We say little of Rousseau's vain excuses as to the probable destiny of his children. They were better, he says, brought up by the public, than rendered rogues by madame le Vasseur, or led into evil courses as dependants on madame d'Epinay and the maréchale de Luxembourg. This futile reasoning does not need elaborate refutation. Rousseau talks of public care, as if that were, in such a place as a Parisian foundling hospital, aught else but public desertion. The poor children in all probability died in their infancy. Rousseau was indeed short-sighted. Brought up in virtue and honour, as a man of his talents ought to have brought up his offspring,--or genius were a vainer gift even than it is,--these children might have clustered round him in his days of desolation, have cheered his house with smiles, and been a help and support in his age. He would not have felt friendless, nor been driven to suicide by the sense of abandonment and treachery. He indeed sowed the wind, and reaped the whirlwind. France was on the eve of a sanguinary revolution. The social state of things was about wholly to change. Who knows of what use Rousseau's sons might have been to check barbarous outrages, to teach justice, or display fortitude? Such ideas are vain, but will present themselves. Our first duty is to render those to whom we give birth, wise, virtuous, and happy, as far as in us lies. Rousseau failed in this,--can we wonder that his after course was replete with sorrow? The distortion of intellect that blinded him to the first duties of life, we are inclined to believe to be allied to that vein of insanity, that made him an example among men for self-inflicted sufferings. We now dismiss this subject. It was necessary to bring it so far forward as to show the evil effects of so bad a cause; it is too painful to dwell further upon. By degrees Rousseau overcame his dislike to its being known to his friends that he had formed this sort of connection with Theresa, and he made common household with her. This species of intercourse was looked upon in a different light in France than in England. She was regarded as Rousseau's housekeeper, and respected as such; and no one thought that they had a right to scrutinise their real relations, or to censure them. This had been praiseworthy as a proceeding founded on tolerant and charitable principles; but when we find that this kindly-seeming society was a Moloch, whom to pacify, little children were ruthlessly sacrificed, the whole system takes a revolting and criminal aspect from which we turn with loathing.