Rousseau, toward the latter part of his life, abandoned all intercourse with society under a notion, which was the effect of his melancholy disposition, that the world had conceived an unconquerable antipathy against him; and that his former friends, particularly Hume, and some philosophers in France, not only had entered into confederacy to destroy his glory and repose, but to take away his life. On departing from England, he passed through Amiens, where he met with Gresset, who interrogated him about his misfortunes, and the controversies in which he had been engaged; but Rousseau only answered, “You have got the art of making a parrot speak, but you are not yet possessed of the secret of giving language to a bear:” and when the magistrates of the city wished to confer on him some marks of their esteem, he refused all their offers, and considered these flattering civilities like the insults which were lavished in the same form on the celebrated Sancho in the island of Barataria. To such extent, indeed, did his disordered imagination carry him, that he thought one part of the people looked upon him like Lazarillo de Tormes, who being fixed to the bottom of a tub, with only his head out of water, was carried from one town to another to amuse the vulgar. His bad health, a strong and melancholy imagination, a too nice sensibility, a jealous disposition, joined with philosophic vanity, and his uncommon devotion to solitude, tended to prepossess him with those wrong and whimsical ideas. But it must be confessed that the opposition he met with from different ranks of persons, at several periods of his life, was extremely severe. He was driven at one time from France, in which he had before been distinguished by his writings, and highly honored. At another time he was chased from Geneva, the place of his nativity, and of his warmest affection. He was exiled from Berne with disgrace; expelled, with some appearance of injustice, from Neufchatel; and even banished from his tranquil solitude on the borders of the lake of Bienne. His disposition therefore to avoid society, must not be entirely attributed to his melancholy disposition; nor his love of solitude to a misanthropic mind. Every acute and scientific observer of the life and character of this extraordinary man will immediately perceive that the seeds of that melancholy disposition, and fretful temper, which through life destroyed his repose, were sown by nature in his constitution. He confesses indeed, to use his own words, that “a proud misanthropy, and peculiar contempt for the riches and pleasures of the world, constituted the chief traits of his character.” This proud spirit and contemptuous mind were mixed with an extreme sensibility of heart, and an excessive indolence of disposition; and his body, which was naturally feeble, suffered, from ill health, the keenest agonies, and most excruciating disorders, to which the human frame is incident.