The publication of his treatise on education brought down a storm of persecution and opprobrium upon the author. The _Contrat Social_ (in which he seemed to aim at subverting the political and social traditions, as he had in _Emile_ the educational prejudices of the venerated Past) appearing soon afterwards added fuel to the flames. Rousseau found himself forced to flee from Paris, and he sought shelter in the territory of Geneva. But the authorities, unmindful of the old reputation of the land of freedom, refusing him an asylum, he proceeded to Neuchâtel, then under Prussian rule, where he was well received. From this retreat he replied to the attacks of the Archbishop of Paris, and addressed a letter to the magistrates of Geneva renouncing his citizenship. He also published _Letters Written from the Mountain_, severely criticising the civil and church government of his native canton. These acts did not tend to conciliate the goodwill of the rulers of the people with whom he had taken refuge. At this moment an object of dislike to all the Continental sovereign powers, he gladly embraced the offer of David Hume to find him an asylum in England. The social and political revolutionist arrived in London in 1766, and took up his residence in a village in Derbyshire. He did not remain long in this country, his irritable temperament inducing him too hastily to suspect the sincerity of the friendship of his host. The next eight years of his life were passed in comparative obscurity, and in migrating from one place to another in the neighbourhood of Paris. In his solitude gardening and botanising occupied a large part of his leisure hours. It was at this period he made the acquaintance of Bernardin St. Pierre, his enthusiastic disciple, and immortalised as the author of _Paul et Virginie_. His end came suddenly. He had been settled only a few months in a cottage given him by one of his numerous aristocratic friends and admirers, when one morning, feeling unwell, he requested his wife to open the window that he “might once more look on the lovely verdure of the fields,” and as he was expressing his delight at the exquisite beauty of the scene and of the skies he fell forward and instantly breathed his last. At his special request his place of burial was chosen on an island in a lake in the Park of Ermondville, a fitting resting-place for one of the most eloquent of the high priests of Nature.