fall!
Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of
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 forever. 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 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 system 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 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 domination,
vanquisher of laws, to be subdued by manners.

But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing ill