y quiet, just because it
had not strength enough to cry out."[278] But in Rousseau, as in
Beethoven, a harsh and rugged passage is nearly always followed by
some piece of exquisite and touching melody. The force of these
indignant pictures was heightened and relieved by moving appeal to
all the tender joys of maternal solicitude, and thoughts of all that
this solicitude could do for the happiness of the home, the father,
and the young. The attraction of domestic life is pronounced the best
antidote to the ill living of the time. The bustle of children, which
you now think so importunate, gradually becomes delightful; it brings
father and mother nearer to one another; and the lively animation of a
family added to domestic cares, makes the dearest occupation of the
wife, and the sweetest of all his amusements to the husband. If women
will only once more become mothers again, men will very soon become
fathers and husbands.[279]

The physical effect of this was not altogether wholesome. Rousseau's
eloquence excited women to an inordinate pitch of enthusiasm for the
duty of suckling their infants, but his contemptuous denunciation of
the gaieties of Paris could not extinguish the love of amusement.

Quid quod libelli Stoici inter sericos
Jacere pulvillos amant?

So young mothers tried as well as they could to satisfy both desires,
and their babes were brought to them at all unseasonable hours, while
they were full of food and wine, or heated with dancing or play, and
there received the nurture which, but for Rousseau, they would have
drawn in more salutary sort from a healthy foster-mother in the
country. This, however, was only an incidental drawback to a movement
which was in its main lines full of excellent significance. The
importance of giving freedom to the young limbs, of accustoming the
body to rudeness and vicissitude of climate, of surrounding youth with
light and cheerfulness and air, and even a tiny detail such as the
propriety of substituting for coral or ivory some soft substance
against which the growing teeth might press a way without irritation,
all these matters are handled with a fervid reality of interest that
gives to the tedium of the nursery a genuine touch of the poetic.
Swathings, bandages, leading-strings, are condemned with a warmth like
that with which the author had denounced comedy.[280] The city is held
up to indignant reprobation as the gulf of infant life, just as it had
been in