was himself returning to his seat, when he was stabbed with a stiletto by a man of the name of Louvel. The unfortunate prince was carried into one of the saloons of the Opera-House, where he soon afterwards expired in great agony. This event occurred on the 14th February 1820. Louvel was secured, and subsequently executed. On the 29th of September in the same year the widow of the murdered prince gave birth to a male child, whose advent into the world was hailed with delirious joy by the Royalists, whose exultation took several extravagant forms of expression. Like Louis XIV., the infant was hailed as the especial 'Gift of God;' and at the baptismal font, in addition to his first name of Henri, he received the appellation of Dieu-Donné. His precise designation, as given by the orthodox Almanach de Saxe-Gotha, is Prince Henri-Charles-Ferdinand-Marie-Dieu-Donné d'Artois, Duc de Bourdeaux. This event was nearly contemporaneous with the death of the ex-emperor at St Helena, and a number of the diplomatic body, in an address to his grandfather, afterwards Charles X., were pleased to style the young Duke of Bordeaux the 'Child of Europe'-inasmuch as he was, in their judgment, a pledge of monarchical stability, and a guarantee against any future revolution in France. It will be long apparently before diplomatists cast aside the traditions of their craft which connect the peace and stability of states with the births, marriages, and deaths of princely families. The Royalists recorded their satisfaction in a very substantial and gratifying manner: they subscribed to purchase an estate for the infant prince, the name of which has lately supplied him with a convenient title-that of the Count de Chambord. Louis XVIII. died in 1824, and was succeeded by his brother Charles X. In the month of July 1830-after a protracted parliamentary struggle, initiated by the king's appointment of an ultra-royalist ministry, at the head of which was the Prince Polignac-the famous ordinances appeared in the 'Moniteur,' by which the constitution granted by Louis XVIII. was revoked by a stroke of his successor's pen, and a government of pure, kingly will sought to be established in its stead. After three days' bloody but unavailing struggle in the streets of Paris, Charles X. with his family withdrew, escorted by the troops remaining faithful to him, to Rambouillet. The Parisians followed, and at first appeared anxious to attack him there. The king, to his honour be it said, refused to permit his troops to assault the people; feeling, doubtless, that no triumph he could achieve in such a combat could permanently win back his crown, and that it was useless to spill more blood in a vain effort. A negotiation ensued, and the dethroned king, who-with the sanction and concurrence of the Duke d'Angoulême, who declared that he renounced all worldly pomps and dignities at the foot of the cross had previously abdicated in favour of the Duke de Bordeaux, agreed to leave the country by stated marches in a given direction. He did so, leisurely and slowly. There is an air of dignity in this deliberate departure of the gray, discrowned king, holding his grandson by the hand, supported on the arm of the heroic daughter of Louis XVI., and escorted by his household troops, which contrasts favourably with a more recent royal flight. The young prince, only about ten years of age, it is minutely recorded, was greatly affected by the weight of the shadowy crown thus devolved upon him, shed a flood of tears, and did not during the entire day partake of any of his ordinary amuse ments. The captain of the guard received his orders, by the direction of Charles X., from the juvenile and imaginary sovereign, during the remainder of the journey. The march was withal a very melancholy one. The contrast between the compelled adulation which had been offered not long before to the Duke and Duchess d'Angoulême, when journeying in royal state through the very portion of France they were now traversing with lingering steps and slow, with the always sullen, and not infrequently openly insulting, aversion manifested by the populace, surprised and saddened the duchess. 'Ah, mon Dieu!' she frequently exclaimed; 'quelle différence!' The lesson came too late. The ex-king's escort took leave of him at the place of embarkation; and Charles, with his family and suite, proceeded to England, where he for a short time took up his abode at Lulworth Castle, Dorsetshire, spontaneously placed at his disposal by the generous feeling of Mr Weld, an English Catholic gentleman. He did not remain there long, in consequence, it was said, of nervous apprehension lest-Lulworth Castle being so near the seacoast-the youthful heir of France should be seized and spirited away. This morbid anxiety was not relieved, the 'Sherborne Journal' remarked, by the presence of a police officer, who had been latterly appointed to watch and counteract any project of the sort that might be entertained by the usurping government of France. The dethroned monarch, the Duke de Bordeaux, and suite, next embarked at Poole for Scotland, and proceeded to Edinburgh, where they resided in the palace of Holyrood for nearly two years. While sojourning in this northern capital, the young Duke de Bordeaux was constantly surrounded by a body of attendants, who, whenever he appeared abroad, clustered round him in real or affected dread of a design to assassinate him, charitably attributed to Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orleans, and then possessor of the recently-vacated throne of France, under the title of Louis-Philippe, the first King of the French. The life of the remarkable personage who had thus, as it were, picked up the tarnished diadem of France from amidst the dust of the streets of