as they had been by another writer's friendly eulogy on
their Socinianism.[352]

The reader who was not moved to turn brute and walk on all fours by the
pictures of the state of nature in the Discourses, may find it more
difficult to resist the charm of the brotherly festivities and simple
pastimes which in the Letter to D'Alembert the patriot holds up to the
admiration of his countrymen and the envy of foreigners. The writer is
in Sparta, but he tempers his Sparta with a something from Charmettes.
Never before was there so attractive a combination of martial austerity
with the grace of the idyll. And the interest of these pictures is much
more than literary; it is historic also. They were the original version
of those great gatherings in the Champ de Mars and strange suppers of
fraternity during the progress of the Revolution in Paris, which have
amused the cynical ever since, but which pointed to a not unworthy
aspiration. The fine gentlemen whom Rousseau did so well to despise had
then all fled, and the common people under Rousseauite leaders were
doing the best they could to realise on the banks of the Seine the
imaginary joymaking and simple fellowship which had been first dreamed
of for the banks of Lake Leman, and commended with an eloquence that
struck new chords in minds satiated or untouched by the brilliance of
mere literature. There was no real state of things in Geneva
corresponding to the gracious picture which Rousseau so generously
painted, and some of the citizens complained that his account of their
social joys was as little deserved as his ingenious vindication of their
hearty feeling for barrel or bottle was little founded.[353]

The glorification of love of country did little for the Genevese for
whom it was meant, but it penetrated many a soul in the greater nation
that lay sunk in helpless indifference to its own ruin. Nowhere else
among the writers who are the glory of France at this time, is any
serious eulogy of patriotism. Rousseau glows with it, and though he
always speaks in connection with Geneva, yet there is in his words a
generous breadth and fire which gave them an irresistible
contagiousness. There are many passages of this fine persuasive force in
the Letter to D'Alembert; perhaps this, referring to the citizens of
Geneva who had gone elsewhere in search of fortune, is as good as
another. Do you think that the opening of a theatre, he asks, will bring
them back to their mother city?