ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES, a French author: celebrated not less for the singularities of his character, and the misfortunes of his life, than for the brilliancy and sentimental enthusiasm of his writings, was born at Geneva June 28, 1712. The family to which he belonged was of French origin, but had been settled for more than a century and a half in the little republican city, where his father, Isaac Rousseau, was a wntelimaker. Deprived of his mother before he was a year old, Rousseau's infancy was tenderly cared for by a sister of his father's. At the age of ten he was placed, along with a cousin, under the charge of a M. Lambercier, Protestant pastor of Bossey, near Geneva, with whom he remained two years. At fifteen a profession was chosen for him after con siderable deliberation—that of procureur (" attorney"), and he was sent to a M. Mas scroll, to acquire a knowledge of engrossing, but that gentleman quickly dismissed _him as a hopeless subject. In 1725 lie was apprenticed to an engraver of Geneva, named Abel Ducommun, a harsh and violent man, from whose vulgar tyranny the sensitive and impulsive youth took refuge in flight (1728). Henceforth, to the end of his harassed and melancholy career, he was a wanderer; resting for a brief space in many homes, and making many friends, but always driven from the former, and robbed (or thinking him self robbed) of the latter. His first protector was a Mine. de Warens, in Savoy, by whose exertions he was placed at a cha•ity-school in Turin. Here, however, he felt himself so miserable that he ran off, lived ambiguously for some time " with the wife of a soldier," but in spite of his " innocent passion" was very prop;aiy kicked out of doors by the irritated husband on his return; after which lie became a lackey in the house of the countess of Vercelli, where (as stated by himself in his Coufeasirms) lie stole a silk ribbon, and then accused a maid of the theft—in consequence of which both were dis missed. Finally, after certain vagabond adventures, lie returned to his protectress, but again fell into irregular courses, whereupon Mme. de Warens conceived the amazing idea of rescuing the youth (who was now in his 21st year) from the temptations of vice by becoming his mistress herself.. To preserve appearances, however, Rousseau always addressed her as mamma. In 1736 the two went to live at Charmettes, near Chambery. Here Rousseau fell into a state of hypochondria, and went to Montpellier to place him self under medical treatment, but on his way thither fell in with a young lady whose charms quite dissipated all lila' morbid delusions. On his return he found that Mme. de Warens had consoled herself during his absence by another lover. whereupon lie betook himself to Lyons, and lived as a house-tutor for three years. Thence he proceeded
to Paris in the autumn of 1741—under the conviction that he had made certain grand improvements in musical notation (of which in fact he.ha rdly knew the elements), and read a paper on the subject before the academie des sciences, but was told that his "improvements" were " neither new nor practicable." However, he managed to live here in an obscure way until he got the appointment of secretary to M. de Montairsi, French ambassador at Venice. After a stay of 18 months in the city of islands, he returned to Paris, and finding his superior intolerable. became intimate with Diderot, Grimm, D'Holbach, and Mme. d'Epinay, the last of whom in 1756 provided a charm ing retreat for him in the vicinity of Paris, called the hermitage, where he lived with a young girl of low origin, named Therese le Vasseur, who bore him five children, all of whom were sent by him to the foundling hospital—perhaps the most scandalous act of his strange life. Rousseau afterward married Therhe, who seems to have been a faithful and affectionate creature of small capacity. The causes of his rapture with the clique of Parisian philosophers and tine women have been the subject of envenomed mis representation in France, but from the thorough and accurate researches of M. Morin (see Essai sur la Vie et le Ca•actere de J. J. Rousseau, Paris, 1751), it turns out that Rousseau was reallythe victim of an elaborate and odious conspiracy on the part of men who betrayed the confidence that he reposed in them. The conduct of Grimm was especially shocking. Driven from the Hermitage in 1757, he again found a temporary asylum with the duke and duchess of Luxembourg: but in 1762 he found it necessary to retire to Switzerland, and fixed himself at Motiers-Travers in Neuchatel, where lie obtained the protection of Marshal Keith, then governor of that Prussian province. The intrigues of enemies pursued him even thither, and after certain paltry persecutions, lay and clerical, he accepted the offer of David Hume to visit England, where he arrived in 1766. Misunderstandings, however, ensued with the Rotel' philosopher, and in the following year he returned to France, and was installed in the castle of Trye by the prince of Conti. He did not remain long there, nor did he enjoy peace. Calumnies of the grossest kind were circulated against him, and once more he sought seenritY in precipitate flight.. In 1770 lie reappeared in Paris, where he lived in obscurity, but not in tranquillity, for eight years, when M. de Girardin offered him a refuge at his estate of Ermenonville, near the capital, in the beginning of 1778, and here the unhappy Rousseau died on July 2 of the same year.