stand well in the esteem of their contemporaries, very few, we fancy, think much of posthumous fame.

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When Marie Phlipon was little more than eleven, she appears to have gone through that phase of religious fervour which so frequently occurs in the life of young Catholic girls at the time of their first communion. Manon felt that she must needs leave father and mother and retire into religious solitude to prepare herself for this important act. She sighed with regret in thinking of those days when pagan fury gave to generous Christians the crown of martyrdom.' Finally, she threw herself at her mother's feet and requested to go into a convent. As her wish was law, she was sent for one year to the convent of the Dames de la Congrégation, situated, as she herself remarked, not far from that prison of Ste. Pélagie in which she was writing her reminiscences of youth. Madame Roland has left a charming description of her cloister life during that twelvemonth. Among other things, she tells us that her religious enthusiasm was such on the occasion of her first communion, that she was obliged to be assisted to the altar by two nuns, as her tottering limbs refused to support her.

These early emotions, these first teachings, left an indelible impression. The materialist influence of the age, her extensive controversial readings, and the rebellious promptings of an inquiring mind which could not passively accept an imposed creed, concurred to shake Marie Phlipon's faith; but even in her unbelief she was always very different from the common sceptics of her day. A characteristic passage of her Memoirs, in which contempt and a lingering love for the once-venerated ceremonies of the Church are strangely mingled, will illustrate our meaning:

'Philosophy has dispelled the delusions of a vain belief; but it has not destroyed the effects of certain objects on my senses, or their association with the ideas and feelings that they were wont to beget. I can still attend with interest the celebration of divine worship, when it is conducted with dignity. I forget the quackery of priests, their ridiculous fables, and their absurd mysteries; I only see a few weak men gathered together to implore the help of a Supreme Being. The woes of mankind, the consoling hope of an all-powerful Remunerator, occupy my thoughts; all other fancies vanish, passion is hushed, the sense of duty is quickened; if music forms a part of the ceremony, I feel myself transported into another world, and I come out a better woman from the place where an imbecile crowd has assembled to worship senselessly a piece of bread.'

Religion is like all other human institutions: it does not change the mind of a man, it assimilates with his nature, and is strong or weak according as he himself may be. The common herd thinks

little, believes on trust, and acts from instinct; and there exists, in consequence, a perpetual contradiction between received precepts and general behaviour. Minds of a stronger temper act differently; they feel the necessity of harmony, and their conduct is but the interpretation of their faith. During childhood I accepted the belief which was given to me, and kept it till I was of an age to question it; but even then all my actions were most rigorously deduced from that belief. I used to wonder at the thoughtlessness of those who, professing such a faith, could act in contradiction with it, even as at the present day I wonder indignantly at the cowardice of men who, wishing to have a country, yet hold their life of any account when they are called upon to risk it in their country's service.'

The best apology that can be offered for Madame Roland's failings and errors is contained in the above lines. Earnestness and sincerity were her redeeming virtues. Had she been one of the early Christians, she would not have shrunk from martyrdom, and we may rest assured that she could have died as cheerfully for her religious as for her political faith. No mean self-interest or self-indulgence lay at the root of her errors, and she sought to deceive neither herself or others.

During the many years which were to elapse between the happy convent days and that last hour on the Place de la Révolution, Marie Phlipon's religious feeling underwent great changes, but at no time can she be said to have lapsed into indifference. Her belief and her doubts were equally sincere. The wish to do right was ever uppermost with her. In a letter written to Sophie Cannet, in 1773, when scepticism had already made great inroads in her mind, she writes: Upright hearts, 'inclined to scepticism, are bound to practise the most severe and rigid virtue, from the fear of appearing in their own eyes to ' have shaken off the yoke from a guilty desire to yield without 'hinderance to their own inclinations.' An austere philosophy, it will be owned, for a girl of nineteen! When the day of misfortune came, when on all sides she saw crime triumphant, when hope was dead for her in this world, she clung more firmly than ever to her belief in the soul's immortality and her trust in a supreme justice beyond the grave. But her's was always a fluctuating religion of the feelings, the sentimental religion of Rousseau her master.

During her stay at the convent of the Dames de la Congrégation, Marie Phlipon conceived a great friendship for two sisters, Sophie and Henriette Cannet, who were her fellowpupils, and when they returned to their home at Amiens, she began with Sophie, the younger of the two, the long and familiar correspondence of which we spoke in the first pages of this

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article.* With the help of these letters and the Memoirs it is very easy to imagine the life of the future heroine up to the time of her marriage. Indiscriminate reading was once more resorted to, as well as study under every form. Geometry, poetry, the violin and guitar, theology, natural history, and literary composition filled up her days. At one time she writes to her friend Sophie: I have just read the Researches of M. de Paw on the Egyptians and Chinese. One of these days I will send you an extract. My brain boils like wax upon the fire. I am out of patience with the shortness of time, and long to be alone, no matter where, so that I could, for ' once, take my fill of work and thinking.' And again: 'I retire with delight to my little closet where Montaigne, Massillon, Bossuet, Rousseau, Fléchier, Helvétius, Voltaire, keep me company in turn.' No wonder that in such mixed company the young brain should boil like wax.

The letters are curiously didactic, considering the age of the writer, and her young correspondent must herself have been peculiarly gifted to have enjoyed them. One letter is filled with acute and judicious remarks on Delolme's work on the British Constitution, which had just been published; another begins thus: I cannot resist the temptation, my dear friend, ' of giving you some idea of the "Memorabilia" of Xenophon,' and she runs on to a dozen pages on Socrates. Marie Phlipon was, above all, a raisonneuse: she took nothing for granted, and theorised on all subjects-even on love. There was no romance in that young girl's head or heart. There were no gentle foreshadowings of love in her, and she thought and spoke of marriage like a pedagogue : —

'I see in marriage many cares which seem to be only compensated by the pleasure of giving to Society useful members. The pleasure, I think, outweighs the cares, but to enjoy it, I must find some one who holds the same opinion, and who, moreover, possesses the ability

* Roland, after his marriage with Mademoiselle Phlipon, showed an injudicious jealousy of his wife's friendship for the Cannets, and the intimacy ceased to a certain degree. It is likely that Madame Roland herself, when immersed in politics, formed more congenial friendships with persons of the other sex. Political differences contributed to the estrangement. Les différences de notre moral ont, 'avec l'éloignement et les affaires, relaché notre liaison sans la 'rompre,' wrote Madame Roland in her Memoirs. But when she was at the Conciergerie, Henriette, then a widow without children, obtained access to her friend, and offered her the means of escape by proposing to change clothes with her and remain in her stead in prison.

to bring up his children worthily. In regard to a husband, I must look out, as a man would do who, knowing the value of a good tutor, feels himself incapable of acting the part of one. I feel the necessity of a helpmate gifted with a superior mind, who can supply all that is wanting in me to educate my children as I should wish.'

In later days, Madame Roland wrote of love in the style of a physiologist; at no time did she speak of it like a true woman. In truth and until the birth of that tardy love for Buzot-there was little of the woman in her. But all the masculine virtues were apparent even in girlhood. She seems herself to have felt that nature had committed some mistake in respect of her. If souls could choose the bodies they are to 'inhabit,' she writes to Sophie Cannet in 1774, ' mine would 'never have selected a weak and foolish sex, which is generally 'condemned to uselessness. My present passion is for the 'general good. Man is made for society; his first duty is to be useful.' And again: In very truth I am sick of being 6 a woman. I ought to have had another soul or another sex, or else have lived in another age. I ought to have been a woman of Sparta or Rome, or at any rate a French man. .. I feel chained down to a condition which should not be mine. I am like those animals of burning Africa which are shut up in our menageries. .. O liberty! idol of energetic souls! sustainer of all virtues, thou art but a name for me! Of what avail is my enthusiasm for the public "good, when I can do nothing to forward it?'

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Although Marie Phlipon wrote a good deal at this period of her life, she never contemplated appearing as an author. Her only object was to become a more enlightened and worthy member of that society, to which, according to her rule, all private interests were to be sacrificed. Even at a later day, if her pen can be recognised in the greater part of the political documents published under her husband's name, if the broadsheets placarded on the walls of Paris at the most eventful crises, the ministerial circulars, the famous letter to the Pope addressed to the Prince-Bishop of Rome in the name of the Republic to claim the release of some French prisoners, and the still more famous letter to the King which undoubtedly hastened the downfall of monarchy in France, were all written by her, it was at the instigation of M. Roland. He found in his wife an indefatigable secretary with a clever and ready pen. He soon discovered, without, perhaps, quite acknowledging the fact to himself, that his literary success was in exact ratio to the part that she took in his work, and called in her willing help on all important occasions. Having once

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admitted his wife to political partnership, it was to be expected that his very ordinary talents would soon be cast into shade by the brilliant genius of his helpmate.

But we are anticipating, and when we left Mademoiselle Phlipon, the great army of her suitors was only about to make its appearance. Masculine though she was in mind and character, she possessed no small amount of feminine charms, and was, moreover, the only daughter of a man at the head of a flourishing business. These united attractions seem to have been very powerful, if we may believe the long list which, with no small complacency, she gives in her Memoirs. It was a general rising of bachelors, une levée en masse,' to use her own expression. We have no intention of reviewing them with her. But one remark is suggested by the heterogeneous assemblage of their names. It is surprising to see how very ill-defined was the social status of a small tradesman's daughter in France some years before the great Revolution. Among the suitors for Marie Phlipon's hand we find M. Morizot de Rozain, a man of noble birth, who is refused on account of his attaching too much importance to his nobility, M. de Boismorel, both rich and noble, who would fain have secured the little bourgeoise as a wife for his son, Gardanne, a physician in good practice, several men of letters, a captain of Sepoys, a dancing-master, and lastly, tradesmen of every degree, including the butcher with whom the family dealt. We are apt to fancy that France, under the old régime, was inexorably ruled by the laws of caste. In theory it was so, both politically and socially, yet we need only read the private memoirs of the times to see that, in reality, there was a great confusion of ranks before any popular outbreak took place. Merit could not secure title and precedence, but wealth and intrigue could. Innumerable offices which could be purchased with money and obtained by favour conferred the rank of nobles upon their holders, while, on the other hand, the younger branches of the hereditary nobility, from their poverty and their contempt for any other profession than the army or the Church, were often reduced to live by their wits and to coin money, by fair means or foul, out of the only patrimony they possessed-their aristocratic names. Nothing could be more calculated than these circumstances to bring the nobility into contempt. During the half century which preceded the Revolution, France swarmed with adventurers of all ranks. Versailles itself was infested with them.

Madame Roland, at heart, was no plebeian democrat. In 1784, she solicited for her husband a patent of nobility. It is