from Julia, which he is positive must be the composition of a man; cautious, however, to leave a salvo by pronouncing that it is either that of a man or an angel. This paves the way for two more from the ladies, defending the rectitude and sincerity of their proceedings, and inclosing copies of the letters which had miscarried. Rousseau addresses his answer 'to the inseparables, be they men or women,' and insists with a good-natured raillery on knowing their names, on pain of dropping all intercourse with them. Thus the correspondence is kept up with considerable interest and spirit by all parties, until a letter from the gentleman, more than usually harsh and repulsive, determines Clara on relinquishing her share of the correspondence. From this time it is continued, solely between Rousseau and Mad. la Tour de Franqueville, without the knowledge, it seems, of her friend. Rousseau discovers this in due time, and humorously lowers her title to that of Marianne. I will never bestow the names of Julia and of Clara on two women, one of whom has secrets from the other. For, if I understand the hearts of Julia and Clara, they were to each other perfectly transparent: concealment was utterly impossible between them: take my advice, be satisfied with the name of Marianne; and if Marianne be such a woman as I imagine, she has no right to complain of her lot.' It must be acknowledged that this lady manages the whimsical temper of her idol with consummate dexterity. Unawed by continual repulses, she perpetually renews the assault, till she fairly triumphs over his heart. Sir and madam are by degrees rejected for dear Jean Jacques' and 'dear Marianne;' she sends him her miniature, describes her own person and countenance, and even pays him a visit during his stay in Paris. Her letters are conspicuous for that epistolary ease and delicacy peculiar to French letter-writers: they have a tenderness of sentiment and liveliness of expression that interest and attract on the most barren topics. What, for instance, can be more unpromising subjects than continual enquiries about her correspondent's health, complaints of his want of punctuality in writing, reproaches for coldness and reserve, explanations, compliments, with Terence's love-catalogue of vitia, injuriæ, Suspiciones, inimicitiæ, inducie, Yet on all these she writes not only with grace, but with an endless variety. She wears a thousand dresses, and she pleases in all. And it is not without justice that Rousseau in one of his letters, after pleading ill-health and numerous troublesome occupations as an excuse for his silence, pays her the following well-turned compliment : Let me however remark that misfortune is always productive of some sort of good: to write to you oftener would no doubt afford me great delight, but then I should lose the pleasure of observing the prodigious variety and elegance of the phrases you use to reproach me with the infrequency of my letters, and the little resemblance they bear to each other. I never read one of your letters without thinking of the perfections I have caused you to display; nor, on finishing, fail to pronounce myself blameless.' Vol. I. P. 301. As a specimen of the correspondence in general, of the citizen's caprice and of the address of his fair idolatress, for she really is little less, we will give extracts from two or three successive letters, premising however that the latter had sent to Rousseau in a previous letter a copy of verses composed by herself, and containing his eulogium. To this he sends the following surly answer: I have no skill in commending the commendations addressed to me, nor in criticising verses of which I am the hero: disliking also to receive favours of a kind I have not solicited, you cannot surely be surprised that I should be backward with my thanks. I am heartily sick of letters, memorials, verses, eulogiums, criticisms, dissertations: all these require answers, and I should have at least a dozen hands and a dozen amanuenses. I can endure it no longer. Thus, madam, since whatever mode of conduct I adopt, you still persevere in requiring of me early answers, and are always mistress of the art to make them appear necessary, I intreat you will allow me to break off our correspondence with the same earnestness that under other circumstances I should have employed to urge its continuation.' Vol. I. P. 167. To this retort-courteous, Marianne replies as follows: You do not like, you say, that the officiousness of zeal should go beyond the bounds of what you ask. Do not, sir, believe me vain enough to imagine I suppose I have done you service by speaking in your praise. I am perfectly aware that no one so little as yourself stands in need of praise, and also that no praises so little as mine deserve to be considered as a benefit. I gave utterance to my thoughts; and I shall ever think agreeably to that ut terance, even should you think proper, with added superciliousness, again to reject the homage my admiration offers you. Of what moment is your conduct to me, compared with your virtues and your writings? A genius like yours, vast and profound, engrossed by general views, would be dishonest to the universe in proportion to the attention it should bestow on a useless, solitary, worthless being, like myself. To my last breath I shall respect your principles, esteem your writings, adore your talents, and cherish your person, without requiring from you any return. Adieu, sir. Excuse the length of this letter: nothing better recommends indulgence than the certainty that it will not again be required of us; and this you possess.' Vol. I. P. 174. The Cynic philosopher softens in his next : Tu m'aduli, ma tu mi piaci. (Thou art a flatterer, yet I am pleased with thee.) I must surrender myself, madam: I am every day more convinced that it is in vain my heart endeavours to resist you: the more I resist the more I am entangled; and, by the manner in which you permit me to break off our correspondence, I perceive that you do not expect to be taken at your word. Yes, you are a woman; I know it by your ascendancy over my heart, by your address: it is a long time since I have entertained the least doubt of it. I relinquish the painful efforts I have made to break the cumbrous chains with which you wantonly have loaded me: but let me intreat you will yourself ease the burden; be no less compassionate than bewitching: accept my homage as an atonement for my negligence, and estimate with less rigour the proceedings of your slave. I was certainly to blame for mentioning to M. de Rougemont what I told you of M. du Terreaux; but the kind of reply you made to