IT is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queenof France-then the Dauphiness-at Versailles;and surely
never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in-glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy.
Oh, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation, and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should live to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.
But the a ge of chivalr y is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex-that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart-which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone,-that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound; which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity; which ennobledwhatever it touched; and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.
- EDMUND BURKE
WORDS
antidote, corrective.
cavaliers, high-minded knights.
chastity, purity. contemplate, regard. decorating, adorning. disasters, calamities. enterprise, daring. enthusiastic, impetuous. extinguished, put out. ferocity, fierceness.
horizon, where earth and sky meet.
loyalty, allegiance.
mitigated, alleviated. panegyric, eulogy. revolution, overturning. scabbards, sheaths. sensibility, conscientiousness. servitude, bondage. sophisters, quibblers. splendour, magnificence. subordination, subjection. titles, claims.
veneration, reverence.
NOTES
① The Dauphiness, the wife of the Dauphin; the title borne by the heir-apparent to the French crown prior to 1830. Marie Antoinette (Ma-re An"-twoi-net), the Dauphiness here referred to, was a daughter of Maria Theresa of Germany. Her marriage with the Dauphin (in 1770) was the result of a compact between France and Germany against England. In 1774 she ascended the French throne, with her husband, Louis XVI. When the Revolution broke out in 1789, she was a special object of popular fury; which explains Burke"s allusions to the disasters and insults that befell her. But she bore her trials with singular fortitude and dignity. She endured the hardships of imprisonment for four years, and was guillotined at Paris in October 1793, ten months after her husband had met the same fate.
② Versailles, a town near Paris, famous for its magnificent palace, built chiefly by LouisXIV. between 1661 and 1687. Marie Antoinette and her husband were seized there by the mob on 6th October 1789, and were led in triumph to Paris.
③ Edmund Burke, a great writer, orator, and statesman. He was born at Dublin in 1730,and died in 1797. He was one of the accusers of Warren Hastings, who was tried for acts of oppression and injustice while Governor-General of India His chief works are Reflections on the Revolution in France , and an Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful .
