It is difficult not to dwell, as he has done, on the delight he experienced during the commencement of his abode at the Hermitage. At first he could only enjoy the woodland walks; the budding of the trees; the balmy winds of opening spring; the aspect of nature. He deliberated as to his occupations; he arranged his papers. He still considered copying music as the calling by which he was to gain his bread; but he revolved many literary projects. The editing the manuscripts of the Abbé de Saint Pierre; an original work he named "Les Institutions Politiques;" a metaphysical discussion on the effects of external circumstances on the human mind; and, to crown all, a system of education, on which he had been requested to occupy himself, by a lady to whose sons he had at one time acted as tutor;--such were his schemes--the subject of his meditations during his walks. These meditations were, however, soon merged into reveries and day-dreams, that absorbed his heart and soul. The long summer days passed beneath the shades of the forest, recalled the wanderings of his youth, and the passions that had warmed his young heart.--A settled life with Theresa; the cares and discontents he had endured in Paris, his literary occupations and theories, engrossing his thoughts, had banished love. Now, in his solitary rambles, as his memory reverted to the illusions of bygone years, his imagination fired, his heart swelled, his being became absorbed. No real object presenting itself, he created chimerical beings, on whom he exhausted the most passionate sentiments, the most brilliant imaginations. His day-dreams became extatic: he was drunk with an abstract love for one who lived only as he painted her, in the form most delightful to his thoughts: he charmed himself by figuring various situations--by addressing letters to her--by fancying those he received in return. He checked himself in his vague reveries, and gave a form and place, a name and a habitation to his creations: the lover and beloved, and the friend dear to both, were imaged and placed in a spot carefully selected as beautiful in itself, and associated with his fondest recollections. Julie, Claire, and Saint Preux, lived and loved at Vevay, beside his native lake, in the midst of the most majestic and lovely scenes that exist on earth.