Everybody knows the fatal pollution of the marriage pomps on the
reception of Marie Antoinette in Paris; the numbers who perished are
still spoken of obscurely as to the amount, and with shuddering awe for
the unparalleled horrors standing in the background of the fatal reign
--horrors
'That hush'd in grim repose, await their evening prey.'
But in the life of Goethe is mentioned a still more portentous (though
more shadowy) omen in the pictorial decorations of the arras which
adorned the pavilion on the French frontier; the first objects which
met the Austrian Archduchess on being hailed as Dauphiness, was a
succession of the most tragic groups from the most awful section of the
Grecian theatre. The next alliance of the same kind between the same
great empires, in the persons of Napoleon and the Archduchess Marie
Louisa, was overshadowed by the same unhappy omens, and, as we all
remember, with the same unhappy results, within a brief period of five
years.
Or, if we should resort to the fixed and monumental rather than to
these auguries of great nations--such, for instance, as were embodied
in those _Palladia_, or protesting talismans, which capital
cities, whether Pagan or Christian, glorified through a period of
twenty-five hundred years, we shall find a long succession of these
enchanted pledges, from the earliest precedent of Troy (whose palladium
was undoubtedly a talisman) down to that equally memorable, and bearing
the same name, at Western Rome.
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