Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee, When they are bound to serve, love, and obey. Ex. 61. Description of the Queen of France. Shakspeare. 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 splendour, and joy. Oh, what a revolution! What a heart I must 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, that she should ever be obliged to carry 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. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is ex the tinguished 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 ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness. Burke. Ex. 62. A Mother's Love. A Mother's Love !-how sweet the name! A noble, pure, and tender flame, To bless a heart of earthly mould- To bring a helpless babe to light, In weakness in her arms to bear, Feed it from Love's own fountain there, Then while it slumbers watch its breath, To mark its growth from day to day, To smile and listen while it talks, And can a Mother's Love grow cold- Ten thousand voices answer, 'No!' A parent's heart may prove a snare : Her hand may lead, with gentlest care, Blest infant! whom his mother taught And poured upon his dawning thought Behold that Mother's Love! Blest mother! who in Wisdom's path, Thus taught her son to flee the wrath, Ah, youth! like him enjoy your prime,- Taught by that Mother's Love. That Mother's Love !-how sweet the name ! The noblest, purest, tenderest flame, Within a heart of earthly mould, As much of heaven as heart can hold, Nor through eternity grows old ;— Montgomery. Ex. 63. Death of Marie-Antoinette. On Monday, the 14th of October, 1793, a cause is pending in the Palais de Justice, in the new Revolutionary Court, such as these old stone walls never witnessed,—the trial of Marie-Antoinette. The once brightest of queens, now tarnished, defaced, forsaken, stands here at Fouquier-Tinville's judgment-bar, answering for her life. The indictment was delivered her last night. To such changes of human fortune what words are adequate? Silence alone is adequate. Marie-Antoinette, in this her utter abandonment and hour of extreme need, is not wanting to herself, the imperial woman. Her look, they say, as that hideous indictment was reading, continued calm; 'she was sometimes observed moving her fingers as when one plays on the piano.' You discern, not without interest, across that dim revolutionary bulletin itself, how she bears herself queen-like. answers are prompt, clear, often of laconic brevity; resolution, which has grown contemptuous, without ceasing to be dignified, veils itself in calm words. 'You persist then in denial?' 'My plan is not denial; it is the truth I have said, and I persist in that.' Her At four o'clock on Wednesday morning, after two days and two nights of interrogating, jury-charging, and other darkening of counsel, the result comes out-sentence of death! 'Have you anything to say?' The accused shook her head without speech. Night's candles are burning out; and with her too time is finishing, and it will be eternity and -day. This hall of Tinville's is dark, ill-lighted except where she stands. Silently she withdraws from it, to die. Is there a man's heart that thinks without pity of those long months and years of slow, wasting ignominy; of thy birth, soft cradled in imperial Schönbrunn, the winds of heaven not to visit thy face too roughly, thy foot to light on softness, thy eye on splendour; and then of thy death, or hundred deaths, to which the guillotine and Fouquier-Tinville's judgment-bar were but the merciful end? Look there, O man born of woman! The bloom of that fair face is wasted, the hair is grey with care; the brightness of those eyes is quenched, their lids hang drooping; the face is stony pale, as of one living in death. Mean weeds, which her own hand has mended, attire the queen of the world. The death-hurdle where thou sittest pale, motionless, which only curses environ, has to stop; a people, drunk with vengeance, will drink it again in full draught, looking at thee there. Far as the eye reaches, a multitudinous sea of maniac heads, the air deaf with their triumph-yell. The living-dead must shudder with yet another pang; her startled blood yet again suffuses with the hue of agony that pale face, which she hides with her hands. There is there no heart to say, God pity thee! O think not of these; think of Him whom thou worshippest, the Crucified-who also treading the wine-press alone, fronted sorrow still deeper, and triumphed over it, and made it holy, and built of it a 'sanctuary of sorrow' for thee and all the wretched. Thy path of thorns is nigh ended; one long last look at the Tuileries, where thy step was once so light-where thy children shall not dwell. The head is on the block; the axe rushes-dumb lies the world; that wild-yelling world, with all its madness, is behind thee. Carlyle. Ex. 64. Ex. 65. The Death Bed. We watched her breathing through the night, As in her breast the wave of life Kept heaving to and fro. So silently we seemed to speak, So slowly moved about, As we had lent her half our powers, To eke her living out. Our very hopes belied our fears, Our fears our hopes belied, We thought her dying when she slept, For when the morn came dim and sad, Her quiet eyelids closed,-she had Resignation. T. Hood. There is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead lamb is there! There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair! The air is full of farewells to the dying, And mournings for the dead; The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, |