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Rh of the bolts and bars of the Bastile! The grim towers of the Bastile, the impassable moat of the Bastile, the dumb, dull grip of the walls of the Bastile—this was the dreaded object which cast its deadly shadow on the muzzled thought of France! This was the living tomb from which they shrank back aghast, and which made so many of them, as soon as they touched English soil, breathe our heavy, fog-laden, smoke-begrimed atmosphere as if it were the very elixir of life. Had Burke been bred in the shadow of the Bastile, and felt the iron of its chains enter into his flesh, he could never afterwards have made all Europe re-echo to the declamatory blasts of his vehement invective against the French people.

In the beginning of August 1784, the Rolands returned from the political land of Goshen to their own poor, suffering country, then so miserably "cabined, cribbed, confined"; and Madame Roland writing of this tour remarks, flatteringly to English feelings: "I shall ever remember with pleasure a country of which De Lolme taught me to love the constitution, and where I have witnessed the happy effects which that constitution has produced. Fools may chatter, and slaves may sing, but you may take my word for it that England contains men who have a right to laugh at us." Her admiration of Englishwomen is expressed in glowing terms to Bosc: "I wish to heaven I had you in England: you would fall in love with all the women. I was very near doing so, in spite of being one myself. They bear no resemblance to ours, and have in general that oval form of countenance which Lavater commends. Take my word for it, that the individual who does not feel some esteem for the English, and a degree of affection mixed with