A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Lezardiere, Mademoiselle
LEZARDIERE, MADEMOISELLE,
Was a native of France. Without any encouragement she manifested an invincible taste for historical researches. In this she met with great opposition from her family. At a period when France, as a nation, was given up to most frivolous pursuits, when the court was occupied entirely by futile pleasures, to say no worse, it seemed monstrous, and inadmissible to common-place people, that a young girl should give up the world, and the usual routine of girlish life, to devote herself to musty manuscripts and severe study. Her perseverance, however, removed all obstacles, and she was at last indulged by her parents with the means of carrying out her views. She devoted the best years of her youth to the most laborious literary pursuits; living in solitude, unknown by the public, but encouraged by the approbation and sympathy of a few scientific men, among whom her principal friend was Malesherbes, the heroic advocate of Louis the Sixteenth. After twenty-five years of careful research, her work was printed anonymously, under the title of "Theory of the Political Laws of the French Monarchy." Alas! the book was printed in 1790, when the very word monarchy was an abomination. It was published after the Revolution, but the time was past; political science had also undergone a revolution, and the labours of a lifetime were lost. Augustin Thierry, unquestionably the best judge in the world of the subject of Mademoiselle Lézardière, since his own writings have formed an epoch in the manner of studying and treating such researches, gives her almost the preference over all the learned men who were her predecessors in this study. He speaks highly of her erudition and philosophic mode of reasoning; her theory he completely destroys, as he does those of all the foregoing savants, not excepting the great Montesquieu.