Burke was the earlier visitor.
Indeed, it was in the last months of the preceding reign, while she was
still dauphiness, that she had excited in his enthusiastic imagination
those emotions which he afterward described in words which will live as
long as the English language. It was in the spring of 1774 that it seemed
to him that "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." No
one could be less like Burke than Horace Walpole, a cynical observer, who
piqued himself on indifference, and especially on a superiority to the
vulgar belief in the merits and attractions of kings and princes. Yet his
report of the charms of Marie Antoinette, as he saw them in the autumn of
this year, 1775, reveals an admiration of them as vivid as that of the
warm-hearted and more poetical Irishman. He saw her, as he reports to Lady
Ossory, first at a state court hall,[7] given on the occasion of the
marriage of the Princess Clotilde, in the theatre of the palace; and he
would have desired to give his correspondent some description of the
beauty of the building; "the bravest in the universe, and yet one in which
taste predominates over expense;" but he was absorbed by the still more
powerful attractions of the princess whom he had seen in it: "What I have
to say I can tell your ladyship in a word, for it was impossible to see
any thing but the queen. Hebes, and Floras, and Helens, and Graces are
street-walkers to her. She is a statue and beauty when standing or
sitting; grace itself when she moves." As he is writing to a lady, he
proceeds to describe her dress, which to ladies of the present day may
still have its interest: "She was dressed in silver, scattered over with
_laurier_ roses; few diamonds; and feathers, much lower than the
monument." He proceeds to describe the ball itself, and some of the
company, which was, however, very select; but at every sentence or two he
comes back to the queen, so deep and so real was the impression which she
had made on him. "Monsieur is very handsome. The Comte d'Artois is a
better figure and a better dancer. Their characters approach to those of
two other royal dukes.[8] There were but eight minuets, and, except the
queen and princesses, only eight lady dancers; I was not so much stru