wholly forgotten. It is power, and
not principles, that Mr. Burke venerates; and under this abominable
depravity he is disqualified to judge between them. Thus much for his
opinion as to the occasions of the French Revolution. I now proceed to
other considerations.

I know a place in America called Point-no-Point, because as you proceed
along the shore, gay and flowery as Mr. Burke's language, it continually
recedes and presents itself at a distance before you; but when you have
got as far as you can go, there is no point at all. Just thus it is with
Mr. Burke's three hundred and sixty-six pages. It is therefore difficult
to reply to him. But as the points he wishes to establish may be
inferred from what he abuses, it is in his paradoxes that we must look
for his arguments.

As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are
very well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce, through
the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect. But Mr. Burke should
recollect that he is writing history, and not plays, and that his
readers will expect truth, and not the spouting rant of high-toned
exclamation.

When we see a man dramatically lamenting in a publication intended to be
believed that "The age of chivalry is gone! that The glory of Europe is
extinguished for ever! that The unbought grace of life (if anyone knows
what it is), the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment
and heroic enterprise is gone!" and all this because the Quixot age of
chivalry nonsense is gone, what opinion can we form of his judgment, or
what regard can we pay to his facts? In the rhapsody of his imagination
he has discovered a world of wind mills, and his sorrows are that there
are no Quixots to attack them. But if the age of aristocracy, like that
of chivalry, should fall (and they had originally some connection) Mr.
Burke, the trumpeter of the Order, may continue his parody to the end,
and finish with exclaiming: "Othello's occupation's gone!"

Notwithstanding Mr. Burke's horrid paintings, when the French Revolution
is compared with the Revolutions of other countries, the astonishment
will be that it is marked with so few sacrifices; but this astonishment
will cease when we reflect that principles, and not persons, were the
meditated objects of destruction. The mind of the na