R 0 L 
ROLAND (Marie-Jeanne Philipon), the wife of the 
preceding, a woman distinguished for her virtues and talents 
was born at Paris in 1754. Her father was M. Philipon, a 
respectable engraver and jeweller, who instructed her in the 
arts connected with his profession. Though not regularly 
handsome, her person was attractive, and her character and 
accomplishments excited general admiration in the small 
circle in which she moved. It was supposed, likewise, that 
she would inherit a fortune not inconsiderable for her station; 
but her mother, who was an excellent womau, dying, her 
father became dissipated, and squandered great part of his 
own and his daughter’s property. With the little she was 
able to preserve, she retired to a convent, where she lived in 
solitude, submitting with a truly philosophical spirit to her 
privations, whilst she was improving her mind by study. 
Among her admirers had been M. Roland, who was now in 
the post of inspector of manufactures at Amiens: he had 
been rejected by her father, who disliked his severity of 
manners, but he sought her out in her retreat, and obtained 
her hand, when she had completed her 25th year: he was 
20 years older. She accompanied him to Amiens, where she 
added the knowledge of botany to her other acquisitions. 
She afterwards visited Switzerland and England, and Was 
led, by what she observed in the constitutions of those coun¬ 
tries, to study the theory of government, the result of which 
was an ardent attachment to the principles of liberty. Her 
husband removing to Lyons, she spent several winters with 
him in that city, and the summers at his country house in the 
vicinity, still extending the sphere of her knowledge and 
attainments. When the Revolution broke out, Roland lost 
his place as inspector, and repaired to Paris, whither he was 
deputed to the constituent assembly for the negotiation of 
some arrangement respecting the public debts of Lyons. Ma¬ 
dame Roland was now in her element. She received at her 
apartments the leaders of the popular party, especially those 
called the Girondists, assisted at all their deliberations, and 
employed her pen in their service. In March, 1792, when 
the king found it necessary, in order to allay the public 
discontents, to nominate a popular administration, Roland, 
as we have seen, was appointed minister of the interior; and 
though he was a man of talents and information, yet the 
public, perhaps justly, attributed to his wife the most eloquent 
and best written of his public papers. She has avowed that 
his celebrated letter to the King was chiefly her composi¬ 
tion. Roland, and all the other ministers except Dumouriez, 
were dismissed in consequence of their urging the king to 
sanction decrees which he disapproved ; but when the mon¬ 
archy was abolished for a republican government, he was 
restored to his place. In December, 1792, Mad. Roland ap¬ 
peared at the bar of the Convention, in order to repel a 
denunciation that had been made against her, and spoke with 
equal eloquence and facility. She appeared again to defend 
her husband when proscribed with the rest of the Brissotines, 
but could not obtain a hearing. He made his escape, but 
she was apprehended, and committed to the Abbaye. After 
a confinement of some weeks, she was released, but had 
scarcely returned to her house when she was again arrested 
by the satellites of Robespierre. She was sent to the convent 
of St. Pelagie, which had been converted into a prison, and 
there passed her time in consoling her fellow-prisoners, and 
composing an account of her own life, and of the transactions 
she had witnessed. At length she was called before the 
bloody revolutionary tribunal, and underwent an examination 
with a calmness and serenity disturbed only when one of the 
brutal judges asked her questions offensive to modesty. Her 
condemnation followed as a matter of course, and in Novem¬ 
ber, 1793, she was led to thescaffold. On passing the statue 
of Liberty in the Place de la Revolution, she bent her head 
towards it, exclaiming, “ O Liberty, how many crimes are 
perpetrated in thy name!” She then submitted to the stroke 
with the most heroic fortitude. She foretold that her husband 
would not long survive her; a prediction which we have 
before noticed was verified. Mad. Roland was, indeed, a 
woman capable of inspiring all the elevated sentiments she 
felt. With the grace and animation of one sex, she possessed 
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the firmness and solidity of the other; and she was generally 
thought superior to all the men of the party with whom she 
was connected. She particularly excelled them in penetration 
and knowledge of the human character, and was not a dupe 
to that philosophy of which she partook in common with 
them. She left one only daughter, whose sole provision was 
her mother’s writings. She had written “ Opuscules,” on 
"moral topics, and “ Voyage en Angleterreet en Suisse;” and 
when in prison, she composed what she entitled “ Appel a 
1’impartiale Posterite,” containing historical notices, anec¬ 
dotes, and her own private memoirs. This is an interesting 
work, written with much energy and vivacity. It presents 
many well-drawn portraits of the leading characters of that 
period, with tire purest sentiments of public and private 
morality. Her own memoirs are peculiarly valuable, as 
giving a picture of life and manners in the middle ranks in 
France, with a view of the progress of a mind which was 
certainly one of the highest order with respect to virtue and 
intellect. Biogr. Anecd. of the Fr. Revolut. Nouv. Diet. 
