s, if it only has hearty benevolence and
cheerfulness in its company, and is free from egoism or
rapacious vanity.

This was the person within the sphere of whose attraction Rousseau was
decisively brought in the autumn of 1729, and he remained, with certain
breaks of vagabondage, linked by a close attachment to her until 1738.
It was in many respects the truly formative portion of his life. He
acquired during this time much of his knowledge of books, such as it
was, and his principles of judging them. He saw much of the lives of the
poor and of the world's ways with them. Above all his ideal was
revolutionised, and the recent dreams of Plutarchian heroism, of
grandeur, of palaces, princesses, and a glorious career full in the
world's eye, were replaced by a new conception of blessedness of life,
which never afterwards faded from his vision, and which has held a front
place in the imagination of literary Europe ever since. The notions or
aspirations which he had picked up from a few books gave way to notions
and aspirations which were shaped and fostered by the scenes of actual
life into which he was thrown, and which found his character soft for
their impression. In one way the new pictures of a future were as
dissociated from the conditions of reality as the old had been, and the
sensuous life of the happy valley in Savoy as little fitted a man to
compose ideals for our gnarled and knotted world as the mental life
among the heroics of sentimental fiction had done.

Rousseau's delight in the spot where Madame de Warens lived at Annecy
was the mark of the new ideal which circumstances were to engender in
him, and after him to spread in many hearts. His room looked over
gardens and a stream, and beyond them stretched a far landscape. "It was
the first time since leaving Bossey that I had green before my windows.
Always shut in by walls, I had nothing under my eye but house-tops and
the dull gray of the streets. How moving and delicious this novelty was
to me! It brightened all the tenderness of my disposition. I counted the
landscape among the kindnesses of my dear benefactress; it seemed as if
she had brought it there expressly for me. I placed myself there in all
peacefulness with her; she was present to me everywhere among the
flowers and the verdure; her charms and those of spring were all mingled
together in my eyes. My heart, which had hitherto been stifled, found
itself more free in this ample space, and my sighs