! you I invoke; to
you I address my prayer. While your aspect averts, with secret terror,
the vulgar regard, it excites in my heart the charm of delicious
sentiments--sublime contemplations. What useful lessons, what affecting
and profound reflections you suggest to him who knows how to consult
you! When the whole earth, in chains and silence bowed the neck before
its tyrants, you had already proclaimed the truths which they abhor;
and confounding the dust of the king with that of the meanest slave,
had announced to man the sacred dogma of Equality. Within your pale, in
solitary adoration of Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions
of the dead; not such as she is painted by the impassioned multitude,
armed with fire and sword, but under the august aspect of Justice,
poising in her hand the sacred balance wherein are weighed the actions
of men at the gates of eternity!

O Tombs! what virtues are yours! You appal the tyrant's heart, and
poison with secret alarm his impious joys. He flies, with coward step,
your incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of insolence.*
You punish the powerful oppressor; you wrest from avarice and extortion
their ill-gotten gold, and you avenge the feeble whom they have
despoiled; you compensate the miseries of the poor by the anxieties of
the rich; you console the wretched, by opening to him a last asylum from
distress; and you give to the soul that just equipoise of strength and
sensibility which constitutes wisdom--the true science of life. Aware
that all must return to you, the wise man loadeth not himself with the
burdens of grandeur and of useless wealth: he restrains his desires
within the limits of justice; yet, knowing that he must run his destined
course of life, he fills with employment all its hours, and enjoys the
comforts that fortune has allotted him. You thus impose on the impetuous
sallies of cupidity a salutary rein! you calm the feverish ardor
of enjoyments which disturb the senses; you free the soul from the
fatiguing conflict of the passions; elevate it above the paltry
interests which torment the crowd; and surveying, from your commanding
position, the expanse of ages and nations, the mind is only accessible
to the great affections--to the solid ideas of virtue and of glory.

* The cathedral of St. Denis is the tomb of the kings of
France; and it was because the towers of that edifice are
seen from the Castle of St. Germain, that Louis XI