upset Manon's equanimity. Practical and sagacious as she was, she could not help seeing the insurmountable obstacles which confronted a young unmarried woman the moment she should be cut adrift from her family. For such an one there seemed to be no inch of standing room on her native soil, and she must either be prepared to bow her neck beneath the yoke, or seek shelter in the tomb-like isolation of conventual life. Englishwomen, even at that time, were already acting with considerably more independence, and the brave and beautiful Mary Wollstonecraft, not many years from the present date, settled as a female author in London, "to be the first of a new genus." But Madame Roland's heroism did not consist in braving public opinion; on the contrary, she considered a certain conformity to it as part of the duty which the individual owed to the social compact—duty to which was, from first to last, the motive spring of her actions.
A reconciliation having been effected between M. Phlipon and his daughter, the latter wrote to Sophie:—"The cares and worries of housekeeping are not repugnant to me. With a lively taste for the acquisition of knowledge, I yet feel that I could pass the remainder of my life without opening a book or being bored by not doing so. Let only the home I live in be embellished by order, peace, and harmony, let me only feel that I have helped towards making it so, and be able to tell myself at the close of each day that it has been usefully spent for the good of a few, and I shall value existence and daily bless the rising of the sun."
With her high conception of the responsibilities of marriage, it cannot surprise us that Marie Phlipon could not make up her mind to accept one of the many
