me give a start, and I exclaimed in my transport:  “At length, all my wishes are accomplished!” The first thing I did was to abandon myself to the impression of the rural objects with which I was surrounded.  Instead of beginning to set things in order in my new habitation, I began by doing it for my walks, and there was not a path, a copse, a grove, nor a corner in the environs of my place of residence that I did not visit the next day.  The more I examined this charming retreat, the more I found it to my wishes.  This solitary, rather than savage, spot transported me in idea to the end of the world.  It had striking beauties which are but seldom found near cities, and never, if suddenly transported thither, could any person have imagined himself within four leagues of Paris.

After abandoning myself for a few days to this rural delirium, I began to arrange my papers, and regulate my occupations.  I set apart, as I had always done, my mornings to copying, and my afternoons to walking, provided with my little paper book and a pencil, for never having been able to write and think at my ease except ‘sub dio’, I had no inclination to depart from this method, and I was persuaded the forest of Montmorency, which was almost at my door, would in future be my closet and study.  I had several works begun; these I cast my eye over.  My mind was indeed fertile in great projects, but in the noise of the city the execution of them had gone on but slowly.  I proposed to myself to use more diligence when I should be less interrupted.  I am of opinion I have sufficiently fulfilled this intention; and for a man frequently ill, often at La Chevrette, at Epinay, at Raubonne, at the castle of Montmorency, at other times interrupted by the indolent and curious, and always employed half the day in copying, if what I produced during the six years I passed at the Hermitage and at Montmorency be considered, I am persuaded it will appear that if, in this interval, I lost my time, it was not in idleness.

Of the different works I had upon the stocks, that I had longest resolved in my mind which was most to my taste; to which I destined a certain portion of my life, and which, in my opinion, was to confirm the reputation I had acquired, was my ’Institutions Politiques.  I had, fourteen years before, when at Venice, where I had an opportunity of remarking the defects of that government so much boasted of, conceived the first idea of them.  Since that time my views had become much more extended by the historical study of morality.  I had perceived everything to be radically connected with politics, and that, upon whatever principles these were founded, a people would never be more than that which the nature of the government made them; therefore the great question of the best government possible appeared to me to be reduced to this:  What is the nature of a government the most proper to form the most virtuous and enlightened, the wisest and best people, taking the last epithet