étaient lents à se succéder, plus ils sont prompts à décrire.

Ces premiers progrès mirent enfin l'homme à portée d'en faire de plus rapides. Plus l'esprit s'éclairait, et plus l'industrie se perfectionna. Bientôt, cessant de 5 s'endormir sous le premier arbre, ou de se retirer dans des cavernes, on trouva que

pierres dures et tranchant ques sortes de haches de

qui servirent à couper du bois, creuser la terre, et faire des huttes de branchages qu'on s'avisa ensuite d'enduire d'argile et de boue. Ce 10 fut là l'époque d'une première révolution qui forma l'établissement et la distinction des familles, et qui introduisit une sorte de propriété, d'où peut-être naquirent déjà bien des querelles et des combats. Cependant, comme les plus forts furent vraisemblablement 15 les premiers à se faire des logements qu'ils se sentaient capables de défendre, il est à croire que les faibles trouvèrent plus court et plus sûr de les imiter que de tenter de les déloger; et quant à ceux qui avaient déjà des cabanes, chacun dut peu chercher à s'approprier 20 celle de son voisin, moins parce qu'elle ne lui appartenait pas, que parce qu'elle lui était inutile, et qu'il ne pouvait s'en emparer sans s'exposer à un combat très vif avec la famille qui l'occupait.

Les premiers développements du cœur furent l'effet 25 d'une situation nouvelle qui réunissait dans une habitation commune les maris et les femmes, les pères et les enfants. L'habitude de vivre ensemble fit naître les plus doux sentiments qui soient connus des hommes, l'amour conjugal et l'amour paternel. Chaque famille 30 devint une petite société d'autant mieux unie, que l'at

tachement réciproque et la liberté en étaient les seuls liens; et ce fut alors que s'établit la première différence dans la manière de vivre des deux sexes, qui jusqu'ici n'en avaient eu qu'une. Les femmes devinrent plus 5 sédentaires, et s'accoutumèrent à garder la cabane et les enfants, tandis que l'homme allait chercher la subsistance commune. Les deux sexes commencèrent aussi, par une vie un peu plus molle, à perdre quelque chose de leur férocité et de leur vigueur. Mais si Io chacun séparément devint moins propre à combattre les bêtes sauvages, en revanche il fut plus aisé de s'assembler pour leur résister en commun.

A

Dans ce nouvel état, avec une vie simple et solitaire, des besoins très bornés, et les instruments qu'ils avaient 15 inventés pour y pourvoir, les hommes, jouissant d'un fort grand loisir, l'employèrent à se procurer plusieurs sortes de commodités inconnues à leurs pères; et ce fut là le premier joug qu'ils s'imposèrent sans y songer, et la première source de maux qu'ils préparèrent à leur 20 descendants; car, outre qu'ils continuèrent ainsi à s'amollir le corps et l'esprit, ces commodités ayant par l'habitude perdu presque tout leur agrément, et étant en même temps dégénérées en de vrais besoins, la privation en devint beaucoup plus cruelle que la possession 25 n'en était douce; et l'on était malheureux de les perdre, sans être heureux de les posséder.

JULIE OU LA NOUVELLE HÉLOÏSE

The freest expression of Rousseau's literary genius is to be found in his novel Julie ou la nouvelle Héloïse. Unlike his other works it was not written under provocation but was an unhampered and unhurried presentation of his ideal of life. He had arrived at the maturity of his talent and as a man of letters with the publication of the first and second discourses had tasted the savor of success. His life had fallen in pleasant places. For a brief period he was at ease with himself. He turned to his subject naturally, and as he tells us in the Confessions, under no outward constraint. Impelled only by his artistic conscience, by his desire to give local habitations and names to the visions that had floated before him, and completeness to a life which he recognized as incomplete, he began this masterpiece.

In April 1756 he had with a strange, if illusory, sense of triumph and release left Paris to take up his residence in the cottage of Mme d'Épinay at the Ermitage near the wood of Montmorency. He had planned to work on his Institutions Politiques and the papers of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, but as he walked and dreamed in those pleasant spring days the new subject imposed itself and he began his story at first without a plan and in sheer delight of creation. By a singular good fortune for his novel the passion which he sought to express in fiction came to him in reality

as he wrote. He fell deeply in love with Mme d'Houdetot the friend of Saint-Lambert.1 Here was a subject made to his hand. His story was to be the love of Saint-Preux a plebeian for Julie d'Étange in station above him. After a brief period of fiery passion SaintPreux in the interest of Julie's honor and happiness must set out on a long exile while Julie to meet her father's wish and obligation must wed M. de Wolmar. At Wolmar's invitation Saint-Preux returns to live in a bitter-sweet friendship by the side of her whom he had loved. This incongruous and strained situation was seemingly what the author would have preferred in the Saint-Lambert, d'Houdetot, Rousseau relation. In spite of the breaks with his friends which were to supervene, little of the bitterness of those later years penetrates to the story in which Jean-Jacques was so entirely absorbed.

2

Completed in 1758 and published in February 1761, the novel proved to be the most popular and in point of literary influence the most important of the eighteenth century. More than fifty editions were printed in a time when successful romances counted three or four. Copies could not be printed rapidly enough to satisfy the demand and lines were formed before the circulating libraries which rented them at ten sous an hour. The beauties of the mountain and lake scenery of Switzerland had as yet generally passed unrecog1 On this subject see Ritter's account Annales J. J. R., Vol. II, 1906, pp. 1-136.

2 For a list of the editions of the Nouvelle Héloïse see the studies by Mornet in Annales J.-J. R., Vols. V (1909), pp. 1-118, Vol. IX, pp. 67-80.

nized. Rousseau's novel brought crowds of tourists to the shores of Lake Geneva, who visited Clarens and Meillerie as places of pilgrimage and followed the course of the story, book in hand.

The reasons for this success and influence were in the main three; Rousseau's treatment of sentiment, of nature, and of the rural or "simple" life.

It would be a mistake to believe that the Nouvelle Héloïse introduced the novel of sentiment. It had long been in vogue and its popularity had recently been increased by the translations of Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe and Grandisson with which Rousseau was familiar. It was not the subject so much as the treatment which was new. We have seen that as the result of a fortunate juncture of circumstances Rousseau wrote with an impassioned sincerity that carried with it a new accent of depth and conviction. Racine in his Phèdre for instance was interested in passion, but more particularly in its effects and in the psychological analysis of these troubled states of soul. Marivaux had expressed the subtleties of the affections with rare finesse. Richardson contains long passages of sentiment interspersed with much moralizing. Rousseau was not interested in passion's effects or its analysis, nor in subtleties nor moralizing. He was making passion as such the object of artistic expression, and it was the force and feverish sincerity of this expression which he contributed to the history of romanticism.

As to Rousseau's attitude toward nature there is likewise much confusion. Contrary to general belief he did not excel in detailed descriptions as such. He