ll to the Guillotine,
telling them, in a tone of tender reproach, like a lover of romance,
"Vous avez fletri mon coeur, je vais l'ouvrir a la Convention."--
Madame Roland, in spite of the tenderness of her sex, could coldly
reason on the expediency of a civil war, which she acknowledged
might become necessary to establish the republic. Let those who
disapprove this censure of a female, whom it is a sort of mode to
lament, recollect that Madame Roland was the victim of a celebrity
she had acquired in assisting the efforts of faction to dethrone the
King--that her literary bureau was dedicated to the purpose of
exasperating the people against him--and that she was considerably
instrumental to the events which occasioned his death. If her
talents and accomplishments make her an object of regret, it was to
the unnatural misapplication of those talents and accomplishments in
the service of party, that she owed her fate. Her own opinion was,
that thousands might justifiably be devoted to the establishment of
a favourite system; or, to speak truly, to the aggrandisement of
those who were its partizans. The same selfish principle actuated
an opposite faction, and she became the sacrifice.--"Oh even-handed
justice!"

I do not pretend to decide whether the English are virtually more gentle
in their nature than the French; but I am persuaded this douceur, on
which the latter pride themselves, affords no proof of the contrary. An
Englishman is seldom out of humour, without proclaiming it to all the
world; and the most forcible motives of interest, or expediency, cannot
always prevail on him to assume a more engaging external than that which
delineates his feelings.

If he has a matter to refuse, he usually begins by fortifying himself
with a little ruggedness of manner, by way of prefacing a denial he might
otherwise not have resolution to persevere in. "The hows and whens of
life" corrugate his features, and disharmonize his periods; contradiction
sours, and passion ruffles him--and, in short, an Englishman displeased,
from whatever cause, is neither "un homme bien doux," nor "un homme bien
aimable;" but such as nature has made him, subject to infirmities and
sorrows, and unable to disguise the one, or appear indifferent to the
other. Our country, like every other, has doubtless produced too many
examples of human depravity; but