[1] An anecdote of her has been preserved which proves how very general was the impression the grace and beauty of the Duchess of Devonshire made upon men in every station of society. On one occasion of her being present on the racecourse at Newmarket, a burly farmer who stood near her carriage, after having for some time gazed at her in a species of ecstasy, exclaimed aloud, "Ah! why am I not God Almighty?--she should then be Queen of Heaven!" The Duchess preserved her personal charms far beyond the period of life when they commonly disappear among women, though she lost one of her eyes a few years before her death in 1806. The existence of those literary assemblies in France during the eighteenth century, the most important of which were those presided over by Madame du Deffand, Mdlle. de Lespinasse, and Madame Geoffrin, were a characteristic feature of the time. It is a notable fact that the abstention from politics in those assemblies indirectly tended to increase the power and importance of the women who frequented them. Alluding to their influence, Montesquieu caustically remarked that a nation where women give the prevailing tone must necessarily be talkative. Then, however, it was the men who talked and the women who listened. The men talked because they could do little else; women gave the prevailing tone because men of all classes were partly compelled, and partly willing, to gather around them. The nobles being excluded from politics--in which none but the Ministers and their creatures could interfere--exercising no control either as individuals or as a body, naturally gave themselves up to the pleasures of society. Their political insignificance thus increased the power and importance of women. To a far greater degree was their power and importance increased, on the contrary, during the first decade of the French Revolution, when, from the exceptional position they held, the _salons_ of Madame Roland, Madame Necker, Madame de Suard, and others were essentially political--that of Madame Roland being almost an echo of the Legislative Assembly. But women who love freedom abstractedly for its own sake, and are ready to suffer and die for a political principle, like Madame Roland, are very rarely met with.