Manchurian Books

Beauty is too apt to exert a peremptory
claim to absolute dominion; and, not content with conjugal affection,
requires obsequious dotage. The Queen's views being all limited to the
routine of a court, unhappily indisposed her from acting the part of a
faithful wife in this critical emergency, and induced her to use all her
power to make the King depend more for advice upon herself and her
favourites, than on those sages who presided at the council board, or
those warriors who contended in the field; in other words, to prefer
shallow courtiers, known only for polished manners, habits of
dissipation, and an excessive regard to their own interest, to men who
knew the strength and disposition of the enemy, who, by deep researches
into past times, could judge of the present, and were too noble-minded
to build plans of self-aggrandizement on the future. Misled by smooth
flatterers, the Queen manifested a fatal dislike to all those whose
minds were too much occupied to pay her particular court. Opposition to
her opinion, was, in her estimation, high treason.


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