--"But I perceive, sir, that I am giving lessons to
Moliere."[351]

The constant thought of Paris gave Rousseau an admirable occasion of
painting two pictures in violent contrast, each as over-coloured as the
other by his mixed conceptions of the Plutarchian antique and imaginary
pastoral. We forget the depravation of the stage and the ill living of
comedians in magnificent descriptions of the manly exercises and
cheerful festivities of the free people on the shores of the Lake of
Geneva, and in scornful satire on the Parisian seraglios, where some
woman assembles a number of men who are more like women than their
entertainers. We see on the one side the rude sons of the republic,
boxing, wrestling, running, in generous emulation, and on the other the
coxcombs of cultivated Paris imprisoned in a drawing-room, "rising up,
sitting down, incessantly going and coming to the fire-place, to the
window, taking up a screen and putting it down again a hundred times,
turning over books, flitting from picture to picture, turning and
pirouetting about the room, while the idol stretched motionless on a
couch all the time is only alive in her tongue and eyes" (p. 161). If
the rough patriots of the Lake are less polished in speech, they are all
the weightier in reason; they do not escape by a pleasantry or a
compliment; each feeling himself attacked by all the forces of his
adversary, he is obliged to employ all his own to defend himself, and
this is how a mind acquires strength and precision. There may be here
and there a licentious phrase, but there is no ground for alarm in that.
It is not the least rude who are always the most pure, and even a rather
clownish speech is better than that artificial style in which the two
sexes seduce one another, and familiarise themselves decently with vice.
'Tis true our Swiss drinks too much, but after all let us not calumniate
even vice; as a rule drinkers are cordial and frank, good, upright,
just, loyal, brave, and worthy folk. Wherever people have most
abhorrence of drunkenness, be sure they have most reason to fear lest
its indiscretion should betray intrigue and treachery. In Switzerland it
is almost thought well of, while at Naples they hold it in horror; but
at bottom which is the more to be dreaded, the intemperance of the Swiss
or the reserve of the Italian? It is hardly surprising to learn that the
people of Geneva were as little gratified by this well-meant panegyric
on their jollity