impulses of the early prime with the visible, intelligible, and
still sublime possibilities of the human destiny,--that imperial
conception, which alone can shape an existence of entire proportion in
all its parts, and leave no natural energy of life idle or athirst. Do
you ask for sanctions! One whose conscience has been strengthened from
youth in this faith, can know no greater bitterness than the stain
cast by wrong act or unworthy thought on the high memories with which
he has been used to walk, and the discord wrought in hopes that have
become the ruling harmony of his days.

FOOTNOTES:

[337] See Hallam's _Literature of Europe_, Pt. I. ch. ii. Sec. 64. Again
(for the 16th century), Pt. II. ch. ii. Sec. 53. See also for mention of
a sect of deists at Lyons about 1560, Bayle's Dictionary, _s.v._
Viret.

[338] See above, vol. i. pp. 223-227.

[339] _Emile_, IV. 163.

[340] IV. 183-185.

[341] M. Henri Martin's _Hist. de France_, xvi. 101, where there is an
interesting, but, as it seems to the present writer, hardly a
successful attempt, to bring the Savoyard Vicar's eloquence into
scientific form.

[342] _Emile_, IV. 135.

[343] _Emile_, IV. 204.

[344] _Emile_, IV. 181, 182. In a letter to Vernes (Feb. 18, 1758.
_Corr._, ii. 9) he expresses his suspicion that possibly the souls of
the wicked may be annihilated at their death, and that being and
feeling may prove the first reward of a good life. In this letter he
asks also, with the same magnanimous security as the Savoyard Vicar,
"of what concern the destiny of the wicked can be to him."

[345] A similar disparagement of Socrates, in comparison with the
Christ of the Gospels, is to be found in the long letter of Jan. 15,
1769 (_Corr._, vi. 59, 60), to M----, accompanied by a violent
denigration of the Jews, conformably to the philosophic prejudice of
the time.

[346] _Emile_, IV. 241, 242.

[347] _Emile_, IV. 243.

[348] IV. 210-236.

[349] Condorcet's _Progres de l'Esprit Humain_ (1794). _Oeuv._, vi.
276.

CHAPTER VI.

ENGLAND.[350]

There is in an English collection a portrait of Jean Jacques,
which was painted during his residence in this country by a provincial
artist. Singular and displeasing as it is, yet this picture lights up
for us many a word and passage in Rousseau's life here and elsewhere,
which the ordinary engravings, and the trim self-complacency of the
statue on the little island at Geneva, would leave very
incompr