Is this a triumph to be consecrated at altars, to be commemorated with grateful thanksgiving, to be offered to the Divine Humanity with fervent prayer and enthusiastic ejaculation?—­These Theban and Thracian orgies, acted in France, and applauded only in the Old Jewry, I assure you, kindle prophetic enthusiasm in the minds but of very few people in this kingdom:  although a saint and apostle, who may have revelations of his own, and who has so completely vanquished all the mean superstitions of the heart, may incline to think it pious and decorous to compare it with the entrance into the world of the Prince of Peace, proclaimed in an holy temple by a venerable sage, and not long before not worse announced by the voice of angels to the quiet innocence of shepherds.

At first I was at a loss to account for this fit of unguarded transport.  I knew, indeed, that the sufferings of monarchs make a delicious repast to some sort of palates.  There were reflections which might serve to keep this appetite within some bounds of temperance.  But when I took one circumstance into my consideration, I was obliged to confess that much allowance ought to be made for the society, and that the temptation was too strong for common discretion:  I mean, the circumstance of the Io Paean of the triumph, the animating cry which called for “all the BISHOPS to be hanged on the lamp-posts,"[91] might well have brought forth a burst of enthusiasm on the foreseen consequences of this happy day.  I allow to so much enthusiasm some little deviation from prudence.  I allow this prophet to break forth into hymns of joy and thanksgiving on an event which appears like the precursor of the Millennium, and the projected Fifth Monarchy, in the destruction of all Church establishments.  There was, however, (as in all human affairs there is,) in the midst of this joy, something to exercise the patience of these worthy gentlemen, and to try the long-suffering of their faith.  The actual murder of the king and queen, and their child, was wanting to the other auspicious circumstances of this “beautiful day”.  The actual murder of the bishops, though called for by so many holy ejaculations, was also wanting.  A group of regicide and sacrilegious slaughter was, indeed, boldly sketched, but it was only sketched.  It unhappily was left unfinished, in this great history-piece of the massacre of innocents.  What hardy pencil of a great master, from the school of the rights of men, will finish it, is to be seen hereafter.  The age has not yet the complete benefit of that diffusion of knowledge that has undermined superstition and error; and the king of France wants another object or two to consign to oblivion, in consideration of all the good which is to arise from his own sufferings, and the patriotic crimes of an enlightened age.[92]