but really ingenious and difficult, art of teaching. When education
is better understood, it will be more generally acknowledged, that,
to impart instruction with success, a teacher must possess deeper
intelligence than is implied by the profoundest skill in any one branch
of science or of art. All minds, even to the youngest, require, while
being taught, the utmost compliance and consideration; and these
qualities can scarcely be properly exercised without a true knowledge of
the human heart, united to much practical patience. St. Pierre, at this
period of his life, certainly did not possess them. It is probable that
Rousseau, when he attempted in his youth to give lessons in music, not
knowing any thing whatever of music, was scarcely less fitted for
the task of instruction, than St. Pierre with all his mathematical
knowledge. The pressure of poverty drove him to Holland. He was well
received at Amsterdam, by a French refugee named Mustel, who edited a
popular journal there, and who procured him employment, with handsome
remuneration. St. Pierre did not, however, remain long satisfied with
this quiet mode of existence. Allured by the encouraging reception given
by Catherine II. to foreigners, he set out for St. Petersburg. Here,
until he obtained the protection of the Marechal de Munich, and the
friendship of Duval, he had again to contend with poverty. The latter
generously opened to him his purse and by the Marechal he was introduced
to Villebois, the Grand Master of Artillery, and by him presented to the
Empress. St. Pierre was so handsome, that by some of his friends it was
supposed, perhaps, too, hoped, that he would supersede Orloff in the
favor of Catherine. But more honourable illusions, though they were
but illusions, occupied his own mind. He neither sought nor wished to
captivate the Empress. His ambition was to establish a republic on the
shores of the lake Aral, of which in imitation of Plato or Rousseau,
he was to be the legislator. Pre-occupied with the reformation of
despotism, he did not sufficiently look into his own heart, or seek to