Jean Jacques Rousseau, the son of a watch-maker at Geneva, was born June 28, 1712. His mother dying while he was yet a child, his father took a second wife; and he himself was placed at school at the village of Bossey, near Geneva, where he learnt but little, and was afterwards apprenticed to an engraver, a coarse, brutal man, whose treatment of him tended to sour a temper already wilful and morose. He became addicted to idleness, pilfering, and lying. The fear of punishment for some act of especial misconduct induced him to run away from his master, and he wandered into Savoy, where finding himself totally destitute, he applied to the Bishop of Annecy, on the plea of wishing to be instructed in the Catholic religion. The bishop recommended him to Madame de Warens, a Swiss lady, herself a convert to Catholicism, who lived at Annecy. She received the boy kindly, relieved his present wants, and afforded him the means of proceeding to Turin, where he entered the College of Catechumens, and after going through a preparatory course of instruction, abjured the reformed religion, and became a Catholic. But as he refused to enter into holy orders, on leaving the college he was again thrown upon his own resources. He became a domestic servant; but his want of self-control and discretion rendered him very unfit for his employment: and in 1730 he returned to the house of Madame de Warens, who received him kindly, and afforded him support and protection during the next ten years. Of his foolish, profligate, and ungrateful course of life during this period, we have neither space nor wish to give an account: after many absences, and many returns, Rousseau quitted her finally in 1740, receiving letters of introduction to some persons at Lyons. Tutor, musician, and private secretary to the French Ambassador, his restless temper and versatile mind led him successively from Lyons to Paris and Venice. From the last-named city he returned to Paris in 1745; and alighting at an obscure inn, met with a servant girl, Therese Levasseur, with whom he formed a connexion which lasted all the rest of his life. He tried to compose music for the stage, but did not succeed in his attempts. He was next employed as a clerk in the office of M. Dupin, Fermier-général, but did not remain long in his new employment. In 1748 he became acquainted with Madame d’Epinay, who proved afterwards one of his steadiest and kindest friends. He frequented the society also of D’Alembert, Diderot, and Condillac, and he was engaged to write the articles on music for the Encyclopédie, which he did very ill, as he himself acknowledges. One day he saw by chance in an advertisement, that a prize had been offered by the Academy of Dijon, for the best essay on the question, Whether the progress of sciences and of the arts has been favourable to the morals of mankind? He at once resolved to write for the prize, and apparently without having ever before considered the