Note 33 — FRENCH REVOLUTION: STORMING OF THE BASTILLE

Edmund Burke passed a splendid and well-known eulogium on the beauty and accomplishments of the Queen, and it was in part the impression which her youthful charms had left in his mind that threw the casting-weight of his talents and eloquence into the scale of opposition to the French Revolution. I have heard another very competent judge, Mr. Northcote, describe her entering a small anteroom, where he stood, with her large hoop sideways, and gliding by him from one end to the other with a grace and lightness as if borne on a cloud. It was possibly to "this air with which she trod or rather disdained the earth," as if descended from some higher sphere, that she owed the indignity of being conducted to a scaffold. Personal grace and beauty cannot save their possessors from the fury of the multitude, more than from the raging elements, though they may inspire that pride and self-opinion which expose them to it.