ety and that plenitude of affection which
have so strongly marked every point of its duration, and left me so
clear a remembrance of every place at which I have been."

After she left the convent, she found her passion for reading
unabated, and as her father's library was limited, she was obliged
to borrow and hire books; from these she made copious extracts and
abstracts which formed her valuable habit of reflection upon what
she had read.

Her first feelings of contempt and bitterness toward the aristocrats
were roused by the air of condescension which the Cannets exhibited
to her in her occasional visits to Sophie. They were stupid and
arrogant people, but they made her realize that the daughter of an
artisan was not on equal footing with people allied to the nobility,
albeit she was a prodigy of beauty, learning, and talent, and they
the dullest of beings.

"I endeavored," she says, "to think with hope that everything was
right, but my pride told me things were ordered better in a
republic." So, as early as at the age of fourteen, we find this
remarkable being philosophizing upon republics, and taking part in
mind against the evils and injustice fostered by monarchies.

Madame Roland wandered from prescribed creeds, and became a liberal
in her religious ideas. She has been called an Atheist, but every
line she writes, and her life of self-sacrifice, disprove this
assertion. Her "one prayer," to which she says she confined herself,
is, to my mind, sublime with beautiful and practical religion.

"O Thou who hast placed me on the earth, enable me to fulfil my
destination in the manner most conformable to the Divine will, and
most beneficial to my fellow-creatures."

I can imagine no more perfect religious faith, no more complete
submission to, and acknowledgment of, a Supreme Power than this
prayer contains. It strikes me as far more devout and respectful
than the prayers of many people who endeavor to dictate to God and
direct Him what to do and what not to do, what to bestow and what to
withhold.

She writes of her religious agitations with great reluctance to
Sophie Cannet, fearful of disturbing the serenity of her friend's
convictions; but she continued to conform to her mother's religious
ideas during that good woman's life, and even afterward she kept up
the forms of Catholicism for the sake of a valued family servant who
was devoted to her.

This delicate consideration of the feelings of others has be