the Letter to D'Alembert; perhaps this, referring to the citizens of
Geneva who had gone elsewhere in search of fortune, is as good as
another. Do you think that the opening of a theatre, he asks, will bring
them back to their mother city? No; "each of them must feel that he can
never find anywhere else what he has left behind in his own land; an
invincible charm must call him back to the spot that he ought never to
have quitted; the recollection of their first exercises, their first
pleasures, their first sights, must remain deeply graven in their
hearts; the soft impressions made in the days of their youth must abide
and grow stronger with advancing years, while a thousand others wax dim;
in the midst of the pomp of great cities and all their cheerless
magnificence, a secret voice must for ever cry in the depth of the
wanderer's soul, Ah, where are the games and holidays of my youth? Where
is the concord of the townsmen, where the public brotherhood? Where is
pure joy and true mirth? Where are peace, freedom, equity? Let us hasten
to seek all these. With the heart of a Genevese, with a city as smiling,
a landscape as full of delight, a government as just, with pleasures so
true and so pure, and all that is needed to be able to relish them, how
is it that we do not all adore our birth-land? It was thus in old times
that by modest feasts and homely games her citizens were called back by
that Sparta which I can never quote often enough as an example for us;
thus in Athens in the midst of fine art, thus in Susa in the very bosom
of luxury and soft delights, the wearied Spartan sighed after his coarse
pastimes and exhausting exercises" (p. 211).[354]

Any reference to this powerfully written, though most sophistical
piece, would be imperfect which should omit its slightly virulent
onslaught upon women and the passion which women inspire. The modern
drama, he said, being too feeble to rise to high themes, has fallen back
on love; and on this hint he proceeds to a censure of love as a poetic