youngest brother's death, from Malta to Gibraltar, and from Gibraltar to England. She set out to find him. Their meeting is described as most affecting. They vowed to each other never again to separate, and the vow was sacredly kept. In company they proceeded once more in search of their mother. With difficulty they managed to convey a letter to her, fixing a rendezvous at Minorca, and on the 7th of September, 1809, they landed at that island to embrace at last the object of their long and anxious search. After a short sojourn in the island, the three set sail for Palermo, where, on the 25th of the following November, Louis Philippe married the daughter of Ferdinand, King of Naples. In Sicily tranquillity first dawned upon the agitated career of the Duke of Orleans. It was a season of mild repose-a blush of light between the storms. His mother, his sister, and his wife were at his side; children were born unto him; public affairs ceased to harass or depress him; he sought, and found, happiness at the family hearth, where Heaven provides it for the meanest. In the midst of the profound calm there fell a thunderbolt. Napoleon was beaten; Louis XVIII. was restored to the throne of France. Louis Philippe heard the news, and started for Paris that very moment.

Marvellous vicissitudes of life! The man who had been refused his bed of straw at the farmhouse reached the French metropolis, and, scarcely taking time for refreshment, hurried to the Palais Royal to set foot again in his magnificent home. His heart beating high, his soul pierced with a hundred conflicting sensations that expressed themselves in visible tears, the restored heir paced the well-known galleries and

visited the "well-remembered gardens. The doors of the grand staircase chanced to be opened. The visitor involuntarily entered, but was stopped by a porter still wearing the imperial livery, who said that strangers were not allowed in the private apartments. Louis Philippe, overcome with emotion, fell upon his knees, and in his bewilderment kissed the lowest step of the staircase. He was recognised, and admitted.

Louis XVIII. and Charles X. may be said to have represented the dry sticks of Bourbonism; the sap of the race was gone, the rich blood of Louis Quatorze had ceased to circulate. Whatever was chivalric in the family, whatever heroic, whatever superb, whatsoever could engage the admiration and secure the pride of a people otherwise aggrieved, had departed for ever; whatever was bigoted, oppressive, ignorant, ridiculous, and suicidal, obstinately remained. Louis XVIII. was scarcely on the throne, Louis Philippe hardly housed in the Palais Royal, before intrigues were on foot again to overthrow the old dynasty, and to place the Duke of Orleans at the head of the Constitutional Monarchists. Intriguers on every side were as busy as possible, when the astounding announcement was made that the chained lion at Elba had burst his bonds and was advancing with strides such as that lion alone could take rapidly on Paris. It was enough. Intrigues were postponed for the present. Louis XVIII. as quick as lightning was beyond the frontier. Louis Philippe, accompanied by his family, was again at Twickenham.

Waterloo put matters straight for the Bourbons, had the men been wise enough to keep them so. The first proposition made by the House of Peers on

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behalf of the restored crown was that all who had taken any part whatever in the successive revolutions of France should be visited with extreme punishment. Louis Philippe was in his place in parliament when the impolitic measure was proposed. He protested against it loudly and indignantly, and at his instigation the obnoxious motion was rejected without a division. The reader possibly remembers the relative positions of Louis XVI. and Egalité, a generation before. Events repeat themselves. Louis XVIII., considerably disgusted, forbade princes of the blood to appear in the Chamber of Peers unless summoned by special authority. The Duke of Orleans retired into comparative seclusion, and revenged himself upon the court by entering his eldest son as a student in one of the public colleges as a simple citizen. His father had driven his own phaeton, and introduced pantaloons. "I perceive," says Louis XVIII. in his own memoirs, and with touching imbecility, "that although Louis Philippe does not stir he advances. How must I manage to prevent a man from walking who appears as if he did not make a step? It is a problem which remains for me to solve, and I should be glad not to leave it for solution to my successors. Poor old gentleman! The sum was too difficult both for himself and the brother who succeeded him.

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Charles X. was admirably adapted for the task he proposed to himself upon ascending the throne. No one in a shorter time, by any possible manoeuvring, could so effectually have ruined his own fortunes and those of all who belonged to him. in his grasp before Jesuits were religious processions revived, and

Power was scarcely installed in office, threats held out to

all who should dare to question the royal will, or oppose the King's government. After more than a quarter of a century of bloodshed, revolution, anarchy, civil and foreign warfare, this was the result of the great lesson! Humanity sighs as it contemplates the incapacity of dunces in a school where the dullest may find the best instruction if he will. The people naturally enough refused to be coerced into love of his Majesty's government, and his Majesty, with characteristic obstinacy, declared his resolution "to be unalterable." France had positively to do its work all over again from the very beginning. Revolution had brought the state machine precisely to the point at which revolution had found it in 1792.

France had another struggle for her rights. Fighting again took place in the public streets of Paris, whilst Charles X. was playing a rubber of whist at St. Cloud, and Louis Philippe was nervously watching the issue of a more intricate game at the palace of Neuilly. In the midst of the roar of civil commotion a proclamation was put forth in Paris full of praise of the Duke of Orleans, who it was said would not declare himself, but waited for the expression of the people's wishes. Negotiators soon arrived at Neuilly. The Duchess of Orleans exhibited the greatest indignation when they proposed that her husband should violate his allegiance to his King. Madame Adelaide, the Duke's sister, took another view of the matter. She spoke feelingly when she said, "Let them make my brother a president, a national guard, or anything they please, provided they do not make him an exile or an outlaw." The Duke entered Paris on the 30th of July, 1830, late

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at night in a state of painful uncertainty. The friends of a republic had threatened to shoot all who should dare to speak of a monarchy. M. Odillon Barrot, since Prime Minister of Louis Napoleon, to silence all such Republicans, had hit upon a happy sentence, the force of which he has since perhaps found reason to question. "The Duke of Orleans,” he said, "is the best of republics." So the Deputies thought, for they created him Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and the Duke, in accepting the appointment, assured the people that henceforth, at least, "the Charter should be a verity." From the Lieutenant-Generalship to the throne was hardly a step. On Monday, the 9th of August, the great grandson of the Regent grasped the sceptre which for two centuries the family of Orleans had vainly tried to clutch.

In the presence of God, Louis Philippe, King of the French, swore to govern only by the laws, and according to the laws, "to cause good and exact justice to be administered to every one according to his right, and to act in everything with the sole view to the interest, the welfare, and the glory of the French people." It was a great oath, but such as might have been expected from a king cradled in misfortune, and conscious of the crying necessities of the people who had freely elected him to be their chief. His Majesty himself was aware of the magnitude of the obligation, but he confronted it like a man, and had unlimited trust in himself. have ratified a great act," he said; "I am profoundly sensible of all the duties it imposes conscious that I shall fulfil them."

"I

on me. I feel

Who shall say