xtinguished his inventive
faculties. After the loss of two wives, whom he regarded with no common
affection, he became unfitted for profound studies; he carried his own
personal despair into his favourite objects of pursuit, and abandoned
them. The inventor of the most original work suffered the last fifteen
years of his life to drop away, without hope, and without exertion; nor is
this a solitary instance, where a man of genius, deprived of the idolised
partner of his existence, has no longer been able to find an object in his
studies, and where even fame itself has ceased to interest. The reason
which ROUSSEAU alleges for the cynical spleen which so frequently breathes
forth in his works, shows how the domestic character of the man of genius
leaves itself in his productions. After describing the infelicity of his
domestic affairs, occasioned by the mother of Theresa, and Theresa
herself, both women of the lowest class and the worst dispositions, he
adds, on this wretched marriage, "These unexpected disagreeable events, in
a state of my own choice, plunged me into literature, to give a new
direction and diversion to my mind; and in all my first works I scattered
that bilious humour which had occasioned this very occupation." Our
author's character in his works was the very opposite to the one in which
he appeared to these low people. Feeling his degradation among them, for
they treated his simplicity as utter silliness, his personal timidity
assumed a tone of boldness and originality in his writings, while a strong
personal sense of shame heightened his causticity, and he delighted to
contemn that urbanity in which he had never shared, and which he knew not
how to practise. His miserable subservience to these people was the real
cause of his oppressed spirit calling out for some undefined freedom in
society; and thus the real Rousseau, with all his disordered feelings,
only appeared in his writings. The secrets of his heart were confided to
his pen.

"The painting-room must be like Eden before the Fall; no joyless
turbulent passions must enter there"--exclaims the enthusiast RICHARDSON.
The home of the literary character should be the abode of repose and of
silence. There must he look for the feasts of study, in progressive and
alternate labours; a taste "which," says GIBBON, "I would not exchange
for the treasures of India." ROUSSEAU had always a work going on, for
rainy days and spare hours, such as his "Dictionary of