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Rh the rallying point of her party, and her potent will would, no doubt, have infused into them a cohesion and a distinctness of aim, for lack of which they ultimately perished. As it was, she could only act indirectly and at second-hand, which naturally weakened the force of her influence. Although she would not have had Roland deviate by an inch from the political principles which they had hitherto entertained; she could have wished him to evince more pliability in unimportant details of business, and greater tact in his intercourse with his colleagues.

But Roland suffered from precisely the same defects which were at the root of so much that was calamitous in the French Revolution. For the men who then came to the forefront of events had not served that apprenticeship to political life—as how should they under a despotic Government?—which would have insensibly prepared them for the complex and difficult art of good government. That very A B C of politics, the daily press, familiar as household words to the meanest drudge in the United States, only came into existence with the French Revolution. Philosophic theories, logical conclusions drawn from abstract reasoning, the speculations of the study, the argumentative rhetoric of the bar, were the equipment with which the prominent members of the Assembly started on their political career. Whereas the subtle involvement of social life is such, that the law of progress seems to be that for every two steps taken in advance there must be made a step backwards, these fanatics of freedom wished to push on at all hazards, even at that of annihilating all resisting human forces.

With Roland the simplicity of Republican manners came upon the Court with a fresh shock. His round