ressing tears which rend his heart asunder, and hold his left arm, when he should strike with both hands?

“Tell me, then, beloved wife! since we are yet together at the family board, where I may not be always, tell me, before the savage deed to which fortune leads me, will your heart always be with me? You are surprised, you vow it in your tears. Do not swear, I believe all. But I know your inward struggle. What will you do to-morrow at the time when the actual event will soon conduct us far from here?

"At this table, where we are together to-day, and where you will be alone to-morrow, strengthen your mind. Remember the heroic history of our mothers; read what they did and were willing to do; the entire devotion and the glorious faith of '89, which, in a union so profound, erected the altar of the future.

"An epoch fruitful in great acts and sufferings, but connected by unity in the struggle and community in death! An age when hearts beat in such oneness of idea, that Love was only for their country.

"The struggle is greater to-day; it embraces

r. soon sike the finest moral is what will you do for me? sury 2 our mothers, of your own ta bat ter bith for which the one you

sit ne drmness to strike manfully for Vorerne, and happiness, also, will be ket you, beloved, whatever may happen, x to me, uniting in my efforts, and da one heart, you heroically sustain yourhe great crisis which will overwhelm

СНАРТER II.

INFLUENCE OF WOMEN ON THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY-MATERNITY.

THE great fruitfulness of the years 1768, 1769, and 1770 in children of genius, has been often remarked-those years which produced Bonaparte, Fourier, Saint Simon, Chateaubriand, De Maistre, Walter Scott, Cuvier, Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, Bichat and Ampère, a huge billow of scientific authors.

Another epoch, about 1760, is not less astonishing; it is this epoch which gave birth to that heroic generation, who, thirty years after, watered the first furrow of liberty with its blood, this fertile blood which made and endowed their country. They were the Girondists, Montagues, Rolands, Robespierres, Vergniauds, Dantons, and Camille Desmoulins; it is this pure and heroic

generation, who formed the invincible armies of the Republic, of Klèber and so many others.

The wealth, the overwhelming amount of genius of these two epochs, which arose so suddenly—was it chance? According to us, there is no chance in this world. No, the natural and very simple cause of this phenomenon, was the overflowing of the dregs of several centuries.

The first epoch (about 1760) was the dawn of Rousseau, who owed the commencement of his influence to the first and powerful effect of Emile; to the passionate emotions of the mother who was willing to nurse and hang over the cradle of her child.

The second epoch was the triumph of the opinions of the century, not only by the universal knowledge of Rousseau, but the longforeseen victory of his conception over laws, by the great actions of Voltaire, by the sublime defences of Sirven, Calas and La Barre. Wives concentrated their ideas under the influence of the most powerful emotions. They regarded the future welfare. All the children of this epoch bore on their foreheads a sign.

Powerful generations sprang up from the noble

thoughts of an enlarged love, conceived of a heavenly flame, born at a sacred moment, when woman, casting aside her affections, discovered and adored the ideal.

The commencement was good. They entertained new thoughts by means of those of education, by the hopes, the vows of maternity, by all the questions that the child from its birth raises in woman's heart. What do I say? In the heart of a girl, a long time before the child is born: "Oh! that this child will be happy, that he will be good and great! that he will be free! Sacred liberty of the ancients, which formed heroes, will my son walk in their footsteps?" These were the thoughts of the women: that is the reason why, in the garden, when the child is playing under the eyes of his mother or sister, you see them dream and read. What is the book that the young girl hides so quickly in her bosom, at your approach? What romance is it? Heloise? No. On the contrary it is Plutarch's Lives, or the Contrat-Social. The influence of the salons, the charm of conversation, held then, whatever may be said to the contrary, but a secondary place in woman's influence. They had