Tea at Trianon: The Sloane Astrolabe

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

Saturday, September 14, 2013

The Sloane Astrolabe

From the British Museum:

This unusually large, very accurately and elegantly engraved instrument had been in the possession of Sir Hans Sloane and was therefore part of the founding collections of the British Museum in 1753. It is the earliest and largest English astrolabe to have survived from the Middle Ages but shows a knowledge of Arabic astronomy and instrumentation. The presence of the names of three saints of particular English significance (Dunstan 19th May, Augustine of Canterbury 26th May, Edmund 20th November) in the list on the back and the plate marked for London make an English origin most likely. One plate is marked for 48º 30', the latitude of Paris. (Read more.)