Note C — POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU

Alluding to Mr. Edmund Burke's rant upon this subject.—Ib. The poet here refers to the well-known passage in Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, published October, 1790, in which after describing the queen of France as he had seen her in 1774 and the "prostrate homage" which her nation had paid to her at that time, he dwells upon the contrast of 1789: "Oh, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that 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 honour 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, œconomists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."