most elevated and spiritual, of all the productions of the prolific genius of France in the eighteenth century.  A poor light-hearted Marmontel thought that the secret of Rousseau’s success lay in the circumstance that he began to write late, and it is true that no other author, so considerable as Rousseau, waited until the age of fifty for the full vigour of his inspiration.  No tale of years, however, could have ripened such fruit without native strength and incommunicable savour.  Nor can the mechanical movement of those better ordered characters which keep the balance of the world even, impart to literature that peculiar quality, peculiar but not the finest, that comes from experience of the black unlighted abysses of the soul.

The period of actual production was externally calm.  The New Heloisa was completed in 1759, and published in 1761.  The Social Contract was published in the spring of 1762, and Emilius a few weeks later.  Throughout this period Rousseau was, for the last time in his life, at peace with most of his fellows.  Though he never relented from his antipathy to the Holbachians, for the time it slumbered, until a more real and serious persecution than any which he imputed to them, transformed his antipathy into a gloomy frenzy.

The new friends whom he made at Montmorency were among the greatest people in the kingdom.  The Duke of Luxembourg (1702-64) was a marshal of France, and as intimate a friend of the king as the king was capable of having.  The Marechale de Luxembourg (1707-87) had been one of the most beautiful, and continued to be one of the most brilliant leaders of the last aristocratic generation that was destined to sport on the slopes of the volcano.  The former seems to have been a loyal and homely soul; the latter, restless, imperious, penetrating, unamiable.  Their dealings with Rousseau were marked by perfect sincerity and straightforward friendship.  They gave him a convenient apartment in a small summer lodge in the park, to which he retreated when he cared for a change from his narrow cottage.  He was a constant guest at their table, where he met the highest personages in France.  The marshal did not disdain to pay him visits, or to walk with him, or to discuss his private affairs.  Unable as ever to shine in conversation, yet eager to show his great friends that they had to do with no common mortal, Rousseau bethought him of reading the New Heloisa aloud to them.  At ten in the morning he used to wait upon the marechale, and there by her bedside he read the story of the love, the sin, the repentance of Julie, the distraction of Saint Preux, the wisdom of Wolmar, and the sage friendship of Lord Edward, in tones which enchanted her both with his book and its author for all the rest of the day, as all the women in France were so soon to be enchanted.[1] This, as he expected, amply reconciled her to the uncouthness and clumsiness of his conversation, which was at least as maladroit and as spiritless in the presence of a duchess as it was in presences less imposing.