La Nouvelle Heloïse has been censured for the dangerous example it affords, and for the interest it throws upon seduction and frailty. The character of St. Preux is decidedly faulty, and even base, in spite of all his sophistry, which however has probably led other young men placed in a similar situation to forget the relative duties of society, and the obligations of hospitality. Here we perceive also the influence of Rousseau’s favourite paradox; for in a state of nature, such as Rousseau has fancied it, the intimacy of St. Preux and Julie would have been unobjectionable. But then the relative position of the teacher, his pupil, and her parents, would not have been the same as in the novel, for they would have been all savages together. Rousseau has however redeemed the character of Julie after she becomes a wife, and he has thus paid a sincere homage to the sacredness of the marriage bond, and to the importance of conjugal duties, the basis of all society. Rousseau was not a contemner of virtue; he felt its beauty, though his practice was by no means modelled on its dictates. He tells us himself the workings of his mind on this subject. “After much observation I thought I perceived nothing but error and folly among philosophers, oppression and misery in the social order. In the delusion of my foolish pride I fancied myself born to dissipate all prejudices; but then I thought that, in order to have my advice listened to, my conduct ought to correspond to my principles. I had been till then good-hearted, I now became virtuous. Whoever has the courage of showing himself such as he is, must, if he be not totally depraved, become such as he ought to be.” It was probably in compliance with his growing sense of moral duty, that he married at last the woman he had so long been living with, when she was forty-seven years of age, and, as he himself acknowledges, was not possessed of any attractions of either mind or person, having nothing to recommend her except her attention to him, especially in his frequent fits of illness or despondency. He seems also to have bitterly repented, in the latter years of his life, having in his youth sent his illegitimate children to the foundling hospital.