of those amazing confessions of contemptible meanness which makes us wonder that human fingers could commit them to paper: the story of his casting the blame of a petty theft upon an innocent girl, to her probable ruin; of his desertion of his friend lying in a fit on the pavement of a strange town; of the more grievous crime of his abandonment of his own children to the foundling hospital. How can any interest survive in the narrator except that kind of interest which a physiologist takes in some ghastly disease? It would be a libel upon ourselves to suppose that we see the reflections of our own hearts in such narratives, or that we can in any degree take them as an indirect flattery to our own superiority. Such an emotion may conceivably be present in some other passages. When, for example, we read how, on the death of a dear friend, Rousseau confesses to one who loved them both that he derived some pleasure from the reflection that he should inherit an excellent black coat, he may perhaps be giving to us the sort of satisfaction which we derive from a keen maxim of Rochefoucauld. We recognise the truth—painful though it may be in itself—that some strand of mean and selfish feeling may be interwoven with genuine regret; and we may reconcile ourselves by interpreting it as a proof that some of the sentiments for which we have blushed are not inconsistent with real kindness of heart. We may smile still more harmlessly at the quaint avowal of absurdity when Rousseau decides that he will test the probability of his future fate by throwing a stone at a tree trunk. A hit is to mean salvation, and a miss, damnation. He chooses a very big trunk very close to him, succeeds in hitting it, and sets his mind at rest. We may congratulate ourselves without malice on this proof that men of genius may indulge in very grotesque follies. A student of human nature may be grateful for a frank avowal now and then of the 'fears of the brave and follies of the wise.' But how can we justify ourselves in point of taste—to say nothing of morality—at not shrinking back from the more hideous avowals of downright depravity contained in this strange record which is to convince us that none amongst the sons of men can claim superiority to Rousseau?