Tea at Trianon: Speaking and Not Speaking

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

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Speaking and Not Speaking

This is written for monks but there is much we can all take away from it. From Fr. Mark:

Let it be said, once and for all, that Saint Benedict, being a wise man of great humanity, is not opposed to a wholesome mirth nor to gladness of heart. He does, however, proscribe noisy agitation and the giddy silliness of the immature man who never takes life seriously. The man who makes a joke of everything, the "hail fellow well met" who goes about slapping others on the back and laughing in loud guffaws will be either an entirely political creature content with a superficial popularity or a buffoon incapable of winning a considered respect. There is a certain Benedictine gravitas that should characterize a monk, without in any way making him gloomy or unsociable; it is a demeanour that is gentlemanly and simple, without artifice and serene. (Read entire post.)