t, however, it is enough,
without going into the general question, to notice the particular fact
that while the other great exponents of the eighteenth century movement,
Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, were nourishing their natural strength of
understanding by the study and practice of literature, Rousseau, the
leader of the reaction against that movement, was wandering a beggar and
an outcast, craving the rude fare of the peasant's hut, knocking at
roadside inns, and passing nights in caves and holes in the fields, or
in the great desolate streets of towns.

If such a life had been disagreeable to him, it would have lost all the
significance that it now has for us. But where others would have found
affliction, he had consolation, and where they would have lain desperate
and squalid, he marched elate and ready to strike the stars. "Never," he
says, "did I think so much, exist so much, be myself so much, as in the
journeys that I have made alone and on foot. Walking has something about
it which animates and enlivens my ideas. I can hardly think while I am
still; my body must be in motion, to move my mind. The sight of the
country, the succession of agreeable views, open air, good appetite, the
freedom of the alehouse, the absence of everything that could make me
feel dependence, or recall me to my situation--all this sets my soul
free, gives me a greater boldness of thought. I dispose of all nature as
its sovereign lord; my heart, wandering from object to object, mingles
and is one with the things that soothe it, wraps itself up in charming
images, and is intoxicated by delicious sentiment. Ideas come as they
please, not as I please: they do not come at all, or they come in a
crowd, overwhelming me with their number and their force. When I came to
a place I only thought of eating, and when I left it I only thought of
walking. I felt that a new paradise awaited me at the door, and I
thought of nothing but of hastening in search of it."[65]

Here again is a picture of one whom vagrancy assuredly did not
degrade:--"I had not the least care for the future, and I awaited the
answer [as to the return of Madame de Warens to Savoy], lying out in the
open air, sleeping stretched out on the ground or on some wooden bench,
as tranquilly as on a bed of roses. I remember passing one delicious
night outside the town [Lyons], in a road which ran by the side of
either the Rhone or the Saone, I forget which of the two. Gardens raised
on a terr