I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from the
scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the
age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators
has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never,
never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that
proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the
heart which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an
exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of
nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It
is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which
felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage, whilst it mitigated
ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice
itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness....On the scheme
of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and
muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is
destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by
their own terms, and by the concern which each individual may find in
them from his own private speculations, or can spare to them from his
own private interests.
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