These delightful books, and the conversations to which they gave rise between my father and me, formed that independent and republican spirit, that proud untameable character, impatient of yoke and servitude, which has tormented me through life, in situations ill adapted to foster it. "With my thoughts continually occupied by Rome and Greece,--living, so to speak, with their great men, born myself the citizen of a republic, and the son of a father whose strongest passion was love of his country,--I warmed by his example--I fancied myself Greek or Roman--I became the man whose life I read. The account of acts of constancy and intrepidity which struck me caused my eyes to flash, and gave expression to my voice. One day, as I was relating at table the history of Scævola, the listeners were frightened to see me advance and hold my hand above a brazier to represent his action." These happy days, which, had they continued, might have blotted many pages of error and suffering from Rousseau's life, ended too soon. The darling of all, he lived in an atmosphere of love. He had one elder brother, who, treated with negligence, ran away, and took refuge in Germany. Not long after, his father had a quarrel with a French officer; and rather than submit to the short, but, as it appeared to him, unjust, imprisonment with which he was menaced in consequence, expatriated himself, leaving his little son with his sister, who had married his wife's brother; and the family was thus doubly related. Jean Jaques was now sent, together with a young cousin, to board at Bossey, with a minister named Lambercier. His life here was more pleasurable than generally falls to the lot of childhood;--the boys had their hours of tuition, and their hours of play--they quarrelled and made it up--they had their childish schemes, their holidays,--they were happy. Rousseau, in his "Confessions," well describes how these days of innocence and childish enjoyment were disturbed by an unjust punishment. The injustice sunk deep into the children's minds,--it despoiled their country home of all its charm; and this circumstance deserves mention, as it will always be found that the more children are treated with kindness and familiarity, the more necessary it is to guard against the slightest show of injustice. At a great school, accusation and punishment are often the effect of accident, and the boys lay less store by them; they are not pregnant with disgrace or shame,--many others, like themselves, are subject to the like, and it appears simply as one of the common hardships of life. But in domestic education they feel themselves to be a portion of the whole; and if that whole be harmonious, a discord, an act of tyranny, that falls peculiarly on themselves, makes a frightful impression; it appears to enfranchise them from the tacit vow of obedience under which they before lived, and causes them to regard their elders as treacherous enemies.