depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salPeters had not the fruits of his

vation." *

prayer; for he neither departed so soon as he wished, nor in peace. He became (what I heartily hope none of his followers may be in this country) himself a sacrifice to the triumph which he led as Pontiff."

Often as it has been quoted, I cannot refrain from repeating the citation of that passage in which a most charming woman is described by the pen of taste and sensibility; a sensibility raised to the highest pitch by the misfortunes of its object.

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

State Trials, vol. ii. p. 360, 363.

star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what an heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream that, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, 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 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 age of chivalry is gone.

The same all-grasping genius exhibits most striking examples of the pathetic, the terrible, the sublime. The following few lines appear to be the dictates of a prophetic spirit, at least of that prophetic spirit which marks his reasoning in general on the French revolution, as it did on the American war; the prescience which arises

from wisdom contemplating objects in all their circumstances and relations, and from cause inferring effect. Speaking of the French republic:- In the present (form) it can hardly remain; but, before its final settlement, it may be obliged to pass, as one of our poets says, through great varieties of untried being, and in all its transmigrations, to be purified by fire and blood." One who had not read Burke would think that such a description had proceeded from the actual survey of the violent and multiplied vicissitudes and revolutions of the French government, and its pernicious and bloody consequences to the civilized world, and not from anticipation.

Impartiality obliges me to acknowledge that in some subordinate parts of the REFLEXIONS, Burke's imagination and feelings have carried him beyond the bounds of cool reflecting reason. His account of the virtues of the French noblesse appears exaggerated, at least. as far as can be judged from the samples of them that we have had occasion

to see in this country, The same observation will, on the whole, apply also to their clergy, concerning whom the experience of this country can hardly justify an opinion, that they were very learned or able men as a body, although as such they are decent and inoffensive, and so far respectable. The exaggeration, however, of the imputed merit does not affect the justness of the argument. Men ought not to have been degraded merely because, as a class, they were neither distinguished for eminent wisdom or virtue, if, with a mediocrity of abilities and good dispositions, they could by certain regulations be made useful in their former rank, of which experience might shew the probability. There have been, and are, in free and well constituted governments, classes not distinguished by quali ties of the head or heart, beyond classes somewhat lower, the aggregate of whose power, exertions, and influence, has a beneficial effect on the community at large, With regard to the clergy, their use as a body must be, and was great, even with

their ordinary attainments.

Policy, there fore, required that they should be preserved in that situation of respect in which their use could have been the greatest; and justice required that there should be no confiscation where there was no delinquency. It was not necessary to magnify the characters of the French noblesse and clergy as a warning to England. Educated in a free country, with every spur to the exercise of unprejudiced reason, our nobility were much superior, AS A BODY, to those of France, (however contemptible some individuals may be) as from various causes, national and professional, are the clergy of Britain, as a BODY, to those under the old government of France.

But though there may be too high colouring in some portions of this extraordinary performance, where is there to be met a work which so completely unfolded the prin ciples of thought and action that guided and prompted the French revolutionists, which so accurately, minutely, and fully