gates1 little from his fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honor of his humanity. I am very sorry to say it, very sorry indeed, that such personages are in a situation in which it is not unbecoming in us to praise the virtues of the great. I hear,2 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 suffering should suffer well), and that she bears all the succeeding days, that she bears the imprisonment of her husband, and her own captivity, and the exile of her friends, and the insulting adulation of addresses, and the whole weight of her accumulated wrongs, with a serene patience, in a manner suited to her rank and race, and becoming the offspring of a sovereign 3 distinguished for her piety and her courage; that like her she has lofty sentiments; that she feels with the dignity of a Roman matron; that in the last extremity she will save herself from the last disgrace, and that, if she must fall, she will fall by no ignoble hand. It is now sixteen or 1 derogates. Give a synonym. 2 I hear, etc. What kind of sentence (grammatically) is this paragraph? Is it a period or a loose sentence? 4 6 6 It is now, etc. This "vision" of Marie Antoinette is one of the most gorgeous pages in English literature. Robert Hall, the distinguished Baptist minister, a man 3 offspring of a sovereign, etc. of great eloquence and power, but Marie Antoinette was the daughter utterly opposed to Burke's opinof Maria Theresa, the heroic Em-ions, gave it as his judgment, that press of Austria. those who could read without rapture what Burke had written of the unhappy queen of France, might have merits as reasoners, but ought at once to resign all pre 4 in the last extremity, etc. Alluding to the queen's carrying poison about with her. 5 ignoble. What is the prefix? seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness,1 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 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 that 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. 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 for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous tensions to be considered men of taste." Burke himself wrote of it to a friend: "The recollection of the manner in which I saw the queen of France in the year 1774, and the contrast between that brilliancy, splendor, and beauty, with the prostrate homage of a nation to her, and the abominable scene of 1789, which I was describing, drew tears from me, and wetted my paper. These tears came again into my eyes, almost as often as I looked at the description; they may again." 1 dauphiness, wife of the dauphin, the title of the heir apparent of France under the old monarchy. 2 sharp antidote. See note on page 214. 3 cavaliers. See Glossary. 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 whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness. This mixed system1 of opinion and sentiment had its origin in the ancient chivalry; and the principle, though varied in its appearance by the varying state of human affairs, subsisted and influenced through a long succession of generations, even to the time we live in. If it should ever be totally extinguished, the loss, I fear, will be great. It is this which has given its character to modern Europe. It is this which has distinguished it under all its forms of government, and distinguished it to its advantage, from the states of Asia, and possibly from those states which flourished in the most 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 social life. It was this opinion 2 If it should. ... 1 This mixed system. What kind of sentence, grammatically? great. What kind of sentence rhetorically? 3 It is this... Europe: that is, chivalry. "Chivalry, uniting with the genius of our policy, has probably suggested those peculiarities in the law of nations by which modern states are distinguished from the ancient." - -FERGUSSON: History Civil Society. which mitigated kings into companions, and raised private men to be fellows with kings. Without force or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit to the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority to submit to elegance, and gave a dominating vanquisher of laws to be subdued by manners. All the pleasing But now all is to be changed. illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved 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, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated" fashion. 3 1 fellows, equals, associates, 3 drapery. See Webster. companions. 4 estimation. Give a synony 2 submit... collar. Explain | mous term. this metaphor. 5 antiquated. Explain. VII. SIR WALTER SCOTT. LIFE AND WORKS. THOUGH Scotland is famed for many good and sufficient reasons, that which more than any other single fact has given the little country its renown is that it is Scott's-land, the native land of that "Wizard of the North," whose magic pen has made Caledonia's landscape, history, and types of character known the world over. Walter Scott was the first literary man of a great riding, sporting, and fighting clan. He was the descendant six generations removed of a certain Walter Scott famed in Border legend as auld Wat (old Walter) of Harden. Auld Wat's son William, who was a noted freebooter, was on one occasion captured while on a raid, and was given the choice between being hanged on the private gallows of his captor, Sir Gideon Murray, and marrying the ugliest of Sir Gideon's three ugly daughters, Meikle-mouthed Meg. After three days' deliberation the handsome but prudent William chose life with the large-mouthed lady, who, according to tradition, proved an excellent wife. She transmitted a distinct trace of her characteristic feature to that illustrious descendant who was to use his "meikle" mouth to such good advantage as the spokesman of his race. Scott's father was an Edinburgh solicitor, a strict Presbyterian, and a dignified and conscientious, though, as appears, a somewhat formal, strait-laced character. The mother was a woman of tender heart, superior |