elcomes him kindly. He says:--

From the first day, the most affectionate familiarity sprang up
between us, and that to the same degree in which it continued
during all the rest of her life. _Petit_--Child--was my name,
_Maman_--Mamma--hers; and _Petit_ and _Maman_ we remained, even
when the course of time had all but effaced the difference of our
ages. These two names seem to me marvellously well to express our
tone towards each other, the simplicity of our manners, and, more
than all, the relation of our hearts. She was to me the tenderest
of mothers, never seeking her own pleasure, but ever my welfare;
and if the senses had any thing to do with my attachment for her,
it was not to change its nature, but only to render it more
exquisite, and intoxicate me with the charm of having a young and
pretty mamma whom it was delightful for me to caress. I say quite
literally, to caress; for it never entered into her head to deny me
the tenderest maternal kisses and endearments, nor into my heart to
abuse them. Some may say that, in the end, quite other relations
subsisted between us. I grant it; but have patience,--I cannot tell
every thing at once.

With Madame de Warens, Rousseau's relations, as is intimated above,
became licentious. This continued until, after an interval of years
(nine years, with breaks), in a fit of jealousy he forsook her.
Rousseau's whole life was a series of self-indulgences, grovelling,
sometimes, beyond what is conceivable to any one not learning of it all
in detail from the man's own pen. The reader is fain at last to seek the
only relief possible from the sickening story, by flying to the
conclusion that Jean Jacques Rousseau, with all his genius, was wanting
in that mental sanity which is a condition of complete moral
responsibility.

We shall, of course, not follow the "Confessions" through their
disgusting recitals of sin and shame. We should do wrong, however, to
the literary, and even to the moral, character of the work, were we not
to point out that there are frequent oases of sweetness and beauty set
in the wastes of incredible foulness which overspread so widely the
pages of Rousseau's "Confessions." Here, for example, is an idyll of
vagabondage that might almost make one willing to play tramp one's
self, if one by so doing might have such an experience:--

I remember, particularly, having pa