letters to Sophie, now returned to Amiens. In those letters, often carried on from day to day, and sent once or twice a week, one almost seems to hear her thinking aloud. In them she hits off every occurrence of the day, giving an analysis of every book she had read, and discussing the religious meditations and philosophical ponderings that succeeded them. The published correspondence opens in the year 1771. The precocious habits of thought and fluency of style of this girl of seventeen are most surprising, especially when one bears her surroundings in mind. Of course we meet with the sententiousness of the eighteenth century, with its high-sounding phrases and idyllic sentimentality; but when we remember that the people who wrote so complacently about the abstract virtues were, in the fulness of time, ready to sacrifice everything to their convictions, we must acknowledge that what now sounds affected to us, once had the fulness of reality.
In one of the earliest letters, we meet with this striking passage: "The knowledge of ourselves is no doubt the most useful of the sciences. Everything tends to turn towards that object the desire to know which is born with us, a desire we try to satisfy by acquainting ourselves with the histories of all past nations. This is by no means a useless habit, if we know how to avail ourselves of it. My views on reading are already very different from those I entertained a few years ago; for I am less anxious to know facts than men; in the history of nations and empires, I look for the human heart, and I think that I discover it too. Man is the epitome of the universe; the revolutions in the world without are an image of those which take place in his own soul."
