The Reign of George III. - (Continued.) page 12

The tombs of ancient kings and warriors were everywhere broken up, and their remains desecrated. Those in the abbey of St. Denis, the burying-place of the kings of France, suffered an especial tempest of destruction. The royal remains were thrown out and kicked about; whether the bones of good kings or bad ones, they had perfect equality dealt out to them. The remains of marshal Turenne now suffered a singular nemesis for the desecration of the German kings, whose bones his soldiers formerly flung about at Speir, making bowls and ninepins of their skulls! Petrarch's Laura, at Avignon, suffered the same indignities. Such was the infernal bacchanal which the French now rioted in! The whole country appeared one great madhouse of bloody and raving maniacs. It was, indeed, a lunatic and devil-inspired nation; the fair advent of liberty being converted into the wild orgie of besotted licence. Instead of the images of the Madonna, you now saw the hideous busts of Marat. Everything Christian was swept away from the names of their towns, streets, and public buildings; and the people now only named their children after the great pagans of Rome and Greece: Solons, Brutuses, Catos, Mutius Scaevolas, and the like.