hich Mme. Roland followed throughout her career had
much to do with her fall: security is the tomb of liberty; indulgence
toward men in authority is the means of pushing them to despotism.
These maxims as her motto or impulse, united with the spirit of push,
energy, and at times rashness and impropriety, naturally led her to
her ruin in those days of revolutionary ideas. She was a woman of
powerful passion controlled by reason, and with frankness, devotion,
courage, and fidelity as forces impelling her to activity. But there
was one great defect which was at the bottom of her misfortunes,--a
too great ambition, which often led her into perilous paths, even to
the scaffold, which, in its turn, covered her errors.

She is said to have married M. Roland more as a theory than as
a husband, for her ideas of marriage were such as to make pure,
disinterested love impossible. Her husband was in many respects her
intellectual superior, but she excelled him in versatility. Being her
senior by twenty years, when he grew old and infirm he depended upon
her for a great deal, all of which contributed to her restlessness
and unhappiness. Then there developed in her that terrible struggle
between loyalty to her husband and passion for Buzot, in which reason
conquered. This devotion to duty was indeed rare in those days, when
passion was supreme and pure love was almost unknown. Mr. Dobson says
that this one trait by which she gave real expression of virtue is
profoundly a product of her mental self. Her instinct would have led
her to self-abandonment, so common in that day, but her "man by the
head" self was stronger than her "woman by the heart" self. These two
sides of her character, fostered by incessant reading, incited her
fearful and unrelenting hatreds as well as her passion, "masculine
enough to be mistrusted and feminine enough to be admired." These two
qualities made her a power and an attraction. Her better side will
continue to shine clearer as the horror of those days is revealed.
Whatever may be the effects of her ambitious nature and of her
unfortunate passion for Buzot, by the very virtue of her intellect and
reasoning she will remain the one great woman of the Revolution who
willingly and conscientiously sacrificed her life for her country.

A type perhaps more universally known in her relation to the
Revolution than is Mme. Roland, though no better understood, was
Charlotte Corday. Possessed of a most intense patriot