wife and his children, and the faithful guards of his perfon, that were maffacred in cold blood about him; as a prince it became him to feel for the ftrange and frightful transformation of his civilized subjects, and to be more grieved for them, than folicitous for himself. It derogates little from his fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honour of his humanity. I am very forry to fay it, very forry indeed, that fuch perfonages are in a fituation in which it is not becoming in us to praise the virtues of the great.

I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady, the other object of the triumph, has borne that day (one is interested that beings made for fuffering fhould fuffer well) and that she bears all the fucceeding days, that she bears the imprisonment of her husband, and her own captivity, and the exile of her friends, and the infulting adulation of addreffes, and the whole weight of her accumulated wrongs, with a ferene patience, in a manner fuited to her rank and race, and becoming the offfpring of a fovereign diftinguished for her piety and her courage; that, like her, fhe has lofty fentiments; that the feels with the dignity of a Roman matron; that in the laft extremity fhe will fave herself from the laft difgrace; and that, if the muft fall, fhe will fall by no ignoble hand.

It is now fixteen or feventeen years fince I faw

the

the queen of France, then the dauphinefs, at Verfailles; and furely never lighted on this orb, which the hardly feemed to touch, a more delightful vifion. I faw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,-glittering like the morning-star, full of life, and fplendour, 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 when the added titles of veneration to thofe of enthufiaftick, diftant, refpectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against difgrace concealed in that bofom; little did I dream that I should 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 fwords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge 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 extinguished 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 spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse

of manly fentiment and heroick enterprise is gone! It is gone, that fenfibility of principle, that chaftity 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 lost half its evil, by lofing all its groffnefs.

This mixed fyftem of opinion and fentiment had its origin in the ancient chivalry; and the principle, though varied in its appearance by the varying ftate of human affairs, fubfifted and influenced through a long fucceffion of generations, even to the time we live in. If it fhould ever be totally extinguished, the lofs I fear will be great. It is this which has given its character to modern Europe. It is this which has diftinguished it under all its forms of government, and diftinguished it to its advantage, from the states of Afia, and poffibly from those states which flourished in the moft 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 of focial life. It was this opinion which mitigated kings into companions, and raised private men to be fellows with kings. Without force, or oppofition, it fubdued the fiercenefs of pride and power; it obliged fovereigns to fubmit to the foft collar of focial efteem, compelled ftern

authority

authority to fubmit to elegance, and gave a domination vanquisher of laws, to be fubdued by man

ners.

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 politicks 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 superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, às 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 fcheme 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 diftinct views, is to be regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, and parricide, and facrilege, aré but fictions of fuperftition, corrupting jurifprudence by deftroying 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 fcheme of this barbarous philofophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy underftandings, and which is as void of folid wif dom, as it is deftitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be fupported only by their own terrours, and by the concern, which each individual may find in them, from his own private fpeculations, or can fpare to them from his own private interefts. In the groves of their academy, at the end of everyvisto, you fee nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanick philofophy, our inftitutions can never be embodied, if I may ufe the expreflion, in perfons; fo as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, or attachment. But that fort of reafon which banifhes the affections is incapable of filling their place. Thefe publick 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 critick, for the conftruction of poems, is equally true as to states:- Non fatis eft pulchra effe poemata, dulcia funto. There ought to be a fyftem 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.