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religious element in the enjoyment of nature, to an extent which we think has been scarcely generally enough recognized. Even an author in whom one would least of all expect to find such a spirit abounds with indications of it; we refer to Aristophanes, from some of whose comedies, especially such a one as the Clouds, many proofs of this assertion could be drawn. Even if the Greek mythology was not a mere calendar of the powers and workings of nature personified, even if its stories were not mere attempts to clothe in human narrative the impressions of her phenomena -which would of itself prove a capability of watching nature amounting to the best evidence of a love for it—no people, from the evidence of its literary remains, was more open to the influence of nature from this point of view. But even the Romans of the hypercivilized days of the empire had not lost all vestiges of this feeling, as many passages besides those quoted by M. Friedländer from Seneca, Pliny, and others, tend to show. The second source of their interest in scenery he traces to the circumstance of the celebrity attaching to any place, and derived from poetry and literature. When Lucilius came back from a tour in Sicily, the only subject on which Seneca was anxious to have information from him was the real nature of the whirlpool of Charybdis; "he had already been informed that Scylla was a rock without any danger whatsoever." This is no doubt only a bastard kind of interest in scenery; but do not, we may fairly ask, similar motives play a very important part in the interest taken in whole districts by modern tourists who consider themselves very good judges of the picturesque? Who crowd the steamboats on Loch Lomond and Loch Katrinethe real lovers of scenery, or the readers of Sir Walter Scott? And does the castled crag of Drachenfels call forth more admiration of its natural beauty, or attempts at remembering the entire stanza in which Byron first insured attention to its devoted head? Again, natural, curiosities and abnormities were as interesting to the Romans as they are to modern travellers who think they admire the Cave of Fingal or the Giant's Causeway because they are beautiful, and really only wonder at them because they

NEW SERIES-VOL. I., No. 2.

are strange. We are certainly more blasé than the crowds of Romans and Greeks who, according to Lucian, made an annual trip to Gades, or the west coast of Gaul, in order to see the ebb and tide of the Atlantic; but some of us, mutatis mutandis, still deserve the reproach of the younger Pliny, that men travel over sea and land to see the wonders of foreign lands, while those of Italy are left unnoticed.

But the question of course remains, whether the Romans possessed that sense for the pure beauty of natural scenery in itself, the influence of which at the present day few will deny, and which was justly remarked upon by Mr. Gladstone, when he opened a park in Lancashire the other day, as a cheering sign of the times. In the sense in which workmen, taking a walk in the park, may be said to be open to the beauties of nature, the Romans were assuredly not one whit behind ourselves. Amonitas was the term by which they expressed the tranquil beauty of scenery most congenial to them, which, as a rule, they sought by the sea-side. But they appear to have lacked the sense of the romantic, which, notwithstanding its many ludicrous perversions, is an undoubted acquisition of our own times. They seem, as M. Friedländer ingeniously proves by the conspicuousness of its absence in cases in which a modern could have hardly failed to introduce it, to have cared neither for the glow of sunset nor for the pale light of the moon. Such expressions as "blue mountains," "glimmering twilight," such a passage as the well-known apostrophe to the sinking sun which M. Friedländer quotes from Faust-and others could, of course, be added by the thousand from our own poets and poetasters he looks for in vain in the ancient writers. Above all, with the Alps at their door, there were no Alpine travellers at Rome. But an inquiry into this last point would not be complete without touching upon another element of modern delight in nature which Professor Friedländer, as a German, has naturally left out. The Romans, with all their refinements of luxury, as well as the ancient Greeks, with their exquisitely natural lives, were too much in the open air, and took too much active exercise as a matter of course, to be

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likely to have a very keen appreciation of exceptional air and exercise in their sublimation in Alpine travel.

Lastly, we are reminded of the absence of effective incitements to travel for its own sake among the Romans, in comparison with those so amply provided in our own times. This was, of course, at once cause and effect, for the Romans could not have failed to cultivate the natural sciences if they had cared for them. And thus it is interesting to find Professor Friedländer quote from Humboldt the three principal causes which the latter states to have in his own case excited an early inclination to travel in the tropical districts-namely, poetical descriptions of nature, landscape-painting, and the cultivation of tropical plants. Humboldt says that an irrepressible desire to visit the tropics was implanted in him by Foster's book on the South Sea Islands, by some pictures of the banks of the Ganges in the house of Warren Hastings in London, and by a colossal dragon-tree in the Botanical Gardens at Berlin. No Roman could have received any such fruitful impressions at home, for description of nature, in the sense of that contained in Foster's book, is one of the most modern branches of literature, and scarcely was such at all before Humboldt himself wrote. Landscape painting was an art nearly unknown to the Greeks and Romans; and as for tropical plants, Roman horticulture confined itself to forcing nature into productiveness and prettiness, without attempting to encourage her to reproduce herself in any thing like her own grandeur.

