Tea at Trianon: "Most Mournful and Moving"

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

Friday, April 5, 2019

"Most Mournful and Moving"

From Ancient Origins:

The Lion of Lucerne (known also as the Lion Monument) is a memorial located in Lucerne, Switzerland. This monument is a rock relief carved into the cliff face of a former sandstone quarry, and features a dying lion. Sculpted during the early part of the 19th century, the purpose of the Lion of Lucerne was to commemorate the Swiss Guards who lost their lives in 1792 during the French Revolution.

The Lion of Lucerne was designed by Bertel Thorvaldsen, a famous Danish sculptor who lived between the 18th and 19th centuries. The man who was responsible for the actual carving of the monument, however, was a stonemason from Constance (in southern Germany) by the name of Lucas Ahorn. The memorial was designed by Thorvaldsen in 1819 whilst he was staying in Rome, and work began in the following year by Ahorn. The monument, which measures 10 meters (32.8 ft.) in length and 6 meters (19.7 ft.) in height, was completed in 1821. (Read more.)

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