Tea at Trianon: The Art of Manly Virtue

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall 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 which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

This is a beautiful article.

It is manly to give of yourself completely, be that in marriage or the priesthood, and those men need to be affirmed in their vocations. We need to be the “iron that sharpens iron” for the men around us, and help them reject the selfishness that the purveyors of our modern culture seem hell-bent on trying to sell us.
Women are not toys, work is not “for chumps”, and self-indulgence is a useless pursuit for a man.

It’s appropriate and praiseworthy for a man to scowl at the magazine his fellows are buying, and it’s certainly appropriate to invite your fellow men to Holy Mass. It’s manly to be clean and polite. It’s manly to respect women and the Church. It’s manly to pray… and it’s very manly to lead others in prayer.