of a literary coterie consoled me for the more public and more durable
applause I had resigned.

But even this gratification did not last long. I fell ill; and the
friends who gathered round the wit fled from the valetudinarian. This
disgusted me, and when I was sufficiently recovered I again returned
to the Continent. But I had a fit of misanthropy and solitude upon
me, and so it was not to courts and cities, the scenes of former
gayeties, that I repaired; on the contrary, I hired a house by one of
the most sequestered of the Swiss lakes, and, avoiding the living, I
surrendered myself without interruption or control to commune with the
dead. I surrounded myself with books and pored with a curious and
searching eye into those works which treat particularly upon "man."
My passions were over, my love of pleasure and society was dried up,
and I had now no longer the obstacles which forbid us to be wise; I
unlearned the precepts my manhood had acquired, and in my old age I
commenced philosopher; Religion lent me her aid, and by her holy lamp
my studies were conned and my hermitage illumined.

There are certain characters which in the world are evil, and in
seclusion are good: Rousseau, whom I knew well, is one of them. These
persons are of a morbid sensitiveness, which is perpetually galled by
collision with others. In short, they are under the dominion of
VANITY; and that vanity, never satisfied and always restless in the
various competitions of society, produces "envy, hatred, malice, and
all uncharitableness!" but, in solitude, the good and benevolent
dispositions with which our self-love no longer interferes have room
to expand and ripen without being cramped by opposing interests: this
will account for many seeming discrepancies in character. There are
also some men in whom old age supplies the place of solitude, and