It does credit
to our official style. The report of the speech of the minister in a
great assembly, which I have read, is a comment upon the Declaration.
Without inquiry how far that report is exact, (inferior I believe it may
be to what it would represent,) yet still it reads as a most eloquent
and finished performance. Hardly one galling circumstance of the
indignities offered by the Directory of Regicide to the supplications
made to that junto in his Majesty's name has been spared. Every one of
the aggravations attendant on these acts of outrage is, with wonderful
perspicuity and order, brought forward in its place, and in the manner
most fitted to produce its effect. They are turned to every point of
view in which they can be seen to the best advantage. All the parts are
so arranged as to point out their relation, and to furnish a true idea
of the spirit of the whole transaction.
This speech may stand for a model. Never, for the triumphal decoration
of any theatre, not for the decoration of those of Athens and Rome, or
even of this theatre of Paris, from the embroideries of Babylon or from
the loom of the Gobelins, has there been sent any historic tissue so
truly drawn, so closely and so finely wrought, or in which the forms are
brought out in the rich purple of such glowing and blushing colors. It
puts me in mind of the piece of tapestry with which Virgil proposed to
adorn the theatre he was to erect to Augustus upon the banks of the
Mincio, who now hides his head in his reeds, and leads his slow and
melancholy windings through banks wasted by the barbarians of Gaul.
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