Hellenism, the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, had only produced forerunners.  What in Petrarch was a tendency, became an established condition in Rousseau:  the acedia reached its climax.  All that went on in his mind was so much grit for his own mill, subject-matter for his observation, and therefore of the greatest value to him.  He lived in introspection, a spectator of his own struggles, his own waverings between an ideal of simple duty and the imperious demands of a selfish and sensuous ego.  His passion for Nature partially atoned for his unamiable and doubtful character; he was false in many ways; but that feeling rang true—­it was the best part of him, and of that ‘idealism of the heart’ whose right of rule he asserted in an age of artificiality and petty formalism.  Those were no empty words in his third letter to Malesherbes: 

’Which time of my life do you suppose I recall most often and most willingly in my dreams?  Not the pleasures of youth; they were too few, too much mixed with bitterness, and they are too far away now.  It is the time of my retreat, of my solitary walks—­those fast-flying delicious days that I passed all alone by myself, with my good and simple Therese, my beloved dog, my old cat, with the wild birds and the roes of the forest, with all Nature and her inconceivable Maker.

’When I got up early to go and watch the sunrise from my garden, when I saw a fine day begin, my first wish was that neither letters nor visitors might come to break its charm....

’Then I would seek out some wild place in the forest, some desert spot where there was nothing to shew the hand of man, and so tell of servitude and rule—­some refuge which I could fancy I was the first to discover, and where no importunate third party came between Nature and me....

’The gold broom and the purple heather touched my heart; the majestic trees that shaded me, the delicate shrubs around, the astonishing variety of plants and flowers that I trod under foot, kept me alternately admiring and observing.’

His writings shew that with him return to Nature was no mere theory, but real earnest; they condemned the popular garden-craft and carpet fashions, and set up in their place the rights of the heart, and free enjoyment of Nature in her wild state, undisturbed by the hand of man.

It was Rousseau who first discovered that the Alps were beautiful.  But to see this fact in its true light, we must glance back at the opinions of preceding periods.[1]

Though the Alpine countries were the arena of all sorts of enterprise, warlike and peaceful, in the fifteenth century, most of the interest excited by foreign parts was absorbed by the great voyages of discovery; the Alps themselves were almost entirely omitted from the maps.