influence a pension for Marcel, a famous dancing master, ran to his house to present him with the patent. Marcel received it but immediately dashed it on the floor, saying, “Mademoiselle, did I teach you to offer an object in that manner? Pick up that paper and hand it to me as you ought to." She picked up the patent and presented it to him in the proper manner, whereupon Marcel said, "That's very well, mademoiselle; I accept it although your elbow was not quite sufficiently rounded, and I thank you."

Dancing master made children miniature adults. — The dancing master was the most important factor in the whole educational situation. His function was to make little children into young ladies and gentlemen as expeditiously as possible. In Monroe's" History of Education" is printed a fashion plate of the eighteenth century showing two children as miniatures of two adults who are represented in the same picture. The same condition is pictured in words by Taine, as follows:

Even in the last years of the ancient régime [down to 1783] little boys have their hair powdered, "a pomatumed chignon (bourse), ringlets, and curls”; they wear the sword, the chapeau under the arm, a frill, and a coat with gilded cuffs; they kiss young ladies' hands with the air of little dandies. A lass of six years is bound up in a whalebone waist; her large hoop-petticoat supports a skirt covered with wreaths; she wears on her head a skilful combination of false curls, puffs, and knots, fastened with pins, and crowned with plumes, and so high that frequently "the chin is half way down to her feet"; sometimes they put rouge on her face. She is a miniature lady and she knows it; she is fully up to her part, without effort or inconvenience, by force of habit; the unique, the perpetual instruction she gets is on her deportment: it may be said with truth that the fulcrum of education in this country is the dancingmaster. They could get along with him without any others; without him the others were of no use. For, without him, how could people go through easily, suitably, and gracefully the thousand and one actions of daily life, walking, sitting down, standing up, offering the arm, using the fan, listening and smiling, before eyes so experienced and before such a refined public? This is to be the great thing for them when they become men and women, and for this reason it is the thing of chief importance for them as children. (1: 137.)

This was the kind of life and education that Rousseau had before him when he wrote "Émile"; a life in which everything that was spontaneous, emotional, natural, childlike, was eliminated in favor of indifference, artificiality, and polite formality.

French courtly ideals copied elsewhere. Not only did these ideals prevail among the nobility proper, but they played a large part in the life of the wealthy members of the middle class, and even descended to shoemakers and other artisans. They were most highly developed at the French court, but they were copied in all the courts of Europe. Taine says:

Paris is the schoolhouse of Europe, a school of urbanity to which the youth of Russia, Germany, and England resort to become civilized. Lord Chesterfield in his letters never tires of reminding his son of this and of urging him into these drawing rooms, which will remove "his Cambridge rust." (1: 139.)

Even in the American colonies, among people of quality, the same ideals and practices in the training of little children were quite common. In the physical development of little girls delicacy of figure and whiteness of complexion were considered ideal by many mothers. "Little Dolly Payne, afterwards Dolly Madison, wore long gloves, a linen mask, and had a sunbonnet sewed on her head every morning by her devoted mother." Very light high-heeled shoes were worn, making exercise impossible. Sometimes little girls five years old were bound up in stays "made of heavy strips of board and steel, tightly wrought with heavy buckram or canvas into an iron frame like an instrument of torture." (4: 57.)

It was fashionable to dress the hair of little children just the same as that of adults. Little boys five to seven years of age had their heads shaved and wore wigs. A little girl had her hair dressed over a high roll, which was so heavy and hot that it made her head "itch & ache & burn like anything." She described her first experience with it as follows:

When it first came home, Aunt put it on & my new cap on it; she then took up her apron & measured me, & from the roots of my hair on my forehead to the top of my notions, I measured about an inch longer than I did downwards from the roots of my hair to the end of my chin. (4: 59.)

Children in paintings, miniature adults.-The conception of the child as a miniature adult, which prevailed in the eighteenth century in America, appears in the portraits of children painted at that time. Nearly all of them are characterized by apparent maturity in dress, expression, and gesture. Either children were so trained and dressed that they actually did appear like miniature adults, or the artist's conception of the child as an adult prevented him from seeing the real child. A picture of a girl of fourteen might very easily be mistaken for a woman of thirty. A boy standing beside his father seems different only in size. Speaking of two of these portraits which were being returned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, a gentleman wrote, " I shall miss the little grown-ups were there no children in those days?" Portraits painted after the American Revolution "show the definite changes in dress which set in with other republican institutions. At this date there began to be worn a special dress for both boys and girls." (4: 61.) The emotional reaction; Rousseau's life and character. Against the formalism, artificiality, and conventionality of the religious and social life Rousseau offered the strongest protest. It was in this that he was most original because he was simply giving expression to his own spontaneity. In his political and educational writings he copied largely from Locke and others, but in his "unrestrained emotionalism" he was simply himself. While knowledge of his life is not essential to an understanding of his historical significance, a brief sketch of it may help in understanding the origin of some of his theories.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was born in 1712 in Geneva. His mother died when he was a child, and his father, an ardent but irresponsible republican, fed him on romances which prematurely stimulated a naturally precocious, passionate nature.

Apprenticed to an engraver at thirteen, he ran away at sixteen to become a tramp. Turning Catholic as the result of a good dinner, he adopted himself into the household of a fascinating grass widow of twenty-nine, a recent convert to Catholicism, upon whom he de

pended for support with occasional intermissions for over ten years (to 1741), at the same time making love to all the attractive women he met; tramping, stealing, and lying wherever it suited his purpose. Going to Paris at the age of twenty-nine, he maintained himself by copying music and cultivating the society of ladies of influence. He spent a few months as secretary to the French ambassador at Venice. Returning to Paris, he formed an attachment for a stupid, ignorant servant girl,

ROUSSEAU

with whom he lived the rest of his life, although not married for many years, sending their five children to the foundling asylum, in spite of the mother's tearful protests.

Rousseau wrote operas, some of which were notable successes. He became the friend of the leading literary men of Paris, including d'Alembert, the Abbé Condillac, and Diderot.

While calling on the latter (who was under arrest because of some of his writings), Rousseau was inspired to write for the Dijon Academy prize, which he won by maintaining that the progress of the sciences and arts had contributed to the corruption rather than the purification of morals (1749). This essay brought him immediate fame, and he became the lion of the brilliant and immoral French society whose life he had really criticized. But to be consistent with his theories, he gave up his gold facings and white stockings, put off his sword and sold his watch, and lived the simple life. He visited his native town, Geneva, where he received an ovation and returned to Protestantism. In 1755 he wrote a second famous essay on the "Origin of Inequality among Men."

To escape the unpleasantness of city life he moved to a cottage in the forest of Montmorency on the beautiful country place of one of his rich patronesses (1756). While living here he engaged in a controversy with Voltaire on the relation of the Lisbon earthquake (in which fifteen thousand people were killed) to the goodness of God. As he wandered in the woods and listened to the music of the nightingale and the murmur of the brooks, he peopled the woods, in his imagination, with all the beautiful women he had known, and lived in a continuedstory daydream in which he pictured himself as the lover of a beautiful maiden. This dream developed into his romance the "New Héloïse," which, published in 1761, took Paris by storm. This was quickly followed by the "Social Contract" and the "Émile" (1762). To escape persecution for religious innovations advocated in the " Émile," he fled to the protection of Frederick the Great (1762-1765) and to England (17651767). The opposition in France having subsided, he spent his remaining years there, troubled only by his insane, emotional, suspicious imagination. He died in 1778.

Spontaneity the foundation of Rousseau's character.The following statement by Davidson is one of the best characterizations of Rousseau's character: