Here he wrote the first portion of his "Confessions;" and for a short time he appeared to take pleasure in his retreat, and to feel grateful to the friend who had procured it for him. A few weeks altered his feelings. He became acquainted with the pretended letter of the king of Prussia, fabricated by Horace Walpole: he began to suspect that Hume allied himself to his detractors and enemies, and he renounced all commerce with him. So far indeed were his suspicions founded, that Hume had changed his opinion with regard to him. He still spoke of him as the most delightful man in the world, when in good humour, but found his distrust and suspicions, and accesses of melancholy, detract from the pleasure which his society afforded. He had joined also in the laugh raised by Walpole's letter, which, considering that Rousseau was his peculiar guest and friend, was indelicate and insulting. Brooding in loneliness, with only the ignorant, mischief-making Thérèse for a companion, during a dreary English winter, Rousseau's mind, ever distrustful, at once became fraught with suspicion. He felt himself deserted by Hume,--he believed himself to be betrayed. Living in obscurity and neglect in a country of the language of which he was ignorant, his imagination suggested that his enemies had entered into a combination to keep him there, so to gain an opportunity, undetected, of falsifying his writings and calumniating his character. These thoughts fermented in his brain till a species of insanity ensued. He fancied that all his letters were opened; that he was, in a manner, imprisoned at Wotton; and that the object of his enemies was to seize on his "Confessions;" the knowledge of their existence having excited this persecution. A pension of 100_l_. a year, which was conferred on him by George III. in honourable terms, did not appease his anxieties nor calm the fever of his mind. Under the dominion of these false ideas,--suddenly, after a year's residence, during which he had been treated with singular consideration and kindness, he left Wotton, traversed England, embarked; and when he arrived at Calais congratulated himself on his escape, as if honour and life had depended on it. The letter he left behind addressed to Mr. Davenport, and those he wrote to his friends, accusing his English protectors of treachery, and denouncing an universal conspiracy against his reputation and writings, by proving that he was possessed by insanity, ought to have excited pity;--he met with none. An indignant cry was raised by Hume and echoed by his enemies, accusing him of base ingratitude, and a wicked intention to vilify his friends. This conduct served to excite his monomania to its highest pitch, by giving some colour to his suspicions; and he appeared to himself most calm and reasonable while he was the most entirely under the dominion of the species of insanity that had come over him. We must not, however, be misunderstood. Rousseau was very