eigning over
it. All things well considered, the trade most to be preferred is
that of carpenter; it is clean, useful, and capable of being carried
on in the house; it demands address and diligence in the workman, and
though the form of the work is determined by utility, still elegance
and taste are not excluded.[299] There are few prettier pictures than
that where Sophie enters the workshop, and sees in amazement her young
lover at the other end, in his white shirt-sleeves, his hair loosely
fastened back, with a chisel in one hand and a mallet in the other,
too intent upon his work to perceive even the approach of his
mistress.[300]

When the revolution came, and princes and nobles wandered in indigent
exile, the disciples of Rousseau pointed in unkind triumph to the
advantage these unfortunate wretches would have had if they had not
been too puffed up with the vanity of feudalism to follow the prudent
example of Emilius in learning a craft. That Rousseau should have laid
so much stress on the vicissitudes of fortune, which might cause even
a king to be grateful one day that he had a trade at the end of his
arms, is sometimes quoted as a proof of his foresight of troublous
times. This, however, goes too far, because, apart from the instances
of such vicissitudes among the ancients, the King of Syracuse keeping
school at Corinth, or Alexander, son of Perseus, becoming a Roman
scrivener, he actually saw Charles Edward, the Stuart pretender,
wandering from court to court in search of succour and receiving only
rebuffs; and he may well have known that after the troubles of 1738 a
considerable number of the oligarchs of his native Geneva had gone
into exile, rather than endure the humiliation of their party.[301]
Besides all this, the propriety of being able to earn one's bread by
some kind of toil that would be useful in even the simplest societies,
flowed necessarily from every part of his doctrine of the aims of life
and the worth of character. He did, however, say, "We approach a state
of crisis and an age of revolutions," which proved true, but he added
too much when he pronounced it impossible that the great monarchies of
Europe could last long.[302] And it is certain that the only one of
the great monarchies which did actually fall would have had a far
better chance of surviving if Lewis XVI. had been as expert in the
trade of king as he was in that of making locks and bolts.

From this semi-stoical ideal there fol