Paris, had before this crowning event been one of considerable vicissitude. Trained in his boyhood by the unreal and sentimental formularies of Madame de Genlis, his youth found him gazing in terrified amazement, and reluctant, half-voluntary admiration at the volcanic outburst of the Revolution. Whether to flee from or attempt to make friends with the prodigy that had sprung up, as it were, from the bowels of the earth, would have puzzled-looking at the magnitude of the stake at issue-wiser heads than his father's or even his own. They both at length resolved to be friends with the monster; and doffing their coronets, stretched out trembling hands in token of friendship and esteem. Their advances were civilly received. Egalité, as he was self-entitled, entered the Convention, where we have seen him; the Duke de Chartres obtained a commission in the Republican army, and served with reputation at the cannonade of Valmy and the combat at Jemappes. The death by guillotine of his father warned the future King of the French that the air of France was dangerous to royalty, trick itself out as it might in the trappings of republicanism, and the prince wisely gallopped across the frontier-his only present resources a stout heart, a fair education, and habits of industry. In order to live till a supply of money could be obtained, the youthful Duke of Orleans taught mathematics in the college of the Grisons, Switzerland. From thence he was after a time driven by the jealousy of the French Directory. So it is said; but the probability is that he voluntarily discontinued teaching the instant he had received remittances from the wealthy and powerful members of his princely family, still seated on the thrones of Spain and Naples, and otherwise occupying splendid positions in the world. Louis-Philippe now set off on his much-talked-of travels; and here we must observe, for the encouragement of the sensitive reader, that there is nothing in the slightest degree alarming or dangerous in the youthful adventures of his majesty Louis-Philippe; and but for the rank of the wandering prince, nothing at all in them interesting, novel, or exciting. He visited Sweden, Denmark, Norway, looked at the famous Maelström, and reached in a northerly direction to within thirteen degrees of the pole. In 1796 he crossed over to the United States in company with his two younger brothers, and explored it in various directions. He saw and conversed with Washington, and paid a visit to the Duke of Kent at Halifax. He then returned to Europe, and took up his abode-a very pleasant one-at Twickenham in England. There is evidently nothing in all this to excite the tear of sensibility. It has, on the contrary, rather an inviting aspect, tempting those who have the means to go and do likewise. While residing in England, the Duke of Orleans sought and obtained an interview with Stanilas-Zavier, Count of Provence, then titular, and afterwards de facto, Louis XVIII. of France. This prince had taken up his abode at Hartwell, Buckinghamshire, after having been expelled, in consequence of the treaty of Tilsit, from the territory of the emperor of all the Russias, where he had resided at Mittau in Courland. In fact Great Britain was the sole refuge in those days left to persons distasteful to the French Emperor; and it is a proud boast that this country never, amid the compelled and general subserviency of Europe, stooped for an instant from her defiant, unquailing attitude 'Still, as in olden time, Sheltering within her dreadless arms albeit that she stood alone and amid ruins. A curious and significant anecdote relative to this interview found its way a few days ago into the public prints. The 'London Morning Chronicle' of June 12 published the following extract from a memorandum purporting to have been written by the late Duke of Buckingham:-' When Louis XVIII. was at Stowe, the then Duke of Orleans (Louis-Philippe), whom he had not admitted to his presence since the period of the Revolution, came to Stowe, and saw his uncle for the first time. My father and I were present at the meeting in the library. We, too, stood at the fireplace near the printroom. Louis and his nephew walked up and down the library conversing for some time. At length, just as they came opposite the table near the print-room door, we heard a clatter and noise, and turning round I saw the Duke of Orleans, on his knees before his uncle, seize his hand, and I heard him say, "Ah, mon oncle! I ask pardon of my king, of God, and man, for having worn that accursed (maudit) national cockade." Louis XVIII. raised him up saying, "C'est bien mon neveu, c'est bien je te pardonne." I can point to the very spot on the floor where this happened.' Lord Nugent, the brother of the late Duke of Buckingham, wrote on the following day to the 'Chronicle,' impugning the authenticity of the memorandum, chiefly on the very questionable ground that Louis XVIII. and the Duke of Orleans could never have addressed each other as uncle and nephew. True; but it does not therefore follow that the Duke of Buckingham, while accurately relating the substance of what occurred, might not have committed such a blunder. Lord Nugent, from his own recollection, gives another version of the interview. Louis XVIII.,' 'his lordship says, 'did not walk up and down the library with the Duke of Orleans; for at that time Louis was little able, from infirmity and corpulence, to walk farther than from one room to another, and that with difficulty and rarely. I remember perfectly that when the Duke of Orleans entered the room Louis rose from his chair, and the Duke of Orleans dropped on one knee to kiss his hand, in total silence. The king raised him, saying, "Levez vous, mon cousin. Mes malheurs me font pardonner tout." Although