far more widely. Voltaire had spoken to society; Rousseau spoke to the
heart of the people. He was above all things a sentimentalist, this son
of a Genevan clockmaker. Society treated him harshly; and he avenged
himself by making fierce war on society. The savage state is the
best--society being revolting in its falseness and shallow varnish: all
men are naturally equal and free; society is nothing but an artificial
contract, an arrangement by which, in the end, the strong domineer over
the weak; the state of nature is divine: there is a Garden of Eden for
those who will cast society behind them. Sciences and arts, civilization
and literature, Encyclopaedists included, are hateful as corrupters of
mankind; all progress has been backward, if one may venture to say
so--downward, certainly. Rousseau embroidered these paradoxes with a
thousand sweet sentiments: he shut his eyes to history, to facts, to the
real savage, the very disagreeable "primitive man," as he may yet
sometimes be seen. "Follow nature" was his one great precept: then you
will scourge away the false and conventional, and life will grow pure
and simple; there will be no rank, no cunning law devised to keep men
from their rights, no struggle for life, no competition. All France
panted and groaned to emulate the "noble savage"--with what success, we
know.

These were the chief literary luminaries of this time: and they all
helped to pull down the fabric of the old society. That society,
however, little understood the tendency of things; to a large extent it
became the fashion to be philosophic, to be free-minded, to attack
religion: with pride in their rank, and cold scorn for their humbler
brethren, and high-bred contempt for their clergy, and ruinous vices
sometimes made amusing by their brightness and their vivacious vanity,
the French upper classes thought it great sport to pull merrily at the
old walls of their country's institutions, never dreaming that they
could be so ill-ordered as to fall down and crush them in their ruin.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] Vauban and Boisguillebert are both to be found in _Les Economiste
Financiers du XVIIIieme Siecle_, published by Guillaumin, 1851.

[32] _Confessions_, pt. i. liv. v. Date of 1736.

[33] _OEuvres_, lxxv. 182.

[34] Corr. 1762. _OEuvres_, lxxv. 188.

[35] _OEuvres_, lxvii. 432.

[36] Condorcet, 170.

BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT

A.D. 1755

WINTHROP SARGENT GEORGE WASHINGTON

CAPTAIN DE CONTRECOEUR