ABSTRACT
I was now nearly forty-five years of age. Travelling on some factitious occasion near the lakes of Westmorland and Cumberland, and listening, as my custom was, after whatever was extraordinary and interesting (I listened, as the reader has by this time perceived, with vain hope; what was called extraordinary, had scarcely the power to excite my attention; what interested others, moved not me), – I was told of a gentleman, by name Macneil, that had resided much in foreign countries, and was supposed particularly to have possessed the confidence of the celebrated Jean Jacques Rousseau, who had been some years an inhabitant of the banks of the Windermere. a He had a family of daughters, to the forming whose manners and mind he and his wife had devoted themselves; so that this man, who had travelled so much, and whose understanding was so highly cultivated and refined, seemed to have no further business remaining in life, except to provide the / children, the offspring of his marriage, with the motives and means of a virtuous and happy existence.