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talents, her high character and pure patriotism, the influence she exercised upon the more moderate and respectable section of the Republicans, the fortitude with which she bore the sorrows of her imprisonment and the intrepidity with which she met her tragic fate-all have tributed to render her an object of attrac tion and pity. She stands forth among her contemporaries as a fair representative of what was best in the party that overthrew the ancient monarchy. In the prejudices of that party she fully shared, and her memoirs speak of Louis XVI. and of his political intentions in terms which history has certainly not ratified. But, in the generally noble aims of the Girondists, and in their utter abhorrence of the excesses of Robespierre and his crew, she also fully shared: and when her friends fell before that Nemesis of successful agitators-the necessity of gov erning in the face of agitators more extreme than themselves-their fall bore her with them in a common ruin. Able and, for the most part, upright men, had they all possessed her energy and courage, it is possible they might have made a more effectual stand than they did. Be that as it may, few nobler deaths than hers were the result of their want of practical governing power.

Madame Roland was born in Paris on the 18th of March, 1754. Her father was an engraver on metal, and belonged to the bourgeois class. Her mother was a woman of sense; and, though not in anywise remarkable, obtained a strong hold on the affections of her only daughter, who speaks of her in her memoirs with the tenderest affection and respect. From a very early age the child manifested a great aptitude for study, and systematically devoured every book that came within her reach. She had also thrown all the ardor of her nature into the performance of her religious duties. At the age of eleven she was sent, at her own earnest request, to a convent, in order that she might prepare herself more calmly and suitably for her "first communion." Here it was that she formed with Sophie Cannet one of those in

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had failed; for Madame Roland, with a self-complacency which is one of the worst features in her character, gives us to understand that she had had any number of offers. The marriage took place in the early part of 1780, and was, on the whole, more happy than might bave been expected of a marriage so entirely de raison. For M. Roland was twenty

tensely strong attachments which occa- | she accepted the hand of M. Roland. sionally exist between deep-hearted un- This gentleman succeeded where many married women. Her frequent letters to her friend have been published, and contain a pretty complete history of her life up to the date of her marriage. The correspondence then ceases; for M. Roland seems, foolishly enough, to have regarded the matter with jealousy, and to have expressed a desire that intimate relations should cease. His wife's comment on this is: "It was ill judged; for mat-years older than his wife, and not young rimony is a grave and solemn state, and if you deprive a woman of feeling of the pleasures of friendship with persons of her own sex, you expose her to temptation." However, notwithstanding this separation and the divergence of their political opinions, the bond of affection that had united Madame Roland to Sophie Cannet and to her sister Henriette did not break utterly. Some idea of its strength may be obtained from the fact that, when, many years afterwards, the former was waiting in the prison of Sainte-Pélagie for the death that was advancing but too surely, Henriette came and offered to die in her stead. The interview was thus described to a friend by one of the actors:

"I was a widow and had no children; Madame Roland had a husband already advanced in years and a charming little daughter who required the care of a wife and of a mother. What was more natural than that I should expose my useless life to save hers? My wish was to exchange clothing with her and to remain a prisoner while she endeavored to escape under favor of the disguise. All my entreaties, all my tears, remained fruitless. But they would kill you,' she repeated constantly; your blood would be upon me. Rather would I suffer a thousand deaths than have to reproach myself with yours.""

for his age-a man of learning and severe
moral principle, but egotistical, pedantic,
and devoid of any lovable qualities. His
profession was that of a government in-
spector of arts and manufactures. In all
his literary pursuits his wife took a very
active share-in fact, it would seem that
the best and most effective bits in his
writings are nearly always due to her
pen.
She herself says:

