Before this of France, the annals of all time have not furnished
an instance of a COMPLETE revolution. That Revolution seems to have
extended even to the constitution of the mind of man. It has this
of wonderful in it, that it resembles what Lord Verulam says of the
operations of nature. It was perfect, not only in its elements and
principles, but in all its members and its organs from the very
beginning. The moral scheme of France furnishes the only pattern ever
known, which they who admire will INSTANTLY resemble. It is indeed
an inexhaustible repertory of one kind of examples. In my wretched
condition, though hardly to be classed with the living, I am not safe
from them. They have tigers to fall upon animated strength. They have
hyaenas to prey upon carcasses. The national menagerie is collected
by the first physiologists of the time; and it is defective in no
description of savage nature. They pursue even such as me, into the
obscurest retreats, and haul them before their revolutionary tribunals.
Neither sex, nor age,--nor the sanctuary of the tomb, is sacred to them.
They have so determined a hatred to all privileged orders, that they
deny even to the departed the sad immunities of the grave. They are not
wholly without an object. Their turpitude purveys to their malice; and
they unplumb the dead for bullets to assassinate the living. If all
revolutionists were not proof against all caution, I should recommend
it to their consideration, that no persons were ever known in history,
either sacred or profane, to vex the sepulchre, and, by their sorceries,
to call up the prophetic dead, with any other event, than the prediction
of their own disastrous fate.--"Leave me, oh leave me to repose!"