itious. Personal distinction was never an active motor in his life.
Even his later honors, thick and fast though they fell, were rather
thrust upon than sought by him. But his nature was proud and sensitive,
and he chafed under personal control. The age was restless. The spirit
of philosophic inquiry, no longer confined within scholastic limits, was
spreading far and wide. From the banks of the Neva to the shores of the
Mediterranean, the people of Europe were uneasy and expectant. Men
everywhere felt that the social system was threatened with a cataclysm.
What would emerge from the general deluge none could foresee. Certainly,
the last remains of the old feudality would be engulfed forever. Nowhere
was this more thoroughly believed than at the home of Rousseau. Under
the shadow of the Alps, every breeze from which was free, the Genevese
philosopher had written his "Contrat social," and invited the rulers and
the ruled to a reorganization of their relations to each other and to
the world. But nowhere, also, was the conservative opposition to the new
theories more intense than here.

The mind of young Gallatin was essentially philosophic. The studies in
which he excelled in early life were in this direction, and at no time
in his career did he display any emotional enthusiasm on subjects of
general concern. But, on the other hand, he was unflinching in his
adherence to abstract principle. Though not carried away by the
extravagance of Rousseau, he was thoroughly discontented with the
political state of Geneva. He was by early conviction a Democrat in the
broadest sense of the term. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a more
perfect example of what it was then the fashion to call a _citoyen du
monde_. His family seem, on the contrary, to have been always
conservative, and attached to the aristocratic and oligarchic system to
which they had, for centuries, owed their position and advancement.

Abraham Gallatin, his grandfather, lived at Pregny on the northern shore
of the lake, in close neighborhood to Ferney, the retreat of Voltaire.
Susanne Vaudenet Gallatin, his grandmother, was a woman of the world, a
lady of strong character, and the period was one when the influence of
women was paramount in the affairs of men; among her friends she counted
Voltaire, with whom her husband and herself were on intimate relations,
and Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, with whom she corresponded. So
sincere was this latter attachme