Above all his ideal was revolutionised, and the recent dreams of Plutarchian heroism, of grandeur, of palaces, princesses, and a glorious career full in the world's eye, were replaced by a new conception of blessedness of life, which never afterwards faded from his vision, and which has held a front place in the imagination of literary Europe ever since.

The notions or aspirations which he had picked up from a few books gave way to notions and aspirations which were shaped and fostered by the scenes of actual life into which he was thrown, and which found his character soft for their impression.

In one way the new pictures of a future were as dissociated from the conditions of reality as the old had been, and the sensuous life of the happy valley in Savoy as little fitted a man to compose ideals for our gnarled and knotted world as the mental life among the heroics of sentimental fiction had done.
Rousseau's delight in the spot where Madame de Warens lived at Annecy was the mark of the new ideal which circumstances were to engender in him, and after him to spread in many hearts.

His room looked over gardens and a stream, and beyond them stretched a far landscape.

"It was the first time since leaving Bossey that I had green before my windows.
Always shut in by walls, I had nothing under my eye but house-tops and the dull gray of the streets.