Rousseau now for protection from the Bern e'se government; but in consequence of the connexion which subsisted between it and the republic of Geneva, they refused to grant it, and insisted upon his quitting the city. He entreated them to shut him up in the common prison; and as this was of course refused, he set off from Berne in an inclement season, and arrived at Strasburg in a very destitute state. Here lie was kindly received by the Marshal de Contade, governor of the city, who treated him with the greatest kindness and generosity. From Strasburg he went to Paris, where he exhibited himself in the dress of an Arme nian, and had the good fortune to become acquainted with our celebrated countryman David Hume. who was then resident in the capital as charge d'affaires from the English court. Commiserating his desti tute condition, Mr. Hume took him along with him to England in the beginning of 1766, and obtained for him an agreeable settlement in the family which he had himself chosen as the best asylum from his ene mies. A character so compound, so capricious, so insincere as that of Rousseau, was incapable of mak ing a favourable impression upon an English mind. His licence of speech, which made him an object of wonder abroad, excited no notice in a country where every man can say what he pleases; his melancholy and troubled temperament had not even the charm of peculiarity in our land of clouds and fogs; and his overweening vanity did not find among our grave coun trymen any food for its insatiable appetite. Rousseau was therefore soon disgusted with England. Although he himself chose to speak openly of all things, and of all men, yet his love of liberty could not brook that he himself should be the subject of free discussion. The English newspapers sneered at his peculiarities: they published a forged letter from the king of Prus sia, ridiculing the principles and conduct of Rousseau, as adapted to a modern Diogenes. Such treatment was not congenial to a distempered mind like Rous seau's, and it annoyed him the more as it was the act of a liberal and free people. Here Ile had no corrupted priesthood to rail at, no fanatical ministers to ridicule, no despot to satirize. He therefore conceived that there was a general confederacy organized against him of all sects and parties. He imagined that his friend and benefactor, Mr. Hume, had leagued himself with the French philosophers against his peace and glory, and that he had brought him to England to expose him to the ridicule of his countrymen. Full of these opinions, and equally full of his own importance, he addressed an abusive letter to Mr. Flume, and re nounced a pension which that amiable man had suc ceeded in obtaining for him from the English govern ment.* From England he went to Paris in 1767, and in 1768 he published his Dictionnaire de Musique, com posed principally of the musical articles which he had contributed to the Encyclopedie. This work, though it contains many good articles, many excellent ob servations, and many just criticisms, is yet full of in accuracies, and has a tendency to mislead the student.
In the year 1769, when he was in the neighbour hood of Lyons, Rousseau married his governess Made moiselle le Vasseur, a woman devoid both of beauty and talents, but who from a devoted attention to him in health and in sickness, had gained over him an as cendancy which was unfortunately used rather to ex aggerate than to subdue his peculiarities. By this lady he had already five children, all of whom he had basely sent to the orphan hospital; a .step which he never scrupled to avow and to defend. Although the married state did not introduce Rousseau to the " matchless joys of virtuous love," abound in the mountainous districts of that province. This study was by no means a temporary pursuit, taken up for the moment. It occupied his best talents, and such was his ardour, that he corresponded on bo tanical subjects with the late M. Gouan, professor of botany at Montpellier.t The correspondence of this
botanist has fortunately fallen into the hands of our eminent countryman Dr. Hooker; and through his kindness we have now before us two of Rousseau's letters to M. Gouan,f exhibiting along with the ut most amiableness of character, a thorough knowledge of the subject on which he writes, and, as Dr. Hooker remarks in a note prefixed to these letters, " and has shown himself thoroughly acquainted with the princi ples of the science, and exhibited a degree of modesty and diffidence in his own knowledge which is seldom found in persons of much inferior acquirements. They are dated," continues Dr. Hooker, " from Dauphiny in Savoy,§ in the year 1.769, eight years before his death, during that period when he concealed his real name under that of Renon, when returning from Eng land disgusted with the world, lie sought for amuse ment and health in investigating and studying the vegetable creation in the beautiful alpine district just alluded to; and we trust that they will be found to strengthen the remark made by Sir J. E. Smith, under his article RoussEA fi in Rees' Cyclopedia, that bo tany had spread a charm over the latter years of this distinguished man, and soothed their real and ima ginary evils;' and that whenever lie touches on this favourite subject in his writings, he communicates the same charm to his readers." The effect which was produced by the Letters on Botany of J. J. Rous seau, in giving popularity to the Linn ean system in France is well known; and even in this country we could scarcely mention any truly elementary work which has been more generally read and admired, or which appears more calculated to encourage a taste for the sicence especially among young students.
The pleasures of solitude, and the pursuits of bota ny, seem to have soon lost their influence over Rous seau's mind, and we find him again in Paris in the year 1770. There he appeared on the 1st of July, at the Regency coffee-house, dressed in his usual simple garb, and enjoying the acclamations and praises of a Parisian mob. The sentence of imprisonment, passed on account of his Emile, was still in force; but his friends procured for him the permission of residence, on condition that he should neither write on religion ncr politics. This injunction lie rigorously obeyed. His life run on with serene tranquillity; and when the clouds of religious and political controversy had pass ed from his horizon, a burst of sunshine followed, which continued with more or less brightness to gild the remainder of his days. In May 1778, Rousseau and his wife accepted of an invitation from the Mar quis de Girardin, to take up his residence in a small house near his beautiful scat of Ermenonville, about ten leagues from Paris. This elegant retirement he was not destined to enjoy. On the 2d of July, 1778, yet his entrance into that state was a sort of homage paid to those social principles which it had been the business of his life to deride; and when he agreed to shackle his licentious love by " the coarser tic of hu man laws," he may be considered as having expressed some regret for his crime, in the fulness of his age, and the maturity of his intellect. Vet this was perhaps only another caprice of his unsettled temper, and we should have regarded it as such, had it not been cer tain that this was the most rational period of his life, and that he now sought for tranquillity of mind in the peaceful study of the productions of nature. At Bour goin, in Dauphiny, where he resided, lie embarked eagerly in botanical study, and employed himself dili gently in collecting and examining the plants which he was carried off by a stroke of apoplexy in the 66th year of his age. The Marquis erected a monument to his memory in the Isle of Poplars, in his pleasure grounds, with the following inscription: The relics of Rousseau were afterwards carried to Paris; and in 1814., we saw the tomb with the above inscription in the Pantheon of the French metropolis.