th of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to
the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most
important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day: I mean a
revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As things now
stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an attempt
to destroy within us every principle of respect, one is almost forced to
apologize for harboring the common feelings of men.

* * * * *

Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend Dr. Price, and those of
his lay flock who will choose to adopt the sentiments of his
discourse?--For this plain reason: Because it is _natural_ I should;
because we are so made as to be affected at such spectacles with
melancholy sentiments upon the unstable condition of mortal prosperity,
and the tremendous uncertainty of human greatness; because in those
natural feelings we learn great lessons; because in events like these
our passions instruct our reason; because, when kings are hurled from
their thrones by the Supreme Director of this great drama, and become
the objects of insult to the base and of pity to the good, we behold
such disasters in the moral as we should behold a miracle in the
physical order of things. We are alarmed into reflection; our minds (as
it has long since been observed) are purified by terror and pity; our
weak, unthinking pride is humbled under the dispensations of a
mysterious wisdom. Some tears might be drawn from me, if such a
spectacle were exhibited on the stage. I should be truly ashamed of
finding in myself that superficial, theatric sense of painted distress,
whilst I could exult over it in real life. With such a perverted mind, I
could never venture to show my face at a tragedy. People would think the
tears that Garrick formerly, or that Siddons not long since, have
extorted from me, were the tears of hypocrisy; I should know them to be
the tears of folly.

Indeed, the theatre is a better school of moral sentiments than churches
where the feelings of humanity are thus outraged. Poets who have to deal
with an audience not yet graduated in the school of the rights of men,
and who must apply themselves to the moral constitution of the heart,
would not dare to produce such a triumph as a matter of exultation.
There, where men follow their natural impulses, they would not bear the
odious maxims of a Machiavelian policy, whether applied to the
at