all the fucceeding days, that fhe bears the im prisonment of her husband, and her own captivity, and the exile of her friends, and the infult ing adulation of addreffes, and the whole weight of her accumulated wrongs, with a ferene patience; in a manner suited to her rank and race, and becoming the offspring of a fovereign distinguished for her piety and her courage; that like her fhe has lofty fentiments; that fhe feels with the dignity of a Roman matron; that in the last extremity she will fave herself from the last disgrace, and that if the muft fall, he will fall by no ignoble hand.

It is now fixteen or feventeen years fince I faw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Verfailles; and furely never lighted on this orb, which the hardly feemed to touch, a more delightful vifion. I faw her juft above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated fphere fhe juft began to move in, glittering like the morning-ftar, full of life, and fplendor, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what an heart muft I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream that, when the added titles of veneration to those of enthufiaftic, diftant, refpectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the fharp antidote against difgrace concealed in that bofom; little did I dream that I fhould have lived to fee fuch difafters fallen upon her in a nation. of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords muft have leaped from their fcabbards to avenge

even

even a look that threatened her with infult.-But the age of chivalry is gone.-That of fophifters, œconomists, and calculators, has fucceeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguifhed for ever. Never, never more, fhall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and fex, that proud fubmiffion, that dignified obedience, that fubordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in fervitude itself, the fpirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly fentiment and heroic enterprize is gone! It is gone, that fenfibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a ftain like a wound, which infpired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself loft half its evil, by lofing all its groffness.

This mixed fyftem of opinion and fentiment had its origin in the antient chivalry; and the principle, though varied in its appearance by the varying state of human affairs, subsisted and influenced through a long fucceffion of generations, even to the time we live in. If it should ever be totally extinguifhed, the lofs I fear will be great. It is this which has given its character to modern Europe. It is this which has diftinguifhed it under all its forms of government, and diftinguished it to its advantage, from the ftates of Afia, and poffibly from those states which flourished in the most brilliant periods of the antique world. It was this, which, without confounding ranks, had produced a noble equality, and handed it down through all the gradations

I

of

of focial life. It was this opinion which miti gated kings into companions, and raised private men to be fellows with kings. Without force, or oppofition, it fubdued the fierceness of pride and power; it obliged fovereigns to fubmit to the foft collar of focial efteem, compelled ftern authority to fubmit to elegance, and gave a domination vanquisher of laws, to be fubdued by

manners.

But now all is to be changed. All the pleafing illufions, which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different fhades of life, and which, by a bland affimilation, incorporated into politics the fentiments which beautify and foften private fociety, are to be diffolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the fuperadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as neceffary to cover the defects of our naked fhivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own eftimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, abfurd, and antiquated fashion.

On this scheme of things, a king is but a man; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal; and an animal not of the highest order. All homage paid to the fex in general as fuch, and without distinct views, is to be regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, and parricide, and facrilege, are but fictions of fuperftition, corrupting jurifprudence by deftroy

ing its fimplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father, are only common homicide; and if the people are by any chance, or in any way gainers by it, a fort of homicide much the most pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too fevere a fcrutiny.

On the scheme of this barbarous philofophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of folid wifdom, as it is deftitute of all tafte and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern, which each individual may find in them, from his own private speculations, or can fpare to them from his own private interefts. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every visto, you fee nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic philofophy, our inftitutions can never be embodied, if I may ufe the expreffion, in perfons; fo as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, or attachment. But that fort of reafon which banishes the affections is incapable of filling their place. These public affections, combined with manners, are required fometimes as fupplements, fometimes as correctives, always as aids to law. The precept given by a wife man, as well as a great critic, for the conftruction of poems, is equally true as to ftates. Non fatis eft pulchra effe poemata, dulcia funto. There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well

formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

But power, of fome kind or other, will furvive the shock in which manners and opinions perish; and it will find other and worse means for its fupport. The ufurpation which, in order to fubvert antient inftitutions, has destroyed antient principles, will hold power by arts fimilar to thofe by which it has acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of Fealty, which, by freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and fubjects from the precautions of tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots and affaffinations will be anticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and that long roll of grim and bloody maxims, which form the political code of all power, not ftanding on its own honour, and the honour of those who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy when fubjects are rebels from principle.

When antient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the lofs cannot poffibly be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to govern us; nor can we know diftinctly to what port we fteer. Europe undoubtedly, taken in a mafs, was in a flourishing condition the day on which your Revolution was compleated. How much of that profperous ftate was owing to the spirit of our old manners and opinions is not easy to say; but as fuch causes cannot be indifferent in their operation, we must prefume, that, on the whole, their operation was beneficial.

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