the world with a sick and careless eye, he occasionally penetrated into the depths of the human heart, and marked its secrets, with an accuracy that made the practised and systematic observer's survey seem but a superficial glance. He had a mind at times eminently practical,[332:1] and suited to estimate men's conduct and character: and thus appearing before the world, there has been much hesitation to pronounce, that the sincerity of insanity accompanied all his vile charges against a man whose heart could not have been for one moment visited by the atrocities of which he is accused. It is clear, that whatever had been Hume's conduct in the affair, Rousseau's rage was a storm predestined to burst upon him. Its elements were in the mind of "the self-torturing sophist," not in the conduct of any other person; and whoever was the object nearest to his thoughts at the moment, as being most associated with the circumstances in which he was placed, had to stand the shock. In this view, Hume's conduct is no more to be tested by that of Rousseau, than the keeper's by that of his patient. We are thus rid of the unpleasant employment of comparing things which cannot bear comparison; and of the sickening task of enumerating instances of kindness, attachment, persevering good offices, and charitable interpretations of conduct on the one side, met by black ingratitude, contempt, and deadly injury on the other. If we look for that over-excited propensity which may have caused this mental disease, it appears, beyond doubt, that it was vanity.[333:1] All Rousseau's avowed misfortunes are the calamities of celebrity. At one time he is the victim of princes and prime ministers; at another, of an assembled clergy; at another, of half the learned men of Europe. That he is neglected and forgotten is never among his ostensible complaints; though there is good reason to believe that it was at the bottom of his most conspicuous fits of fury. The English people, though they were at first somewhat curious about the remarkable stranger, did not incommode themselves about him, and obstinately abstained from following him into the wilderness. In his long letter of charges, he cannot help bitterly remarking the apathy of the public; but he states it as an accusation against Hume,[333:2] whom he supposes to have said, like Flavius, I'll about And drive away the vulgar from the streets: So do you too, where you perceive them thick. These growing feathers, pluck'd from Cæsar's wing, Will make him fly an ordinary pitch, Who else would soar above the view of men, And keep us all in servile fearfulness.