"In my eyes, it is one of the phases of evangelical life: a tumultuous,
bloody life, terrible at certain moments, full of convulsions, of
delirium, and of sobbing. It is the violent contest of the principle of
equality preached by Jesus, and passing, now like a radiant light, now
like a burning torch, from hand to hand, to our own days, against the
old pagan world, which is not destroyed, which will not be for a long
time yet, in spite of the mission of Christ, and so many other divine
missions, in spite of so many stakes, scaffolds, and martyrs. What is
there, then, to astonish us in the vertigo which seized all minds at
the period of the inextricable _mêlée_ into which France precipitated
herself in '93? When everything went by retaliation, when every one
became, by deed or intention, victim and executioner in turn, and when
between the oppression endured and the oppression exercised there was
no time for reflection or liberty of choice, how could passion have
abstracted itself in action, or impartiality have dictated quiet
judgments? Passionate souls were judged by others as passionate, and the
human race cried out as in the time of the ancient Hussites,--'This is a
time of mourning, of zeal, and of fury.'"

The tone of our author concerning this and subsequent revolutions which
have come within her own observation is throughout temperate, hopeful,
and charitable. The noblest side of womanhood comes out in this; and
however her fiery youth might have counselled, in the pages now under
consideration she appears as the apologist of humankind, the world's
peacemaker.

George loves to linger over the details of her father's early life.
They are, indeed, all she possesses of him, as she was still in early
childhood when he died. So much and such charming narrations has she