Excerpt from The Private Life of Marie Antoinette, Vol. 1 of 2: Queen of France and Navarre With Sketches and Anecdotes of the Courts, of Louis 14, Louis 15, and Louis 16

All the world is longing for romance, but why not seek it rather in history than in fiction? In history will be found, in infinite variation, the drama of the lives of men and women and of their sterner and gentler passions. Above all, history enjoys the sovereign charm of reality. I admire and appreciate as much as anyone the creative power of imagination which places before us imaginary beings invested with the attributes of humanity, but the biographies of those who have really known the passions, the joys, the sorrows and the calamities of life have a far greater fascination for me than the most perfect productions of poetry or romance.

The living creature, the work of God, is more beautiful than any human creation. Of all poets God is the greatest.

So, more than fifty years ago, wrote the famous Monsieur Guizot and his words are as well worth remembering to-day as when they appeared in the Revue des deux Mondes in the year 1855.

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