prung modern light,
I confess to you, Sir, that the exalted rank of the persons suffering,
and particularly the sex, the beauty, and the amiable qualities of the
descendant of so many kings and emperors, with the tender age of royal
infants, insensible only through infancy and innocence of the cruel
outrages to which their parents were exposed, instead of being a subject
of exultation, adds not a little to my sensibility on that most
melancholy occasion.

I hear that the august person who was the principal object of our
preacher's triumph, though he supported himself, felt much on that
shameful occasion. As a man, it became him to feel for his wife and his
children, and the faithful guards of his person that were massacred in
cold blood about him; as a prince, it became him to feel for the strange
and frightful transformation of his civilized subjects, and to be more
grieved for them than solicitous for himself. It derogates 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, 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 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 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 splendor and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what an heart must
I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that