intended as a 'feeler.'

Rousseau's letter must turn to his early essays, to his 'Conoperated so far that it destroyed these hopes, fessions,' to his Heloise:' but for his theoand involved him in a quarrel with the phi- retic views, for those utterances that have losophe of Ferney; but when afterwards weight in themselves, and are not merely cutheatricals were actually introduced in Ge- rious, as expositions of a character, we must neva, it was found that the citizens had so go to the Contrât Sociale' and 'Emile.' little taste for them, that a permanent exist- The former contains the theory of the citience could not be secured. Thus Rous-zen-the rights belonging to the free memseau in his letter was fighting against a sup- ber of a free state, subject to naught but posed evil, which left to itself would have that universal will of the state, in which he perished naturally. himself has a share the rights which are inherent in him because he is a man, and which he has himself limited by becoming a party to a social compact. The latter contains the theory of the man-the natural man apart from his connection with any state whatever. Rousseau gives himself an imaginary pupil, whom he calls Emile,' and educates him from the moment of his birth to the time when he is married and may be supposed to acquire a political existence. The savage life which Rousseau eulogized at the expense even of the most perfect republic, finds its representative in the young Emile: only it is much softened down since first it was so violently advocated. Then the inhabitant of the woods and mountains, born under no government, having no property, and conscious of no law, was the ob

Whether it was from a feeling of patriotism, or whether it was from feeling himself not a strong man, Rousseau always tried to have a numerous party on his side: it had been his constant aim to flatter the republic of Geneva. The adulation was dealt out in a most liberal measure in the dedication of the 'Discourse on Inequality,'-the moral worth of the Genevese was valued at a high rate, when he expressed such dread at their corruption by the introduction of a theatre, -he puffed the pipe of peace with his compatriots while eulogising the cercles, and if he did go so far as to admit that the Genevese women, when assembled in a knot together, talked scandal about their own husbands, he added that it was much better to do so, than to indulge in the same vein when any of the male sex were in the room. Pas-ject of admiration: now it is to the man, tors, citizens, ladies, pipe, pot, and scandal, all was virtuous at Geneva. Nay, more virtuous was it to get drunk, and talk ribaldry at Geneva, than to keep sober, and study mathematics at Paris. Unfortunately, this love for his country (let us believe it really was love) was not returned in a spirit of kindness; and the little amiable prejudices which he had been at such pains to exalt, re-acted against their defender in a frightful manner. In the present times, the anniversary of Rousseau's birthday is a great occasion at Geneva; but it was a very different matter when he was alive. We all know how the seven cities, through which the living Homer begged his bread, contended, after his decease, for the honour of his birth. Rousseau's case was still harder, for he was obliged to endure a severe persecution; no longer a shadowy, unreal persecution, invented by himself in his morbid moments, but a substantial storm, which beat him about from point to point most relentlessly. By the publication of his 'Emile,' this storm was occasioned.

'Emile' is unquestionably the greatest of all Rousseau's works. The thoughts which lie scattered elsewhere, the opinions which he had previously uttered in a crude form, are here carefully digested, and arranged into a systematic work. For the weaknesses and vanities of Rousseau, we

born under a modern government, but at
the period of his life when he also has no
property, and is conscious of no law, that
Rousseau directs his attention. The book
Emile' is a system of education: but what
is that system? It is the system of letting
nature perform the greatest part of the work,
and as the savage is instructed by her voice,
so causing the child to be instructed also.
Only the plan is modified to a certain extent,
because Emile is to be educated into com-
plications which the savage can never know,
and hence, though his path is originally that
of nature, he has-such is the world-to be
led to civilisation as a goal: a civilisation,
which, be it understood, does not make him
so completely blend with his fellows as to
lose his identity, but allows him still to re-
tain a substance of his own which can exist
apart from society. It is by feeling wants,
that the savage learns the use of his several
faculties, but his wants are few and simple :
it is by surrounding Emile with the wants
of a more artificial kind, that his training is
accomplished. The preceptor's entire occu-
pation is to watch over this Emile; his in-
fluence is unfelt by his pupil, as he teaches
him no precept, sets him no task; but he is
constantly preparing such an atmosphere,
that the pupil must infallibly guide himself
to the desired point. So far is the educa
tion natural, that the pupil is merely le