Hist. Aikin. 
ROLAND, Breche de, a remarkable opening in the 
central part of the Pyrenees, in very high ground above 
the village of Gavarnie. A wall of rocks, from 300 to 600 
feet in height, extends in the form of a crescent, with its 
convexity towards France. In the middle is a breach, 300 
feet in width, said, by the tradition of the peasantry, to 
have been made by the famous Roland. The great moun¬ 
tain of Marbore rises over the breach like a citadel, and 
the elevation is so great, that the whole forms a desert, 
without a trace of vegetation. The prospect on the side 
of Spain is very extensive: on the side of France is a suc¬ 
cession of mountains, the tops of which resemble the waves 
of the sea. 
ROLANDINO, an early Italian historian or chronicler, 
was the son of a notary at Padua, in which city he was born 
in 1200. He studied at Bologna under Buoncompagno, and 
in 1220 received the honorary title, then customary, of 
master and doctor in grammar and rhetoric. His father who, 
besides his employment as a notary, had kept a chronicle of 
memorable events as they occurred, put his papers into his 
son’s hands after he had returned from Bologna, with a charge 
to continue them. This he executed with care and fidelity, 
to the year 1260, when he was urged to revise and complete 
his work. He employed two years in this revision, and in 
1262 his chronicle, in twelve books, in the Latin language, 
was read publicly before the University of Padua, submitted 
to an attentive examination, and solemnly approved. Ro- 
landino, who succeeded his father in his post, and was 
probably likewise a professor of grammar in the University, 
died in 1276. His history is accounted one of the most exact 
and faithful records of that time, particularly with respect to 
the transactions of the famous tyrant Ezzelino da Romano, 
and the other principal families in the Marche ofTrevigi. 
Though his style is not free from the barbarisms then 
prevalent, his narrative is clear and well arranged. Vossius 
Speaks of him as Surpassing all the writers of his age in perspi¬ 
cuity, order, and judgment, and as showing himself well 
versed in sacred and profane literature. An edition of his 
work, with other chronicles, was given at Venice in 1636 by 
FelLx Osius, and it has been repriuted by Muratori in the 7th 
volume of his Italian historians; Fossil Hist. Lat. Moreri. 
Tiraboschi. 
ROLANDRA, s. [so named in honour of Rolander, a 
pupil of Linnaeus.] In botany, a genus of the class syn- 
genesia, order polygamia segregata, natural order of com- 
positae capitatte. Cinarocephalae, (Juss.) Generic Cha- • 
racter.—'Calyx: common none; florets in bundles, in a 
roundish head; bundles distinct, pedicelled, with many 
scales interposed, shorter than the florets, ovate and lanceo¬ 
late awned; perianth partial chaffy, two-valved; valves un¬ 
equal, compressed, keeled ; the upper one larger, inclosing 
the other, awned; lower acuminate. Corolla: proper her¬ 
maphrodite, very small, funnel-shaped ; tube filiform, long ; 
border five-cleft; segments very short, erect, acute. Sta¬ 
mina: filaments five, shorther than the tube; anther tubular, 
within 
