Page:Modern Literature Volume 3 (1804).djvu/156

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first reading hurried through it without waiting to examine its reasoning and philosophy. Like the magic pen of Shakespeare this performance, whithersoever it expatiated, carried with it his fancy and passions. He saw English votaries of the French revolution, in one page terrible, in the next contemptible, and in the third disgusting, now as tigers panting after slaughter and carnage, now as grashoppers teasing with their importunate chink; then a loathsome object full of blotches and putrified sores. Here he regarded chivalry as the great parent of social happiness, lamented its age as for ever gone; there he viewed Marie Antoinette as in beauty beyond the lot of human excellence; and next as in pity beyond the lot of human suffering. By the author's luminous torch he saw her bearing her son to the loyal officers; he viewed the