Redeemer, and acknowledge my own unworthiness of His favour; but then what words was I to make use of ?-truly, at first, of none at all, but a devout silence did speak for me. But after that I poured out my prayers, and was in amazement that there should be such a sin as ingratitude in the world, and that any should neglect this great duty. But why do I say all this to you, my friend ?—Truly that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, and I am still so full of it, that I cannot forbear expressing my thoughts to you." CHAPTER VII. THREE ILLUSTRIOUS FRENCHWOMEN: MADAME ROLAND.-MADAME MICHFLET.-EUGÉNIE DE GUÉRIN. MANON, MADAME ROLAND.* ROFESSOR SHARP, in his lectures on "Culture PROFI and Religion," says some wise words in defence of ideal aims. How, he says, are we to make anything of the Actual unless we have some aim to direct our efforts, some clue to guide us through its labyrinths? Now, this aim, this clue, is just what we mean by the Ideal; and a life without the Ideal is necessarily a purposeless and a motiveless life,—a life degraded to low and servile objects. "An aim, an ideal of some sort, be it natural or spiritual, you must have, if you have reason, and look before and after. True, no man's life can be wholly occupied with the ideal, not even the poet's or the philosopher's. Not even the most ethereal being can live wholly upon sunbeams; and most lives are far enough * Born, 1754; married De Roland de la Platière, French statesman and Girondist, 1781; guillotined, 8th November, 1793. removed from the sunbeams. Yet sunshine, light, is necessary for every man. The Culturists then speak truly when they tell us that every man [and woman] must have some ideal, and that it is all-important that, while the mind is plastic, each should form some high aim which is true to his own nature, and true to the truth of things. It has been well said that youth is the season when men are engaged in finding their ideals. In mature age they are engaged in trying to impress them on the actual world." The story has Madame Roland in her youth found her ideal, which she afterwards sought to impress upon the minds of her fellows. She failed in the high endeavour, and her failure led her to an early and a painful death. Yet neither her life nor her death was wholly in vain. since moved many hearts and stirred many minds, awakening them to a sense of the beauty of "plain living and high thinking," and urging them on not only to "dream" but to "do" noble things. Moreover, she herself was the better, aye, and the happier, for her devotion to a sublime aim and motive. It consecrated her womanhood as it had brightened and purified her girlhood. It lifted her above the commonplaces and conventionalities of the world, into a serener sphere of thought and feeling. It rescued her from "The daily scene Of sad subjection and of sick routine," and gave her a standpoint of her own, from which she |