my request made me doubt if you would be prevailed on to acquaint his brother with the affair in question; and his knowing of it was quite necessary. This is not the excuse, but the motive of my conduct. I beg of you, madam, to rely implicitly on two things: the first is that, if you had observed toward me the silence I deserved of you, I should have taken especial care to have counteracted your purpose long before you could have consigned me to oblivion; and if you had used the least delay in writing to me, I should certainly have been the first to complain: further, that however your last letter bas penetrated deeply into my heart, yet I almost regret that you did not leave me this opportunity of manifesting my eagerness and my contrition. The second object I would press on your belief, madam, is that at my age it is impossible to change one's habits, and therefore I cannot with sincerity promise you a stricter punctuality in future than that you have already experienced. Notwithstanding this, my heart is deeply sensible of your kindness, and zealous to shew itself worthy of it. This, madam, whether I write or not, you may always rely upon.' Vol. I. P. 175. Another letter exhibits him in a still more amiable light, and shows that, with all his fluctuations of caprice, so long as he could believe a disinterested service to have been done to himself, ingratitude was not among his faults. During his residence at Bourgoin Mad. la Tour de Franqueville had published in Paris an anonymous paper in justification of his conCRIT. REV. VOL. 5. May, 1805. C duct. Rousseau, uninformed of the circumstance, instantly recognises the style of his fair advocate in the pamphlet which a friend had sent him, and thus expresses the warmth of his acknowledgments. My heart can never cease to be full of your image: I did already cherish you for all the amiable qualities I observed in you; but a single service proceeding from genuine friendship will ever excite in me a sentiment more powerful than any other; a senti ment that neither time nor absence can weaken: and whether the remnant of my existence be short or long, you will be equally dear and respectable in my estimation to my latest sigh.' Vol. II. P. 48. Upon the whole, whoever reads this whole correspondence of Rousseau, free from outrageous prejudice, with due allowances for natural temperament irritated by long sickness, and alternately pampered by applause, and exacerbated by persecution and abuse, will feel himself moved rather to pity than anger at his pettish frowardness, his captiousness, and mistrust. For our own part we own that our regret preponderated over disgust, and we were more inclined to weep with Marianne than to resent with Clara. It is impossible to read these letters, and not to think of Martial's 'testy pleasant fellow :' 6 Difficilis, facilis,-jucundus, acerbus es idem; Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te.' Of the letters addressed by Rousseau to M. de Peyrou, which form the second series, we have already observed that more than a third part have, with the exception of a few not very interesting passages, already appeared, both in French and English. But this objection, as well as several others of a similar nature, attaches to the French editor, and not to the English work, which we hasten to consider as a translation. The translator, as it appears in her preface, is a female, and we hesitate not to say that she would not have disgraced her name by subjoining it to that of Mad. la Tour de Franqueville in the title-page, which is no light praise. The stiffness of exotic idiom is rarely to be detected, and, for the most part, had Rousseau been an Englishman, he would not have needed to blush at having written in the style of his translator. Some little oversights have escaped her, as using you and I' in the oblique case, with here and there similar inadvertences, venial perhaps in a letter. Heloise, when Anglicized, should, we think, be spelt not Heloisa, but Eloisa. In those letters, in which we have compared her translation with that of 1790, she seems to have advanced upon it considerably in elegance - and correctness, if not in fidelity. When any poetry occurs, she is less successful. The French verses composed for the purpose of being placed under Rousseau's portrait (Vol. II. P. 445) are translated in a note, neither very faithfully nor very well, into blank verse, in which the sense closes or at least pauses at the end of each line, a mode of versifying that has a very unpleasant effect upon the ear, whether it be in English blank verse or in Latin hexameters. We are sorry that the lady should have compromised her reputation by attempting what she is unequal to. Had she no judicious friend to consult, who would be candid enough to advise her not to print her verses? We will not hurt her feelings by quoting them. Many letters in the latter series relate to the unfortunate quarrel between Rousseau and Hume. We believe the latter to have been innocent of the duplicities imputed to him by the former, and yet to Rousseau appearances must have been so much against him as in some degree to extenuate the bitterness of his resentment. We will not stir up these old disputes. Like the combatants themselves, composta quiescant'! Upon the whole we agree with the French editor that the letters which he presents to the public contain matter not merely for the gratification of general curiosity, but for the reflections of the enlightened and attentive student. Here is food for the skimmer of romances, and here is food for the investigator of mind. With all his whims and paradoxical extravagances, who can forbear to love and admire the 'citizen of Geneva'? It remains for us to emulate his bold originality of thought without running into his absurdities, to cherish his warmth and tenderness of heart without its caprices, and to exert his intrepidity and vigour in the defence of social order and of religion pure and undefiled. ART. III.-A short Account of the Cause of the Disease in Corn, called by Farmers the Blight, the Mildew, and the Rust. With two Plates. By the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks, K. B. P. R. S. &c. 4to. 1803. (Not Sold.) IT is with peculiar propriety that the attention of philosophic observers is directed to agricultural researches on the means of remedying the diseases of corn, by the veteran chief of the first philosophical society in the world: a society to which all Christendom looks up with filial reverence, as the legitimate parent of true science and sound philosophy. It is a well-known fact that the Transactions of the Royal Society of |