merit raise the tardy bust."

November, 1896.
S. W. ORSON.

THE CONFESSIONS

OF

J. J. ROUSSEAU