"The habit of and the taste for, a studious

life made me share in the labors of my husband so long as he remained a private individual; I wrote with him as I ate with him, because the one came to me as naturally as the other, and because, living only for his happiness, I devoted myself to what gave him the greatest amount of pleasure. He described the artsI described them also, though they were wearisome to me; he was fond of erudition-we made our researches together; if he relaxed his mind by sending some literary fragment to an academy, we worked at it together, or separately, so as to compare our work and select the better, or else remodel the two; if he had written homilies, I should have done the same. He became a minister; I did not take any part in the administrative portion of his duties; but if there was a circular to be dispatched, a series of instructions or an important public paper to be drawn up, we conferred on the subject together, according to the confidence subsisting between us; and, penetrated with his ideas, full of my own, I took up the pen which On leaving the convent Mademoiselle I had more time to wield than he. Both havPhlipon went back to live with her par-ing the same principles and the same spirit, ents, and spent the years of her girlhood and early womanhood chiefly in study The first event of any importance that broke the calm monotony of her existence was the death of her mother, which happened in 1775. After this, her father, who seems to have been an excessively commonplace man, took gradually to vicious courses, and wasted his daughter's fortune. Disgusted with his conduct, she determined to abandon him; and it was while living in solitude that

ting them into words; and my husband had we ended by agreeing in the manner of putnothing to lose in passing through my hands. I could express nothing with respect to justice and reason which he was not capable of realizing and upholding by his character and conduct; and I depicted better than he could have described what he had executed, or what he could promise to accomplish. Roland, administrator; his activity, his knowledge, without me, would not have been a less good were his own, like his uprightness; with me he produced more sensation, because I put into the writings that mixture of strength with

sweetness, of the authority of reason with the charms of feeling which belong, perhaps, only to a woman gifted with a tender heart and a healthy brain. I worked with delight at these writings, which I deemed were destined to be useful; and I found in their production more pleasure than if I had been known as their author. I yearn for happiness; and find it in the good I do, and do not even feel any need of glory; I do not see in this world any part which suits me except that of Providence. I allow the mischievous to regard this avowal as an impertinence, for it must bear

some resemblance to one: but those who know me will see nothing in it but what is sincere like myself."

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Ministre de l'Intérieur by Louis XVI., who had determined to try to govern with a popular ministry. For this post Roland, it is not too much to say, was quite unfit; and his nomination can only be explained by a complete dearth of men of capacity and integrity. During the ten weeks of his tenure of office he seems to have applied himself mainly to weakening the monarchy which he should have strengthened; and in the manner of his resignation he weakened it still more. The once famous letter announcing his determination to the king was the work of his wife.

We may here remark that it was in his Two months afterwards, on the 10th capacity as an administrator-the one of August, the people invaded the Tuilewhich Madame Roland declares was ex-ries; the king fled for refuge to the Naclusively his own-that her husband most tional Assembly, and was deposed, the signally failed. But to return to the revolution was triumphant, and Roland wife notwithstanding all her literary was reinstated as Minister of the Interior. avocations, she prided herself on never The times were now terrible and the neglecting her household duties. One position horribly responsible. What was trait especially deserves notice, as being wanted was a statesman ready in decisvery singular in France at that time, and ion, firm and prompt in action, fertile in not now as common as it should be; expedients, plausible in speech. Roland, namely, that she insisted on being her with the best intentions, was a pedant, child's nurse. and powerless as a leader of men. Something better than sententious circulars was required to rule revolutionary France at a time when the mob was butchering the inmates of the prisons. He failed; but while blaming him for his failure, it is but just to remember the almost insurmountable difficulties against which he had to contend. It is but just, also, to remember that, by protesting against that which he had not prevented, he exposed himself to almost certain death. In this last duty his wife took a noble part. The charms of her conversation and the nobleness of her somewhat ostentatious sentiments had won for her a high place in the esteem of her husband's political friends, the Girondists. This influence she used to urge them to make no truce with the Septembriseurs, the assassins of the prisoners. Nor were they slow to answer to a call which was that of their own consciences; and the National Convention was swayed by their character and talents. But, unfor tunately, the legislature was weak and powerless, and the revolutionary cutthroat Commune was all-powerful. For the time Paris was a despot and the rest of France a slave.

In the latter part of the year 1791, his inspectorship having been abolished, Roland left Lyons, where he had been living for some time, and came to Paris. He was already a strong partisan of the revolutionary opinions that were gaining strength with every hour and shaking society to its foundations. It was an anxious time; but as yet the horrors of the Reign of Terror had not been felt, and upright men still looked forward with hope and confidence. Flying from the abuses of the past, they did not perceive that they were rushing headlong into a pit of still darker abuses in the future. Madame Roland was all eagerness, and threw herself into the movement with all the passion of her nature. Indeed, it raises a sad smile to compare the language in which she speaks of the turbulence of the populace at this time with that which she used when the oppression of her own friends had shown her the justice of mob-law. Roland, immediately on his arrival in Paris, joined the society of the Jacobins and made himself very active as a member of the Corresponding Committee. Utterly to his own and to his wife's surprise, he was, on the 24th of March, 1792, appointed

With the fall of the Girondists came,

of course, the fall of Roland. In January, 1793, he had resigned a place which it had for some time been a dishonor to hold. But this was not enough to appease such enemies as Robespierre, Hébert, and Marat. On or about the 31st of May, his arrest was decreed by the Revolutionary Committee, and he fled. His wife, who had something of the Roman in her composition, made no attempt to escape.

"I thought it quite right," says she, "that Roland should clude the popular fury and the talons of his enemies. As for me, their interest to do me harm could not be so great; to kill me would be an act so detestable that they would not care to incur its odium; to put me in prison would scarcely serve them, and would, as far as I was concerned, be no great misfortune. If they had some shame and went through the usual forms of interrogating me, etc., I should have no difficulty in confounding them; that might even serve to enlighten those who were really deceived with regard to Roland. If they actually instituted a new 2d of September [the date of the massacres], it could only be in the event of their having in their power all the upright deputies, and of all being lost in Paris. In that case I would rather die than be a witness of the ruin of my country; I should feel honored by being included among the glorious victims sacrificed to the rage of crime. The fury assuaged on me would be less violent against Roland, who, once safe from this crisis, might again render great services to some portions of France. Thus one of two things must happen: either I am only in danger of an imprisonment and of a judicial procedure which I shall be able to render useful to my country and to my husband, or, if I must die, it will only be in an extremity in which life will be hateful to me."

To these reasons, as we shall have further occasion to show, must be added Madame Roland's love for one of the Girondist leaders. But such words, be it remembered, are not in her mouth mere empty gasconade. Nothing in her words or actions during the term of her imprisonment belies these sentiments. Never once did she stoop to beg any favor from her tormentors, or cease to speak to them with the contempt they deserved. But into the details of that imprisonment, and of her trial and death, we must forbear to enter. We will not describe the cruel farce of her release and recapture, the respect with which she inspired even the fallen women in the prison, the favors her gracious conduct

procured from her guardians, the fears of the revolutionary tribunals lest her eloquent voice should be heard at the trial of the Girondists, the fortitude with which she bore the sharpest "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," the serenity of mind that enabled her to write her memoirs untroubled even in the shadow of death, and, lastly, the high courage with which she went to the scaffold. It was not a Christian end, for Madame Roland had long forsworn the faith of her early years; but it was an end of which a Roman or a Spartan might have been proud. Her husband, as she had prophesied, committed suicide on hearing of her fate.

dame Roland's life and character to There is, however, one point in Mawhich we must revert, inasmuch as it forms the main feature of M. Dauban's interesting, though somewhat grandiloquent etude. It had always been suspected that, during the last year or two of her life, she had nourished for some one of the Girondist leaders a warmer affection than the cold friendship and esteem she felt for her husband. She herself had made no secret of the fact, adverting to it pretty openly in several passages of her memoirs; but these passages had nearly all been suppressed by the first editor, M. Bose, and are only now restored. In her "last thoughts," written when she had abandoned all hope and was contemplating suicide, after addressing her husband and her child, she exclaims:

"And thou whom I dare not name! thou whom men will some day better appreciate, pitying our common sorrows, thou whom the most terrible of passions did not prevent from respecting the barriers of virtue, wouldst thou where we can love one another without wrong, mourn to see me preceding thee to a place where nothing will prevent our union? There all pernicious prejudices, all arbitrary exclusions, all hateful passions, and all kinds of tyranny are silent. I shall wait for thee there and rest.”

The whole piece ends with these words: "Farewell. . . . No, from thee alone this is no separation; to quit the earth is to draw nearer to thee."

Hitherto the name, and, owing to M. Bose's mutilations, even the existence, of this Platonic though impassioned lover had remained doubtful. But towards the close of last year, an acciden

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