Illi iterum fuerit casta Geneva domus.
Illic iuvenies, quidquid, conducit utrique:
Relligio hic sana est, aura, ager, atque lucus.
Amongst the various objects which are pointed out as deserving the attention of a stranger, is the house in which the celebrated J.J. Rousseau was born, in the year 1712. The circumstance is recorded by an inscription over the door. His father was a watchmaker, and his house was small and obscurely situated.
Rousseau was perhaps the most eloquent and fascinating of all the sceptical writers of the last century; and probably the only one amongst them who established a system of his own, if indeed his eccentricities can be so called. His character exhibited a strange mixture of pride, which made him perpetually anxious to be of public notoriety, and of an unsociable temper, which often made him retire in disgust with the world, and treat (without any rational cause, that has been assigned) those who were most his friends, as if he considered them to be his bitterest enemies. He was far more jealous of the reputation obtained by his contemporaries, than delighted with the approbation he personally received. Considered as a philosopher, he was paradoxical; as a moralist, dangerous and licentious; as a parent, unnaturally abandoning his offspring; as a friend, suspicious and ungrateful. As pride was the ruling passion of Rousseau, so was vanity beyond dispute the grand characteristic of Voltaire, (the proximity of Fernay may excuse my here comparing him with Rousseau,) and this passion induced him to pervert transcendent talents to the most pernicious and fatal purposes.
The hostility of Voltaire to the Christian dispensation has been compared to the enmity rather of a rival than of a philosopher. He is thought to have wished its overthrow, not so much because he entertained any solid objections to its sublime theories, or had real doubts as to the miracles by which it is attested; as because his vanity led him to think, that if he once could persuade men to the abolition of Christianity, he might himself become the founder of a new system of moral indulgence. The Abbé Raynal, in 1791; already repented of the philosophic principles, which he had so sedulously inculcated, and expressed his conviction, that the consequence of the theories then so finely fancied, would be a general pillage, for that their authors wanted experience, to reduce their speculations to a practical system. The Abbé was right in this last expectation, and from the French Revolution, so destructive in most respects, there has at least resulted this advantage; it has furnished the most satisfactory comment upon the grand experiment of the philosophers, and proved most folly that it is religion alone that possesses authority to silence the clamours of interest, to control the passions, and to fetter the ambition of mankind. The same year (1778) is memorable for the deaths both of Voltaire and Rousseau; the first is represented as exhibiting on his death bed the most melancholy spectacle of horror and remorse that can be possibly conceived; the latter is thought to have committed suicide at Ermenonville, where he found an asylum, after having been banished successively from many states. This opinion is founded chiefly on the authority of Madame de Staël; it is related, that he rose in the morning in perfect health, and returned after his usual walk; that soon after, he desired his wife to open the window, that he might, as he expressed it, contemplate nature for the last time and that being presently taken ill, he refused to receive any assistance, and died in a few hours.
Those who have seen both those celebrated characters (who long attracted persons from all parts of Europe to this country) have remarked, that Voltaire at first sight was acknowledged to be a man of genius; but that Rousseau was only suspected of possessing superior abilities.
I have perhaps said too much on this subject, into which I have been led insensibly, by reflecting on what I had read of these philosophers, and shall therefore conclude with inserting the remark of a Savoyard peasant, who, according to M. Lantier, being asked his opinion of them, answered, "I think that Voltaire has done a great deal of mischief in the age in which he lived; and that Rousseau will not do less to posterity."