[The following passage from from the author's The Life of Maximilien Robespierre (1849)in the Hathi Digital Library Trust web edition. — George P. Landow]
nhappily, kings cannot buy experience at any price.
The terrible strokes of destiny fall upon them not as lessons,
but as outrages. They never hear the truth, they cannot
hear it. From childhood upwards, surrounded by flatterers (which means liars), they are to be pitied, deeply
pitied, rather than blamed. They so seldom hear a true
word spoken that they know not how to distinguish it
from falsehood.* They are treated so like gods upon
earth that we must not wonder if they believe in their
own divinity. Experience teaches not kings; it only
exasperates them! What king ever had so ample an experience as Louis Philippe? He lived through the first
Revolution. He saw the Consulate and the Empire, the
Hundred Days, the Restoration, and the Revolution of
July, which placed him on the throne. He had known
adversity, and struggled for his existence. He had lived
in free states: in Geneva, in England, in America; yet
he, too, when on the throne, went the old way, fell into
the old foolish rut: bed, equivocated, and fell. [94]
Bibliography
Lewes, George Henry. The Life of Maximilien Robespierre; with extracts from his unpublished correspondence. London, Chapman and Hall, 1849. Hathi Digital Library Trust online version of a copy in the Harvard University Library. Web. 25 April 2017.
Last modified 28 April 2017