ortal
genius. _Emile_ and _La Nouvelle Heloise_ are nothing more than two
eloquent pleas for the system. The voice there raised will resound
through the ages, because it points to the real motives of true
legislation, and the manners which will prevail in the future. By
placing children at the breast of their mothers, Jean-Jacques rendered
an immense service to the cause of virtue; but his age was too deeply
gangrened with abuses to understand the lofty lessons unfolded in those
two poems; it is right to add also that the philosopher was in these
works overmastered by the poet, and in leaving in the heart of _Julie_
after her marriage some vestiges of her first love, he was led astray by
the attractiveness of a poetic situation, more touching indeed, but less
useful than the truth which he wished to display.

Nevertheless, if marriage in France is an unlimited contract to which
men agree with a silent understanding that they may thus give
more relish to passion, more curiosity, more mystery to love,
more fascination to women; if a woman is rather an ornament to the
drawing-room, a fashion-plate, a portmanteau, than a being whose
functions in the order politic are an essential part of the country's
prosperity and the nation's glory, a creature whose endeavors in life
vie in utility with those of men--I admit that all the above theory, all
these long considerations sink into nothingness at the prospect of such
an important destiny!----

But after having squeezed a pound of actualities in order to obtain one
drop of philosophy, having paid sufficient homage to that passion for
the historic, which is so dominant in our time, let us turn our glance
upon the manners of the present period. Let us take the cap and bells
and the coxcomb of which Rabelais once made a sceptre, and let us pursue
the course of this inquiry without giving to one joke more seriousness
than comports with it, and without giving to serious things the jesting
tone which ill befits them.

SECOND PART. MEANS OF DEFENCE, INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR.

"To be or not to be,
That is the question."
--Shakspeare, _Hamlet_.

MEDITATION X. A TREATISE ON MARITAL POLICY.

When a man reaches the position in which the first part of this book
sets him, we suppose that the idea of his wife being possessed by
another makes his heart beat, and rekindles his passion, either by an
a