hantoms of
theology, he passed his days in a state of calm. Even when illness
brought it into his head that he should soon know the future lot by more
assured experiment, he still preserved a tranquillity which he justly
qualifies as sensual.

In thinking of Rousseau's peculiar feeling for nature, which acquired
such a decisive place in his character during his life at Les
Charmettes, it is to be remembered that it was entirely devoid of that
stormy and boisterous quality which has grown up in more modern
literature, out of the violent attempt to press nature in her most awful
moods into the service of the great revolt against a social and
religious tradition that can no longer be endured. Of this revolt
Rousseau was a chief, and his passion for natural aspects was connected
with this attitude, but he did not seize those of them which the poet of
_Manfred_, for example, forced into an imputed sympathy with his own
rebellion. Rousseau always loved nature best in her moods of quiescence
and serenity, and in proportion as she lent herself to such moods in
men. He liked rivulets better than rivers. He could not bear the sight
of the sea; its infertile bosom and blind restless tumblings filled him
with melancholy. The ruins of a park affected him more than the ruins of
castles.[84] It is true that no plain, however beautiful, ever seemed so
in his eyes; he required torrents, rocks, dark forests, mountains, and
precipices.[85] This does not affect the fact that he never moralised
appalling landscape, as post-revolutionary writers have done, and that
the Alpine wastes which throw your puniest modern into a rapture, had no
attraction for him. He could steep himself in nature without climbing
fifteen thousand feet to find her. In landscape, as has been said by one
with a right to speak, Rousseau was truly a great artist, and you can,
if you are artistic too, follow him with confidence in his wanderings;
he understood that beauty does not require a great stage, and that the
effect of things lies in harmony.[86] The humble heights of the Jura,
and the lovely points of the valley of Chamberi, sufficed to give him
all the pleasure of which he was capable. In truth a man cannot escape
from his time, and Rousseau at least belonged to the eighteenth century
in being devoid of the capacity for feeling awe, and the taste for
objects inspiring it. Nature was a tender friend with softest bosom, and
no sphinx with cruel enigma. He felt neit