advice.--Her opinion of kings and courtiers.

Madame Roland was thus living at La Platiere, in the enjoyment of all
that this world can give of peace and happiness, when the first
portentous mutterings of that terrible moral tempest, the French
Revolution, fell upon her ears. She eagerly caught the sounds, and,
believing them the precursor of the most signal political and social
blessings, rejoiced in the assurance that the hour was approaching
when long-oppressed humanity would reassert its rights and achieve its
triumph. Little did she dream of the woes which in surging billows
were to roll over her country, and which were to ingulf her, and all
whom she loved, in their resistless tide. She dreamed--a very
pardonable dream for a philanthropic lady--that an ignorant and
enslaved people could be led from Egyptian bondage to the promised
land without the weary sufferings of the wilderness and the desert.
Her faith in the regenerative capabilities of human nature was so
strong, that she could foresee no obstacles and no dangers in the way
of immediate and universal disfranchisement from every custom, and
from all laws and usages which her judgment disapproved. Her whole
soul was aroused, and she devoted all her affections and every energy
of her mind to the welfare of the human race. It is hardly to be
supposed, human nature being such as it is, but that the
mortifications she met in early life from the arrogance of those above
her, and the difficulties she encountered in obtaining letters-patent
of nobility, exerted some influence in animating her zeal. Her
enthusiastic devotion stimulated the ardor of her less excitable
spouse; and all her friends, by her fascinating powers of eloquence
both of voice and pen, were gradually inspired by the same intense
emotions which had absorbed her whole being.

Louis XVI. and Maria Antoinette had but recently inherited the throne
of the Bourbons. Louis was benevolent, but destitute of the decision
of character requisite to hold the reins of government in so stormy a
period. Maria Antoinette had neither culture of mind nor knowledge of
the world. She was an amiable but spoiled child, with great native
nobleness of character, but with those defects which are the natural
and inevitable consequence of the frivolous education she had
received. She thought never of duty and responsibility; always and
only of pleasure. It was her misfortune rather than her fault, that
the idea never e