He offered his morning prayer from a hill-top, and in the evening, before he left, stooped to kiss the ground and the trees, gazing till they were out of sight at the places where he had been so happy.

At the Hermitage with Therese there was a similar idyll.

The most epoch—­making event in European feeling for Nature was the appearance of La Nouvelle Heloise (1761).  The book overflows with Rousseau’s raptures about the Lake of Geneva.  St Preux says: 

’The nearer I drew to Switzerland, the greater were my emotions.  That instant in which I discovered the Lake of Geneva from the heights of Jura, was a moment of ecstasy and rapture.  The sight of my country, my beloved country, where a deluge of pleasure had overflowed my heart; the pure and wholesome air of the Alps, the gentle breeze of the country, more sweet than the perfumes of the East; that rich and fertile spot, that unrivalled landscape, the most beautiful that ever struck the eye of man, that delightful abode, to which I found nothing comparable in the vast tour of the globe; the mildness of the season, the serenity of the climate, a thousand pleasing recollections which recalled to my mind the pleasures I had enjoyed;—­all these circumstances together threw me into a kind of transport which I cannot describe, and seemed to collect the enjoyment of my whole life into one happy moment.’

La Nouvelle Heloise shewed the world three things in quite a new light:  the inner consciousness which was determined to give feeling its rights again, though well aware that ’a feeling heart is an unhappy gift from heaven’; the taste for solitude, ’all noble passions are formed in solitude’; and closely bound up with these, the love of romantic scenery, which it described for the first time in glowing language.

Such expressions as these of St Preux were unheard of at that time:  ’I shall do my best to be free quickly, and able to wander at my ease in the wild places that to my mind make the charm of this country.’  ’I am of opinion that this unfrequented country deserves the attention of speculative curiosity, and that it wants nothing to excite admiration but a skilful spectator’; and ’Nature seems desirous of hiding her real charms from the sight of men, because they are too little sensible of them, and disfigure them when within their reach; she flies from public places; it is on the tops of mountains, in the midst of forests, on desert islands, that she displays her most affecting charms.’

Rousseau certainly announced his views with all the fervour of a prophet proclaiming a newly-discovered truth.  The sketch St Preux gives of the country that ‘deserved a year’s study,’ in the twenty-third letter to Julia, is very poetic.  He is ascending a rocky path when a new view breaks upon him: