yond the walls, to protect the windows from the
summer's sun and the winter's rain and snow. The external walls,
straight, and entirely unornamented, were covered with white plaster,
which, in many places, the storms of years had cracked and peeled off.
The house stood elevated from the ground, and the front door was
entered by ascending five massive stone steps, which were surmounted
by a rusty iron balustrade. Barns, wine-presses, dove-cotes and
sheep-pens were clustered about, so that the farm-house, with its
out-buildings, almost presented the aspect of a little village. A
vegetable garden; a flower garden, with serpentine walks and arbors
embowered in odoriferous and flowering shrubs; an orchard, casting the
shade of a great variety of fruit-trees over the closely-mown
greensward, and a vineyard, with long lines of low-trimmed grape
vines, gave a finish to this most rural and attractive picture. In the
distance was seen the rugged range of the mountains of Beaujolais,
while still further in the distance rose towering above them the
snow-capped summits of the Alps. Here, in this social solitude, in
this harmony of silence, in this wide expanse of nature, Madame
Roland passed five of the happiest years of her life--five such years
as few mortals enjoy on earth. She, whose spirit had been so often
exhilarated by the view of the tree tops and the few square yards of
blue sky which were visible from the window of her city home, was
enchanted with the exuberance of the prospect of mountain and meadow,
water and sky, so lavishly spread out before her. The expanse,
apparently so limitless, open to her view, invited her fancy to a
range equally boundless. Nature and imagination were her friends, and
in their realms she found her home. Enjoying an ample income, engaged
constantly in the most ennobling literary pursuits, rejoicing in the
society of her husband and her little Eudora, and superintending her
domestic concerns with an ease and skill which made that
superintendence a pleasure, time flew upon its swiftest wings.

Her mode of life during these five calm and sunny years which
intervened between the cloudy morning and the tempestuous evening of
her days, must have been exceedingly attractive. She rose with the
sun, devoted sundry attentions to her husband and child, and
personally superintended the arrangements for breakfast, taking an
affectionate pleasure in preparing very nicely her husband's frugal
food with her