1

on by the desire of supplying his own guages, but he is to consider these as mere wants; so far is it artificial, that these trivial accomplishments, and is early taught wants are artificially awakened. What is to think that the mechanic who pursues an called learning is deferred to an age com- useful calling is higher than a philosopher paratively mature, when the boy can be or a poet. Though supposed to be rich, be made to feel uneasy at the want of it; but is nevertheless to be independent of the all crowding of a child's mind with words, freaks of fortune; and he learns the trade the notions attached to which he cannot of a joiner, is regularly bound apprentice, possibly understand, are expressly prohibit- that in all circumstances he may obtain a ed. Precocious displays of erudition, such livelihood. Thus he becomes Rousseau's as the knowledge of geography and history, ideal of a man: a man depending on no long recitations of poetry by children, Rous- society, but capable of mixing in any the seau treats with the most utter contempt; man believed in at the time of the Revolufables, in which beasts and birds hold con- tion, which Rousseau foresaw, and which verse, he opposes strenuously as means of so shortly followed: and whatever we may conveying instruction in childhood, protest- think of the means adopted to cultivate this ing that they only serve to give false im- ideal, certainly the thought itself was a pressions, and that La Fontaine, in his great one. By the side of Emile,' the time the favourite author for children, is ideal man, strong of limb, firm in his indeneither adapted to them by his language, pendence, stamped with all the nobility of nor by his moral. Our own Cowper, in a nature, is placed the ideal woman,' whom fit of small wit, chose to ridicule this notion Rousseau calls Sophie. In treating of her, of Rousseau's, and wrote a miserable fable he appears as the strenuous opponent of himself to show his contempt for the doc- the rights-of-woman' sort of thinkers, who trine, but he simply showed that he did not consider women capable of performing all understand the man whom he condemned. the political offices of a man, and as unjustly As it was Rousseau's principle of education kept in a state of subjection. He objects to inspire a series of wants, and to commu- even to the influence which ladies had alnicate nothing that the child himself did not ready obtained in the fashionable circles of desire, it was necessary that words corres- Paris; he objects to their presiding over ponding to no notions at all should be pro-society; to their giving opinions on matters hibited and more necessary to exclude those to which wrong notions were attached. A word in a child's mouth should only, in this system, serve to mention something he cared about; and therefore he could have no use for words, the meanings of which were out of his mental reach, nor for figurative expressions, which could only tend to confuse his view of the relation between names and things. Emile' is a wellweighed, carefully written book; the remarks on the disposition of children are founded on the acutest observation; and he who heedlessly attacks an isolated part, is likely to find he has chosen an adversary his superior in strength.* The plan of hindering Emile from learning when a child, and confining his earliest years to bodily exercises, and a few rude notions of the Jaws of property, is not, however, merely adapted to prevent him from being a precocious savant. He is not to be a savant at any period of his life, for Rousseau, still adhering to the side he took years before, continues to hold that character in contempt. In due time the pupil learns something of the classics, and of modern lan

of philosophy and literature: teaching that domestic life is the proper sphere of woman, and that the secondary position assigned to her, is the result not of prejudice, but of the natural order of things. When Rousseau thinks calmly, there is nothing of what may be called the 'socialist' in his composition. Politically he is an ultra-revolutionist, but with regard to social laws he is strictly conservative.

The cause of the storm that was created on the publication of Emile' was the 'Profession of Faith of the Vicaire of Savoy' which appears as a mere episode of the work. This insidious 'profession' is remarkable for its display of natural piety. The declarations of faith in a Supreme Being, and in the immortality of the soul, are made with the greatest appearance of devoutness; but while the doctrine of a future state is proved' by arguments singularly unconvincing, the groundwork of every positive religion is assailed with remarkable tact and acuteness. The evidence by miracles,-in short any sort of evidence that would make of Christianity anything but a mere system of morality,-is assiduously controverted; and though the doctrines of Rousseau are such as in the present time might obtain him no severer name than that of a 'rationalist,' he was in his day a com

