move in, glittering like the morning star full of life and splendor and
joy. 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 honor 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,
economists and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is
extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous
loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience,
that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself
the spirit of an exalted freedom.

The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of
manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility
of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound,
which inspired courage while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever
it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all
its grossness.
E. Burke.


CXLVI.

PERORATION OF OPENING SPEECH AGAINST HASTINGS.

In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villany upon