we shall be strong."[53] This was the opening of the deistical reaction; it was thus, associated with everything that struck imagination and moved the sentiment of his readers, that Rousseau brought back those sophistical conclusions which Pascal had drawn from premisses of dark profound truth, and that enervating displacement of reason by celestial contemplation, which Fenelon had once made beautiful by the persuasion of virtuous example.  He was justified in saying, as he afterwards did, that there was nothing in the Savoyard Vicar’s Profession of Faith which was not to be found in the letters of Julie.  These were the effective preparations for that more famous manifesto; they surrounded belief with all the attractions of an interesting and sympathetic preacher, and set it to a harmony of circumstance that touched softer fibres.

For, curiously enough, while the first half of the romance is a scene of disorderly passion, the second is the glorification of the family.  A modern writer of genius has inveighed with whimsical bitterness against the character of Wolmar,—­supposed, we may notice in passing, to be partially drawn from D’Holbach,—­a man performing so long an experiment on these two souls, with the terrible curiosity of a surgeon engaged in vivisection.[54] It was, however, much less difficult for contemporaries than it is for us to accept so unwholesome and prurient a situation.  They forgot all the evil that was in it, in the charm of the account of Wolmar’s active, peaceful, frugal, sunny household.  The influence of this was immense.[55] It may be that the overstrained scene where Saint Preux waits for Julie in her room, suggested the far lovelier passage of Faust in the chamber of the hapless Margaret.  But we may, at least, be sure that Werther (1774) would not have found Charlotte cutting bread and butter, if Saint Preux had not gone to see Julie take cream and cakes with her children and her female servants.  And perhaps the other and nobler Charlotte of the Wahlverwandtschaften (1809) would not have detained us so long with her moss hut, her terrace, her park prospect, if Julie had not had her elysium, where the sweet freshness of the air, the cool shadows, the shining verdure, flowers diffusing fragrance and colour, water running with soft whisper, and the song of a thousand birds, reminded the returned traveller of Tinian and Juan Fernandez.  There is an animation, a variety, an accuracy, a realistic brightness in this picture, which will always make it enchanting, even to those who cannot make their way through any other letter in the New Heloisa.[56] Such qualities place it as an idyllic piece far above such pieces in Goethe’s two famous romances.  They have a clearness and spontaneous freshness which are not among the bountiful gifts of Goethe.  There are other admirable landscapes in the New Heloisa, though not too many of them, and the minute and careful way in which Rousseau made their features real to himself,