outer world, she read the newspapers regularly to him; and the better to enable him to comprehend the changes and positions of the armies engaged in the war then raging, she framed the armies with pins of various sizes, which she stuck in a map, changing their positions as the actual position of the war panorama shifted. As his wife read the accounts from the seat of war, by simply passing his fingers over his map of pins, Huber could form as true a conception of the relative positions, the losses and gains, of the contending forces, as though he had had his eyesight, and stood at the seat of the war. And to enable him to communicate his thoughts, and thus hold communion with his fellow-men, Madame Huber invented a system of writing, the practice of which furnished him with an endless source of amusement and of satisfaction: he felt now that his life need not be a mere waif-useless and cumbrous, but that he could prove his right to live, despite his misfortune, by the publication of the results of his experiments and the deductions of his reflections.

Huber was in the habit of jocularly boasting of the greater probability of the information furnished by him being truer than the information derived by one person's eyesight; whereas he used the eyes of others, obtained their concurrent testimonies, and then, after his own mature reflection, recorded the result. This was not so much a boast as it was a fact; for, strange to say, the researches of the most eminent naturalists have added little to the information of the history and habits of Bees, so full and accurate, which Huber has furnished. "On reading the descriptions," says one writer,

"which this learned man has given of those insects, one would suppose them to be the composition of a clear-sighted man, very well versed in this branch of natural history. Huber, however, had no other assistant in this great work but his wife, who told him the colour of the insects, whose form and size he afterwards perceived by the touch, with the same ease as he knew them by their buzzing when they flew in the air." 66 Nothing," says De Candolle, "of any importance has been added to the history of bees since his time; and naturalists of unimpaired vision have nothing of consequence to subjoin to the observations of a brother who was deprived of sight." It was to his wife, however, that Huber attributed all his intellectual conquests; so highly did he estimate her services that he even considered that he should be miserable were he to cease to be blind. "I should not know," said he, "to what extent a person in my situation could be beloved; besides, to me, my wife is always young, fresh, and pretty, and that is no light matter."

When forty years of this sweet companionship had passed, Huber was left alone; his dear Marie, that had so bravely done her duty, heard the final "Well done;" then it was that the mourning husband declared that " as long as she lived he was not sensible of being blind." His old age was soothed and cheered by the attentions of his daughter; and he had also the satisfaction of hearing the praises of his son: P. Huber, whose scientific acquirements in the same direction as his own studies had earned the approbation of the learned naturalists of the day. His work, entitled Researches Concerning the Habits of Ants, is as valuable as it

is entertaining. Thus surrounded, and thus pleasantly employed, this useful man lived on until his eighty-first year, when, contentedly and calmly, he breathed his last in his daughter's arms.

"No floweret blooms

Throughout the range of those rough hills,
Nor in the woods, that could from him conceal
Its birthplace. None whose figure did not live
Upon his touch."

Madame Roland.

Ir is not strange that two of the most heroic women of the Revolution found inspiration in the pages of Plutarch; that his eloquent lives of the ancients nerved them to brave and valiant efforts, as they believed, for the good and happiness of their country.

In 1756, Gratien Philipon, engraver, had born to him, at his residence in Paris, a daughter, whom he named Manon. Gratien was in easy circumstances, adding to his trade of engraver and painter in enamel the business of a dealer in diamonds and jewels; he was also fond of speculation, which usually turned out adverse. These speculations were undertaken chiefly on account of his daughter, whom he hoped to place in a position far above the workshop. With this hope he spared no expense in giving her a superior education, which found a genial response in her willingness and mental capability. Her earliest years were characterised by a fondness for books and flowers, which became almost a passion. Her most delightful occupation was to spend hours in a recess of her father's workshop, not reading, but devouring, an odd volume of Plutarch's Lives; as the noble sentiments and still nobler actions passed before her eye, her cheeks would flush and run

with tears. Why was she not a Spartan or a Roman? Her mother, a woman of remarkable beauty and gentleness, could only tempt her from this absorbing employment by offering her flowers; but these seldom induced her to part with her "Plutarch." "I shall never forget," said Manon," the Lent of 1763, during which every day I carried that book to church: it was from this moment that I date the impressions and ideas which made me Republican, when I had never formed a thought on the subject." But "Plutarch" was not allowed to absorb all her time she made rapid progress in history, geography, astronomy, chemistry, geometry, Latin, English, Italian, and music. So anxious was she to learn that she was accustomed to rise at five in the morning in order to pursue her studies. But young as she was, she soon learned that these studies were only the medium for the attainment of real knowledge; that there was a supreme good, to which these could only minister as handmaids; an excellence of character of which she had some dawnings in the Lives depicted by Plutarch. This led her to prayer and contemplation, and induced her to consider the sacrifices made by Sisters of Charity, worthy of emulation. Her parents, yielding to her earnest importunity, permitted her to spend a year in a convent, where her desire for self-communion was amply indulged. Her most loved employment, while at the convent, was to sit alone or wander through the solitary grounds indulging in contemplation; or over the grave of some departed nun, dream of a life of self-sacrifice, of death and eternity. Her subsequent busy existence tended to divert these youthful imaginings, but it never entirely destroyed their influence. When