I was in my boyhood when I was a witness to this scene, the whole of it, and especially the words used, remain fixed on my memory; so that I can now speak distinctly to the correctness of the statement I am now making. And what impresses above all on me the conviction that my brother could never have given this memorandum as a true narrative of what passed is, that often, and many years after, in talking over the scene with him, I found that we agreed entirely in the contrast we drew between the discretion of the Duke of Orleans in saying nothing, and the exceeding bad taste and feeling of Louis XVIII. in a phrase which implied that it was his misfortunes only that made him forgive his kinsman.' There is no very important difference in the two versions. The cold dislike and aversion of Louis XVIII. for the Duke of Orleans is more apparent in his lordship's account than in that of the Duke of Buckingham; but one does not well see how the words 'Mes malheurs me font pardonner tout' could have been addressed to a man who did not apologise for some real or supposed offence. Whether the duke really expressed viva voce his hatred of a symbol which must have been as detestable to himself as to the head of the elder House of Bourbon, is of slight moment. It was of course implied, whether spoken or not. At all events, the antipathy constantly manifested by Louis XVIII. to the astute chief of the younger branch of Bourbon was not, as his after-conduct very abundantly proved, in the slightest degree modified by this simulated reconciliation. The distaste of the unwieldy monarch for his comparatively youthful kinsman is by Louis-Philippe's friends stigmatised as an unreasonable prejudice; by the partisans of the elder house it is held to indicate a keen appreciation of character. After a not very lengthened abode at Twickenham, the exiled duke removed to Malta, with the hope of prolonging the life of his surviving brother, who had been attacked by the fatal disease of consumption. This hope frustrated, he proceeded to Sicily, where his sister Adelaide was residing under the protection of the Neapolitan Bourbons. He there married, on the 25th of November 1809, his amiable consort, Amélie, daughter of the king of Naples, and thenceforth chiefly resided at Palermo, which he did not finally leave till the overthrow of Bonaparte restored him to France, and placed in his possession the vast domains of his family, which fortunately had not been 'nationalised' during the Revolution. Certain rather important passages in the life of this prince, while residing in Sicily, familiar to few English readers, have been held by persons not friendly to him to throw a strong and unfavourable light upon his character. The people of Sicily have been long accustomed to look towards Great Britain for ultimate deliverance from the yoke of the Neapolitan Bourbons, always submitted to with profound reluctance. The commercial intercourse between England and Sicily is very considerable; but the circumstance which has of course chiefly directed the attention of Sicilians anxious or actually struggling for freedom towards this country, is the geographical fact of Sicily being an island, and its independence and liberation being therefore to be effected by a serious word from the mistress of the seas-a consummation which no continental state, however powerful on land, could prevent. Various considerations-chiefly, we fear, selfish ones-have from time to time induced successive English ministries to favour this disposition of the Sicilian people; and especially during the terrific struggle with Bonaparte, against whose overwhelming power it was found necessary to sharpen every available weapon, was this not very honourable coquetting manifested. The patriotism of the Sicilians was stimulated, at the instance of Lord William Bentinck, by the promulgation of a constitution, after the approved British pattern of king, lords, and commons. There was of course a vehement struggle between the Absolutists, actively favoured by the court, and the Reformers, or Constitutionalists. Thanks, however, to the British influence, freely exerted by Lord William Bentinck, and especially to the active enthusiasm in the national cause of the Duke of Orleans, who from his position was so able to soften or remove difficulties, the popular cause triumphed. The exultation was unbounded, and in the first blush of it, it was proposed to increase the dowry of the Princess Amélie, then Duchess of Orleans, to nearly five times the amount usually bestowed in such cases-namely, from 5000 to 24,000 ounces, or 300,000 francs (£12,000) per annum. enormous revenue from such a people was decreed almost unanimously. There were, however, dissentients to this policy amongst the liberal or constitutional party, who expressed themselves with great freedom upon the subject. You are the dupes,' they told their chiefs, of a liberalism assumed for the occasion (libéralisme de circonstance). The Duke of Orleans cares no more for the Sicilian charter than he does for that of China-if the Celestials have one-and has merely simulated devotion to the only party which could effectually help him to the coveted 300,000 francs per annum; and,' they added, ' to expect a Bourbon to be a real friend to liberty and charters is an absurdity.' All this was pronounced to be ungenerous, and calumnious. A change was, however, at hand. The destruction of Napoleon's army in 1813 appearing to render the friendship of Great Britain no longer a question of life or death to the Bourbon royal family, the famous Caroline, queen of Naples and Sicily-her husband was a cipher in the government-directed her energies towards the destruction of the new order of things: a constitution being to her as hateful as This |