tionists. If his nature was not quite natural, it was natural enough to move those who had only gazed at the mere artificial. Truly it is a great sight to see this Rousseau, this creature of feeble purpose, constructing what he believed to be the natural man out of such strange materials as society presented him, and out of such a weak self. The man of his imagination grew to maturity in the 'Emile,' and there is no doubt he was as dear a companion to his preceptor as if he had been a reality. He would have marred his idol by a projected work, called Emile and Sophie: a work of which only a few chapters were written, and which promised to be one of immense power: but the ideal man was to have risen triumphant from his imaginary misfortunes. Pygmalion--and Jean Jacques wrote a Pygmalion-created an ideal, saw it realized, and was blessed: Rousseau erected likewise an ideal, but he saw the impossibility of its realization in the world, he gnashed his teeth at actualities, and sunk into despair and madness.

ART. II-Schwedische Geschichten unter
Gustav dem Dritten, vorzüglich aber unter
Gustav dem vierten Adolf. (Sketches of
Swedish History under Gustavus III. and
Gustavus IV., Adolphus.) Von E. M.
ARNDT. Vol. I. 8vo. Leipzig. 1839.

THE history of Sweden from the beginning of the sixteenth century downwards is a remarkable proof how brilliant a thing it is, and how dangerous, for a country to be governed by a race of kings in whose blood genius, and to it closely allied madness, is hereditary. Men of business proverbially have an instinctive distrust of genius: Jove's thunder, they say, is a thing always more sublime than safe, useful indeed, nay necessary at certain critical seasons for shaking and purifying the morbid overladen atmosphere, but on common occasions dispensable. Not that genius is a thing essentially bad in itself; the men of business are not so uncharitable as to say that; it is a thing essentially good, but good for the most part in excess or in disproportion to the occasion. There lies the evil. It overshoots the mark. Like old Acestes in the Æneid, it does not shoot the pigeon, but the clouds; and the clouds burn and blaze, and stars shoot across the sky, and all men cry a miracle; but with all this the proper mark of the archer was the pigeon, and not the cloud.

There is, indeed, a sort of calm, mild, well-toned, contemplative genius, which is perfectly safe. In the world of books there are many such, a Sophocles, a Jeremy Taylor, a Goethe; but wisdom with a sword in her hand is rare. The genius of soldiership is dangerous on a throne. A conqueror who knows how to stop conquering, like Frederick of Prussia when he had finished the Silesian business, is one out of a hundred. Charles XII. did not know where to stop; Napoleon did not know where to stop. A king ought to sit upon his throne; but military geniuses like Napoleon and the Swede, are not to be made to sit anywhere. They must spur and drive on with or without a rational aim. Did not Charles, when at Bender, ride three strong horses weary every day? Could he have existed otherwise? To move about the world, and drive down all opposition, with a leathern belt about his loins, a sharp sword in his hand, booted and spurred, and gloved,was it not the very life, and breath, and being of the man? Was it not the very life, and breath, and being of Napoleon also? Could he have existed otherwise? Could the Corsican or the Swede, being as they were the most fulminant of soldiers, be for the countries which they respectively governed, anything but bad kings? The reign of the one was to France, after the necessa ry good of self-preservation had been obtained, altogether a brilliant blunder; and though the other was cut short in his career, the extraordinary obstinacy of his character a feature equally remarkable in Napoleon-leaves little ground for hoping that he would have been able to secure more favourable terms of peace than those which his successors were contented to receive two years after his death, at the fatal peace of Nystadt (1721) which opened the Baltic to Russia. Thus all the gain of Narva and of Charles the Twelfth's military genius to Sweden was a splendid loss.

But let us not look exclusively at one side of the picture. The men of business are quite right when they do not pray Heaven to send men of genius to keep their daily ledgers and to collect their yearly rents; but kings have sometimes extraordinary work to do; and then a genius will do great things. When we take a survey of the long line of intellectually gifted Swedish sovereigns (concerning whom Arndt justly remarks, that in such close succession no European country has anything parallel)— Gustavus Wasa, Charles IX., Gustavus Adolphus, Christina, Charles X., Gustavus, Charles XI., Charles XII., and Gustavus III.-we shall find that though

The history of Sweden from the time of Gustavus Wasa is more interesting than any history of modern times, chiefly for this