oes
such a conspiracy appear, upon the face of it, highly improbable, but
the evidence which Rousseau adduces to prove its existence seems totally
insufficient; and the reader is left under the impression that the
unfortunate Jean-Jacques was the victim, not of a plot contrived by
rancorous enemies, but of his own perplexed, suspicious, and deluded
mind. This conclusion is supported by the account of the affair given by
contemporaries, and it is still further strengthened by Rousseau's own
writings subsequent to the _Confessions_, where his endless
recriminations, his elaborate hypotheses, and his wild inferences bear
all the appearance of mania. Here the matter has rested for many years;
and it seemed improbable that any fresh reasons would arise for
reopening the question. Mrs. F. Macdonald, however, in a
recently-published work[7], has produced some new and important
evidence, which throws entirely fresh light upon certain obscure parts
of this doubtful history; and is possibly of even greater interest. For
it is Mrs. Macdonald's contention that her new discovery completely
overturns the orthodox theory, establishes the guilt of Grimm, Diderot,
and the rest of the anti-Rousseau party, and proves that the story told
in the _Confessions_ is simply the truth.

If these conclusions really do follow from Mrs. Macdonald's
newly-discovered data, it would be difficult to over-estimate the value
of her work, for the result of it would be nothing less than a
revolution in our judgments upon some of the principal characters of the
eighteenth century. To make it certain that Diderot was a cad and a
cheat, that d'Alembert was a dupe, and Hume a liar--that, surely, were
no small achievement. And, even if these conclusions do not follow from
Mrs. Macdonald's data, her work will still be valuable, owing to the
data themselves. Her discoveries are important, whatever inferences may
be drawn from them; and for this reason her book, 'which represents,' as
she tells us, 'twenty years of research,' will be welcome to all
students of that remarkable age.

Mrs. Macdonald's principal revelations relate to the _Memoires_ of
Madame d'Epinay. This work was first printed in 1818, and the concluding
quarter of it contains an account of the Rousseau quarrel, the most
detailed of all those written from the anti-Rousseau point of view. It
has, however, always been doubtful how far the _Memoires_ were to be
trusted as accurate records of historica