political thought, his unregulated mind went all astray.

Let us now turn to consider a moment his doctrines pertaining to
education, as brought out in his greatest and most unexceptionable work,
his "Émile."

In this remarkable book everything pertaining to human life appears to
be discussed. The duties of parents, child-management, punishments,
perception and the beginning of thinking; toys, games, catechisms, all
passions and sentiments, religion, friendship, love, jealousy, pity; the
means of happiness, the pleasures and profits of travel, the principles
of virtue, of justice and liberty; language, books; the nature of man
and of woman, the arts of conventional life, politeness, riches,
poverty, society, marriage,--on all these and other questions he
discourses with great sagacity and good sense, and with unrivalled
beauty of expression, often rising to great eloquence, never dull or
uninstructive, aiming to present virtue and vice in their true colors,
inspiring exalted sentiments, and presenting happiness in simple
pleasures and natural life.

This treatise is both full and original. The author supposes an
imaginary pupil, named Émile, and he himself, intrusted with the care of
the boy's education, attends him from his cradle to his manhood, assists
him with the necessary directions for his general improvement, and
finally introduces him to an amiable and unsophisticated girl, whose
love he wins by his virtues and whom he honorably marries; so that,
although a treatise, the work is invested with the fascination of
a novel.

In reading this book, which made so great a noise in Europe, with so