CVII.—MARIE ANTOINETTE.BURKE.Edmund Burke was born in Ireland in 1728, and died in 1797. Such was the transcendent ability of Burke, that, at a time when England was richest in brilliant orators, and great statesmen, he rose from his obscure position, as a young and unknown Irishman, to be the great central figure in the array of great names which shed a lustre over the closing years of the Eighteenth century. But to his unrivaled merits as an orator and statesman, can be added the still higher praise of being a man of unblemished honor and probity.
BURKE.
Edmund Burke was born in Ireland in 1728, and died in 1797. Such was the transcendent ability of Burke, that, at a time when England was richest in brilliant orators, and great statesmen, he rose from his obscure position, as a young and unknown Irishman, to be the great central figure in the array of great names which shed a lustre over the closing years of the Eighteenth century. But to his unrivaled merits as an orator and statesman, can be added the still higher praise of being a man of unblemished honor and probity.
1. History will record, that on the morning of the 6th of October, 1789, the King and Queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled, melancholy repose.
2. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who cried out to her, to save herself by flight—that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give—that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with a hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed from whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and, through ways unknown to the murderers, had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.
3. This king, to say no more of him, and this queen, and their infant children (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people), were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the mostsplendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated[650]carcasses. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous[651]slaughter, which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family, who composed the king’s body-guard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded in the great court of the palace.
4. Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the procession; while the royal captives, who followed in the train, were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and thrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies,[652]and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shapes of the vilest of women. After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve miles, protracted[653]to six hours, they were, under a guard, composed of those very soldiers who had thus conducted them through this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted into a Bastile for kings....
5. It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of 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 just began to move in,—glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and whata heart I must 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 have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers.
6. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded: and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. 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 defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage, while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.
[650]Mu-tiˊ-lat-ed, mangled; maimed.[651]Pro-misˊ-cu-ous, indiscriminate; confused.[652]Conˊ-tu-me-lies, reproaches; offensive treatment.[653]Pro-tract-edˊ, lengthened.
[650]Mu-tiˊ-lat-ed, mangled; maimed.
[650]Mu-tiˊ-lat-ed, mangled; maimed.
[651]Pro-misˊ-cu-ous, indiscriminate; confused.
[651]Pro-misˊ-cu-ous, indiscriminate; confused.
[652]Conˊ-tu-me-lies, reproaches; offensive treatment.
[652]Conˊ-tu-me-lies, reproaches; offensive treatment.
[653]Pro-tract-edˊ, lengthened.
[653]Pro-tract-edˊ, lengthened.