Tea at Trianon: Your Romantic Search

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

Thursday, February 23, 2017

Your Romantic Search

From Convivium:

Research consistently links living together before marriage with a greater chance of divorce. Those who move in together without any clear commitment to marry report lower levels of marital quality down the road. University of Denver professor of psychology Scott Stanley says this about living together as a test of the relationship: “Testing is pretty much the worst reason you can have to live with someone before marriage… if you feel that you need to live together to test the relationship, you actually probably already know the answer.”

Living together before marriage is more problematic based on how you get there. Researchers call this “sliding versus deciding.” It’s decidedly (pardon the pun) better to decide than to simply end up living together because going home in the evening felt like a chore over time. In the same 2014 research survey, participants were asked to indicate the degree to which they “slid or decided.” Those who categorized the move as a concrete decision had greater marital happiness later on. (Read more.)