"

"They make me feel injustice and look upon absurdity," replied this
philosopher of thirteen.

Thus early did she commence her political meditations, and here were
planted the germs of that enthusiasm which subsequently nerved her to
such exertions for the disenthralment of the people, and the
establishment of republican power upon the ruin of the throne of the
Bourbons. She thought of the ancient republics, encircled by a halo of
visionary glory, and of the heroes and heroines who had been the
martyrs of liberty; or, to use her own energetic language, "I sighed
at the recollection of Athens, where I could have enjoyed the fine
arts without being annoyed at the sight of despotism. I was out of
all patience at being a French-woman. Enchanted with the golden period
of the Grecian republic, I passed over the storms by which it had been
agitated. I forgot the exile of Aristides, the death of Socrates, and
the condemnation of Phocion. I little thought that Heaven reserved me
to be a witness of similar errors, to profess the same principles, and
to participate in the glory of the same persecutions."

Soon after Jane had entered her fourteenth year, she left her
grandmother's and returned to her parental home. Her father, though
far from opulence, was equally removed from poverty, and, without
difficulty, provided his family with a frugal competence. Jane now
pursued her studies and her limitless reading with unabated ardor. Her
mind, demanding reality and truth as basis for thought, in the
developments of character as revealed in biography, in the rise and
fall of empires as portrayed in history, in the facts of science, and
in the principles of mental and physical philosophy, found its
congenial aliment. She accustomed herself to read with her pen in her
hand, taking copious abstracts of facts and sentiments which
particularly interested her. Not having a large library of her own,
many of the books which she read were borrowed, and she carefully
extracted from them and treasured in her commonplace book those
passages which particularly interested her, that she might read them
again and again. With these abstracts and extracts there were freely
intermingled her own reflections, and thus all that she read was
carefully stored up in her own mind and became a portion of her own
intellectual being.

Jane's mother, conscious of the importance to her child of a knowledge
of domestic duties, took her to the market to obtain m