Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The Longinian tradition
- Part II Rhapsody to rhetoric
- Part III Irish Perspectives
- Part IV The Aberdonian Enlightenment
- Part V Edinburgh and Glasgow
- Part VI From the Picturesque to the Political
- 41 A dissertation on oriental gardening (1772)
- 42 An essay on the picturesque (1794)
- 43 A review of The landscape (1795)
- 44 The history of the life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1783)
- 45 Enquiry concerning political justice (1798)
- 46 Reflections on the revolution in France (1790)
- 47 A letter from the right honourable Edmund Burke to a noble lord (1796)
- 48 A vindication of the rights of man (1790)
- 49 Letters written in France (1790)
- 50 A tour in Switzerland (1798)
- Sources and further reading
46 - Reflections on the revolution in France (1790)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The Longinian tradition
- Part II Rhapsody to rhetoric
- Part III Irish Perspectives
- Part IV The Aberdonian Enlightenment
- Part V Edinburgh and Glasgow
- Part VI From the Picturesque to the Political
- 41 A dissertation on oriental gardening (1772)
- 42 An essay on the picturesque (1794)
- 43 A review of The landscape (1795)
- 44 The history of the life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1783)
- 45 Enquiry concerning political justice (1798)
- 46 Reflections on the revolution in France (1790)
- 47 A letter from the right honourable Edmund Burke to a noble lord (1796)
- 48 A vindication of the rights of man (1790)
- 49 Letters written in France (1790)
- 50 A tour in Switzerland (1798)
- Sources and further reading
Summary
History will record, that on the morning of the 6th of October 1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the centinel at her door, who cried out to her, to save herself by flight – that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give – that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with an hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards: the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and through ways unknown to the murderers had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure in his own life for a moment.
This king, to say no more of him, and this queen, and their infant children (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated carcasses.
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- The SublimeA Reader in British Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory, pp. 286 - 291Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996