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obstructive in the Legislature, and neither built up, nor aided in building up, any one portion of the constitutional machinery. They see, too, that, with scarcely an exception, all the more influential of their fellow-colonists are the architects of their own positions, are by no means ignorant of their wants, and have not shown any absence of sympathy with those constituencies which returned them to the Legislature. These are elements which the more influential colonists might turn to advantage. It is scarcely to be expected that they will spare time from their private pursuits to engage in a public life which an extreme—and we think injurious-jealousy has left without reward; nor is there an unemployed landed class to supply their place. The difficulty is to find inducements of an honourable kind and of sufficient power to lead men of character, station, and ability to devote a large portion of their time to the public service. With such an element in colonial affairs, there is very little doubt that these Colonies will make a right use of the great prosperity which lies around them, and provide for that great future which lies before. But without it, let America declare on how dangerous a sea they embark. Nor has the short history of Australian constitutional government been without its fluctuations. By this test, we have already seen it succeed,-fail,-and now partially succeed again. All the more influential colonists rallied round its first Triennial Parliament. Its second, they left to the contempt of colonists within and without its walls. In its third, we have seen a very considerable reaction. It remains to be seen under what auspices the fourth parliamentary campaign opens, and whether this reaction will be continued. Nor is the future to be prepared for very distant. In America, we have seen it arrive in a lifetime. We have seen a constitution of fourscore years broken to atoms; a system of internal industry which was the admiration of the world reduced to smoking embers; a huge debt raised; and the flower of the population killed or maimed. Doubtless neither Slavery nor Federalism menaces these Colonies; but if the body be unsound, will the specific disease be long wanting? It is certain that the Australians will no less rapidly rise into the proportions of a great nation: will they be more wise or more fortunate?

ART. IV.-1. Etude sur Madame Roland et son Temps, suivie des Lettres de Madame Roland à Buzot et d'autres Documents inédits. Par C. A. DAUBAN. Paris: 1864.

2. Mémoires de Madame Roland, édition entièrement conforme au manuscrit autographe transmis en 1858 par un_legs à la Bibliothèque Impériale, publiée avec des notes. Par C. A. DAUBAN. Paris: 1864.

3. Mémoires de Madame Roland écrits durant sa captivité. Nouvelle édition revue et complétée sur les manuscrits autographes et accompagnée de notes et de pièces d'un grand intérêt. Par M. P. FAUGÈRE. Paris: 1864.

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WE E live in an age of historical and biographical discovery. Every day brings to light some secret of the past, some hidden and long-sought-for testimony which has baffled the curiosity of our predecessors; and whereas, at first sight, it might appear natural to suppose that the course of time would render the attainment of truth more difficult, experience shows us that time is, in reality, the best auxiliary of historic research. The mere fact of the disappearance from this world's scene of those who have had personal interest in creating mystery or distorting facts, and the extinction of contemporary fears and hatreds, or even of contemporary scruples and delicacy, leave exposed to the curiosity of succeeding generations much that, being concealed, was supposed to be destroyed. Each successive flood of living passion as it subsides leaves bare at the feet of inquiring posterity the stranded vestiges of former wrecks and long-appeased storms.

But something more than this general law of natural disclosure operates in favour of modern inquiry. The age of discovery in history and literature, as in geography, art and science, is, in fact, synonymous with the age of research. There is no obscure point of history the elucidation of which is not in the present day the object of the untiring efforts of many minds; there is no memory of any note which scores of biographers are not striving to re-edify and set up in its integrity before the public. Old documents must be worthless indeed to be considered as waste paper in our time. Governments print their state records, families publish their domestic annals, and lastly-though not the least important feature in this case-the love of autographs has become a reigning passion. The commercial value of collections of this kind has enlisted even cupidity in the interests of learning;

and materials for history-even when chance throws them into the hands of the ignorant or the indifferent-soon find their way to the portfolio of the collector, or, at any rate, to the table of the auctioneer.

These several agencies working towards the same end have not, however, produced results quite so startling as some fanciful historians would have us to believe. With very rare exceptions, the minutest researches of modern investigators have left the most prominent characters of history in very much the same position, as regards public estimation, that they occupied in less inquiring times on the mere strength of tradition and popular instinct. To some few, posterity may indeed have said,Friend, go up higher;' some others, again, may have been consigned to a lower place: but, in general, it has been found that everybody that same everybody who is said to be more witty than Voltaire-after a certain lapse of time judges pretty fairly.

But this remark holds good only in respect to wholesale appreciations of character and general estimates of worth; for if we apply ourselves to the minute study of individual minds, if we indulge in psychological analysis-to use a favourite phrase of modern criticism-we are surprised to find how much light may be thrown by one or two familiar letters, or even by a few lines reinstated in their proper place in a carefullycollated manuscript. To go no farther than the example we have before us, the curious conjunction of the discovery of some interesting unpublished letters of Madame Roland, and the simultaneous appearance of two new editions of her Memoirs carefully revised on the original text, justifies us, we think, by the new insight we have obtained into her character, in devoting a few pages to that most extraordinary woman-extraordinary even for the wonderful times she lived in. The new matter which her last editors have furnished, leaves her preeminent station as one of the heroines of the French Revolution and her rank as a political character unassailed, but the opinion of many readers in respect of the woman may, we think, be modified. Before speaking of Madame Roland herself, we must, however, say a few words of her editors, and more especially of the two last whose names stand at the head of this article. In the present case, the history of the book is almost as curious, in its way, as the history of the writer.

