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They would have furnished the ministry with general powers to act for them, and sat at ease with no other regard to publick measures, than might incite them to animate, with their applauses, the laudable endeavours of their profound, their diligent, and their magnanimous governours.
Envy, affectation, and vanity, may dictate the verdicts we give, and the worst principles of our nature may be at the bottom of our pretended zeal for morality; but if we only mean to inquire, why they who are well disposed to mankind apprehend, in every instance, certain rights pertaining to their fellow creatures, and why they applaud the consideration that is paid to those rights, we cannot assign a better reason, than that the person who applauds, is well disposed to the welfare of the parties to whom his applauses refer.
When I contemplate the horrid and systematic massacres of the second and third of September; when I observe that a Murat and a Robespierre, the notorious prompters of those bloody scenes, sit triumphantly in the convention and take a conspicuous part in its measures that an attempt to bring the assassins to justice has been abandoned; when I see an unfortunate prince, whose reign was a continued demonstration of the goodness and benevolence of his heart, of his attachment to the people of whom he was the monarch, who, though educated in the lap of despotism, had given repeated proofs that he was not the enemy of liberty, brought precipitately and ignominiously to the block without any substantial proof of guilt, as yet disclosed without even an authentic exhibition of motives, in decent regard to the opinions of mankind; when I find the doctrines of atheism openly advanced in the convention, and heard with loud applauses; when I see the sword of fanaticism extended to force a political creed upon citizens who were invited to submit to the arms of France as the harbingers of liberty; when I behold the hand of rapacity outstretched to prostrate and ravish the monuments of religious worship, erected by those citizens and their ancestors; when I perceive passion, tumult, and violence, usurping those seats where reason and cool deliberation ought to preside I acknowledge that I am glad to believe there is no real resemblance between what was the cause of America and what is the cause of France; that the difference is no less great than that between liberty and licentiousness.
Falkland to the desperate attempt of saving her from the flames; and she trusted that this passion would speedily declare itself, as well as induce the object of her adoration to overlook her comparative unworthiness. Mr. Tyrrel endeavoured at first with some moderation to check Miss Melville in her applauses, and to convince her by various tokens that the subject was disagreeable to him.
One wonders how he looked upon the crowd which no doubt would throng after him with acclamations whether thankfully and cheerfully in the pleasure of release, or with a revengeful sense of how little he owed to their easy applauses. It is said that Albany rode behind him on the same horse as an exhibition of amity.
The voice of Napoleon was for the first time heard in an energetic speech, ascribing all the glories that had been achieved to the zeal of the French soldiery for "the glorious constitution of the year THREE" the same glorious constitution which, in the year eight, was to receive the coup de grace from his own hand; and Barras, as presiding director, answering, that "Nature had exhausted all her powers in the creation of a Buonaparte," awoke a new thunder of unwelcome applauses.
"Be you yet alive? I have been infinitely distressed for you; but I hope it is now as safe with you as glorious. Doctor Jim Cogswell has left the army. A few days ago I received a letter from him. 'I doubt not, he says, 'you have most sensible pleasure in the applauses bestowed on our friend Burr; when I hear of his gallant behaviour, I feel exquisite delight.
On the magnanimity of his majesty, the eloquent counsel expatiated for a considerable time; but the applauses with which this part of his oration was received by a party in the gallery, who were seated near the king, were so loud, as almost to drown the voice of the orator, and effectually to distract the attention of those employed to take down his words.
But it so impressed Isaura, that the same night she concluded her letter to Madame de Grantmesnil, by giving a sketch of its substance, prefaced by an ingenuous confession that she felt less sanguine confidence in the importance of the applauses which had greeted the Emperor at the Saturday's ceremonial, and ending thus: "I can but confusedly transcribe the words of this singular man, and can give you no notion of the manner and the voice which made them eloquent.
She came at night, and in a storm, with only two attendants, and stood before a peasant's hut, tired, bedraggled, soaked with rain, "the red print of her lost crown still girdling her brow," and implored admittance and was refused! A few days before, the adulations and applauses of a nation were sounding in her ears, and now she was come to this!
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