turning himself inside out for public inspection. Since his time we have had similar exhibitions on a larger scale. Rousseau said that he was making a new experiment, and one which would have no imitators, by exhibiting a man as he really was, and that man himself. The exhibition, it is generally agreed, was not altogether edifying; but it is also agreed that it was singularly fascinating. It was certainly a step beyond Pope. To call upon mankind to admire your virtues, and even to manufacture sham virtues for the purpose, is an intelligible aim, but it amounted to a discovery when your vices and your meannesses were employed for the same purpose. It is easy enough to preach upon the morality of the criminals; it would be proper to add in a pulpit that they were not promoting the welfare of their souls by such transactions. But, then, can we honestly say when we are out of the pulpit, that we wish that they had not done it? Pope's contrivances at least added to our literature one of the most interesting collections of correspondence in the language; a series of letters which puts us face to face with some of the most brilliant of our writers, and enables us to realise as nothing else can do the strength and the weakness, the shrewd-
