Tea at Trianon: The Night Rainbow

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, May 20, 2021

The Night Rainbow

From My Modern Met:

We think of rainbows as being reserved for the daytime, but it turns out that the colorful beam looks magnificent at night, too. Photographer Brian Haislip captured sight of a double moonbow—the rare nighttime version of a rainbow—that appeared over the water in Lexington Park, Maryland. In four images, he showcases the crash of lightning as it seemingly tussles with the multicolored arc while also highlighting the moonbows in calmer moments after the storm. The results are as unexpected as they are magical.
Haislip loves to snap pictures of storms. So, when he saw that there was a lightning storm going on, he trekked down to the waterfront in his neighborhood in hopes of photographing it. “This particular night,” he tells My Modern Met, “the lightning calmed down around 10 p.m. so I packed up and went back home to edit the lightning shots I got.” He heard more thunder in the distance around midnight. He was exhausted but as a self-proclaimed “storm addict,” he decided to grab his camera and head back to the same spot. (Read more.)

This reminds me of a poem: "If You're Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow."