received. He was made a public creature, and had no
enjoyment whatever but in the performance of some duty. At this
exigent moment the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied.

But a Disposer, whose power we are little able to resist, and whose
wisdom it behooves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in
another manner, and--whatever my querulous weakness might suggest--a
far better. The storm has gone over me, and I lie like one of those
old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stript
of all my honors; I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the
earth! There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the
divine justice, and in some degree submit to it. But while I humble
myself before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the
attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience of Job is
proverbial. After some of the convulsive struggles of our irritable
nature, he submitted himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even
so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable
degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbors of his who
visited his dunghill to read moral, political, and economical lectures
on his misery. I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate.
Indeed, my lord, I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I
would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and
honor in the world. This is the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury;
it is a privilege; it is an indulgence for those who are at their
ease. But we are all of us made to shun disgrace, as we are made to
shrink from pain, and poverty, and disease. It is an instinct; and
under the direction of reason, instinct is always in the right. I live
in an inverted order. They who ought to have succeeded me are gone
before me; they who should have been to me as posterity are in the
place of ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation--which ever must
subsist in memory--that act of piety which he would have performed to
me; I owe it to him to shew, that he was not descended, as the Duke of
Bedford would have it, from an unworthy parent.

IV

MARIE ANTOINETTE[57]

I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady, the other object
of the triumph, has borne that day (one is interested that beings made
for suffering should suffer well) and that she bears all the
succeeding days, that she bears the imprisonment of her husband, and
her own