Long before either M. Faugère or M. Dauban were born, the public had every reason to suppose that it was in possession of the authentic and complete Memoirs of Madame Roland. In 1795, two years after she had died on the scaffold,

VOL. CXXI. NO. CCXLVIII.

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the first edition of the Private Memoirs and of the Historical Notes written during her captivity for the defence of M. Roland's, and we may add, of her own political conduct, was published under the title of An Appeal to impartial Posterity.' The editor was Bosc, an old and tried friend, and the work was sold for the benefit of Madame Roland's only daughter Eudora, who, the editor says in his preface, had been deprived of her father's and mother's fortune.' Bosc, who had been Administrateur des Postes' under the first Ministry of Roland, had known Madame Roland before her marriage, and during many years, from 1782 to 1791, had kept up a familiar correspondence with her, some interesting fragments of which have been preserved. She had from time to time confided to his care the manuscripts composed in her prison. It was a dangerous trust, and Bosc, in the anticipation of domiciliary visits, kept them for many months in the hollow of a rock in the forest of Montmorency, where he had himself taken refuge. Unmindful of personal danger, he continued to visit his friend in her prison so long as any intercourse with the outer world was permitted to her. When the day of execution came, Bosc, though himself a marked man and easily recognised by his tall stature, walked beside the fatal cart and stood at the foot of the scaffold till all was over. He took under his protection Roland's orphan daughter, and on the first faint reappearance of liberty published, as we have said, her mother's writings. Such an editor should have been trustworthy, yet, with the best intentions, Bosc gave but a garbled version. Not to speak of his trifling literary corrections which were sometimes far from felicitous, he struck out many passages which he deemed too severe towards living political personages, others again that might give pain to Madame Roland's daughter and surviving friends, and lastly several pages which he judged, not without reason, injurious to the memory of his friend by their coarseness and offensive indecency. In a word, his work conveyed a very incomplete notion of Madame Roland as a woman, though it proved her power as a writer and her sincerity as a patriot. This publication was, however, received at the time with intense interest, and we remember that Mr. Fox mentions in one of his letters that he had sate up the greater part of one night at Holkham to read it.

The next editor was M. Champagneux in 1800. Champagneux's son had married Madame Roland's daughter, and the motives which had actuated Bosc in his suppressions weighed still more strongly with his successor. As before, all traces of the u ul and ill-starred love which it had

evidently been the intention of Madame Roland to relate fully to the world, had her life been spared, were carefully erased. That fashion of cynical self-dissection which JeanJacques had introduced, and which was so likely to lead astray a mind as fearlessly sincere as that of Madame Roland, rarely finds favour with surviving relatives and friends. The real value of the Champagneux edition consisted in some letters addressed to the editor, the account of a journey to England in 1784, and of another to Switzerland, and more especially in a selection from Madame Roland's juvenile writings, which had never been intended for publication. These are, in general, emphatic and declamatory in style, according to the fashion of the times, singularly ambitious as regards the choice of subjects for so young a writer, but indicative of extensive reading, and of no common grasp of mind. Above all, they are interesting as showing the remarkable consistency of character and views of the author. What Madame Roland was when she died at nine-and-thirty, Marie Phlipon was at eighteen; and the Minister's wife, the political leader, the soul and life of the heroic Gironde, did no more than realise the ambition and follow out the line of conduct pedantically set forth by the obscure engraver's daughter in her girlish compositions.

The numerous editions of the Memoirs which have succeeded each other during more than sixty years have perseveringly

*Other less justifiable sacrifices were made to the feelings of the times. As some English readers may be curious to know what sort of expressions were deemed objectionable by a French editor in the year VIII of the Republic (1800), we will give an example of M. Champagneux's corrections. Madame Roland ended the last page of her Memoirs-or rather we should say the sketch of what she intended to write in her Memoirs, if she had lived-with this characteristic exclamation: . . . . Je ne sais plus conduire la plume au 'milieu des horreurs qui déchirent ma patrie; je ne puis vivre sur 'ses ruines, j'aime mieux m'y ensevelir. Nature, ouvre ton sein! 'Dieu juste, reçois-moi!' It will scarcely be believed that the words we have written in italics were effaced by the editor! Evidently the Supreme Being whose existence had been decreed by Robespierre, and who was officially reinstated in honour by the First Consul, was not generally acknowledged in 1800, and it was thought possible that Madame Roland's invocation might be considered superstitious and injure her in public opinion. Such suppressions seem the more curious when they are contrasted with the many offensive passages which were retained, the publication of which seems excusable only if it can be ascribed to a scrupulous and unquestioning respect for the original text.

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