Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 209, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1912 — Rousseau’s Etiquette of Love. [ARTICLE]

Rousseau’s Etiquette of Love.

Before Rousseau, love was a highly refined form of social Intercourse, a species of gallantry conducted witn self-restraint, and all the formalities of special etiquette; any extravagancy, whether in feeling, in speech, or in action, was banished. But when SaintPreux, oppressed by his high-strung passions, came to the rock at Meilllere to pour forth in solitude the flood of his sentimental tears, all the witty refinements of eighteenth century gallantry, for good or for evil, were finally swept away; extravagancy was free to lay down the Rousseau who enabled Mlrabeau, In his first letter to Julie Danvers (whom he had never seen), to declare, also, am a lover, have emptied the cup of sensibility to the dregs, and could give a thousand lives for what I love.” It was Rousseau who laid down a new etiquette of love which every petty poet and novelist still' adheres to. — Atlantic Monthly.