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Untitled Article
ditch , € each of the depth of twenty feet , ' - —* the palisades of iron topped with clusters of sharp spikes /*—' the ancient and grim- * looking donjon-keep , which rose like a black Ethiopian giant into the air /—' the shot-hole windows /—* the gateway towers / - * - ~ * the triple succession of portcullis and d * awbridge / -r ~ and the ' cradles of iron called swallows' nests , from which the sentinels , who
were regularly posted there ^ could take deliberate aim at any who should attempt to enter without the proper signal or password of the day / no longer blast the sight of outraged humanity—no longer call down the vengeance of offended heaven ! The besom of destruction has swept these enormities from the earth- —they have vanished before the light of reason and the rod
of retributive justice . The reclamation of the rights of man has tumbled them to the ground , leaving but , as an awful memento , the scanty remains of this once mighty engine of kingly despotism I The stout peasantry and the sturdy yeomanry of France , —the strength ^ if not the ornament of nations ,- —now cultivate contentedly , cheerfully , exultingly , on their own account , that very soil where i every yard of land , excepting the permitted path' itself
was formerly ' rendered dangerous , and well-nigh impracticable , by snares and traps armed with scythe-blades , which shred off the unwary passenger ' s limb as sheerly as a hedge-bill tops a hawthorn sprig , and calthrops that would pierce your foot through , and pitfalls deep enough to bury you in for ever ; and where ' the very leaves of the trees were like so many ears which carried all that was spoken to the king ' s own cabinet . ' With a
proud feeling of reconquered rights and conscious property , the men of Touraine shout aloud in concert the animating strains of the Parisienne and the sublime hymn of the r MarseJlaise . * Truly , as the pensioned Burke exclaimed in an agony of grief , truly the age of chivalry is gone , and with it the age of iron-fisted , grim , and heart-breaking oppression . Its ominous emblem , the fleur-de-lis , is every where erased ;* its white flag has disappeared ;
its lilies are faded ; the charm , the grace , which by depriving vice of half its grossness , rendered it in the sight of some persons interesting , if not harmless , are being again chased from social life ; and c when the summer fades into autumn , and moonlight nights are long , and roads become unsafe / you will , on this altered spot , no longer * see a cluster of ten , ay , of twenty , human beings hanging like acorns on that old doddered oak . f '
It was at Plessis that Louis XI . ( who , if he had not been a king , would have been called a monster ) died , in spite of the leaden images of the Virgin , which the superstitious hypocrite always wore in his hat , according to Sir Walter Scott ; and notwithstanding he summoned to his relief the miraculous phials both of * This royal emblem is everywhere defaced , even on the granite half-league stones \> y the road sides . f Quentin Durward , vol . i , page 39 ,
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Notice * of France .. 67 ft
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1832, page 679, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1822/page/31/
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