lueness of the Rhone, which has been attributed to various causes,
is due to the comparative purity of the water. The yellow and muddy
stream, during its passage through the lake, is enabled to purge itself
to a very great extent of the solid matter held in suspension--the
glacial and other detritus---and so, on leaving its vast natural
filtering-bed, it flows out clear and blue: it has regained the proper
colour of pure water.]

18.

This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss.
Stanza lxxix. line 3.

This refers to the account, in his _Confessions_, of his passion for the
Comtesse d'Houdetot (the mistress of St. Lambert), and his long walk
every morning, for the sake of the single kiss which was the common
salutation of French acquaintance. Rousseau's description of his
feelings on this occasion may be considered as the most passionate, yet
not impure, description and expression of love that ever kindled into
words; which, after all, must be felt, from their very force, to be
inadequate to the delineation; a painting can give no sufficient idea of
the ocean.

[Here is Rousseau's "passionate, yet not impure," description of his
sensations: "J'ai dit qu'il y avoit loin de l'Hermitage a Eaubonne; je
passois par les coteaux d'Andilly qui sont charmans. Je revois en
marchant a celle que j'allois voir, a l'accueil caressant qu'elle me
feroit, au baiser qui m'attendoit a mon arrivee. Ce seul baiser, ce
baiser funeste avant meme de le recevoir, m'embrasoit le sang a tel
point, que ma tete se troubloit, un eblouissement m'aveugloit, mes
genoux tremblants ne pouroient me soutenir; j'etois force de m'arreter,
de m'asseoir; toute ma machine etoit dans un desordre inconcevable;
j'etois pret a m'evanouir.... A l'instant que je la voyois, tout etoit
repare; je ne sentois plus aupres d'elle que l'importunite d'une vigueur
inepuisable et toujours inutile."--_Les Confessions_, Partie II. livre
ix.; _Oeuvres Completes de J.J. Rousseau_, 1837, i. 233.

Byron's mother "would have it" that her son was like Rousseau, but he
disclaimed the honour antithetically and with needless particularity
(see his letter to Mrs. Byron, and a quotation from his _Detached
Thoughts, Letters_, 1898, i. 192, note). There was another point of
unlikeness, which he does not mention. Byron, on the passion of love,
does not "make for morality," but he eschews nastiness. The loves o