But though burdened with details sometimes irrelevant, not properly and sufficiently digested, too personal, indulging in much criticism of his authorities, not to say considerable carping, the volumes on manufactures and arts are a colossal piece of work, most valuable in their day, but which never had their full credit because of the stormy times in which they appeared, and, perhaps, not a little too, because of the chaotic series of encyclopedias to which they belonged; for certainly there could with difficulty be a greater mass of information published in a more inaccessible shape than that in the _Encyclopédie méthodique_. It was in arranging notes, copying, polishing, and reading proofs of articles on soaps and oils, dyes and weaving, skins and tanning, that Madame Roland spent most of her time from 1780 to 1784. A part of the work which was more happy was the botanizing they did. During their four years at Amiens, she made, in fact, a very respectable herbarium of Picardy. Of society she saw less than one would suppose, since the Cannets were here, and since her husband occupied so prominent a place. She did, of course, see Sophie and Henriette, but not often. Roland did not wish her to be with them much, and she, obedient to his wishes, complied. They had one intimate friend—a Dr. Lanthenas that Roland had met in Italy, and who, since their marriage, had become a constant and welcome visitor in their home. Then there were their acquaintances in the town—but for them she cared but little. Indeed, she was thoroughly submerged in domestic life. She seems to have had no thought, no desire, no happiness outside of her husband and her child. A great number of her letters written at this period to Roland, who was frequently away from home, have been preserved; one searches them in vain for any interest in affairs outside her house. She wrote pages of her _bonnes_, of the difficulty of finding this or that in the market, of the price of groceries, of the repairs to be made, above all, of her own ills and of those of Eudora, and she counselled Roland as to his plasters and potions. Her absorption in her family went so far that public questions rather bored her than otherwise, as this remark in a letter in 1781 shows: “M. de Vin [one of their friends at Amiens] came to see me yesterday expressly to tell me of our victory in America over Cornwallis. He saluted me with this news on entering, and I was forced to carry on a long political conversation—I cannot conceive the interest that a private person, such as he is, has in these affairs of kings who are not fighting for us.”