the union, and the truth of whose presentiments her heart confirmed, which coloured her bright hopes with a tinge of melancholy as she entered the land where lay so brilliant a future before her?

The first years after her marriage, spent in the midst of a refined and affectionate court, in the society of an adored and richly-gifted husband, were marked by the union of every joy that earth can bestow. On the 30th of May, 1838, the anniversary of her marriage, she wrote to an old friend, "What a difference from last year! Now, all the hopes I then cherished are realized, and fresh hopes attach me to the future. A profound and true affection, the germs of which were, on that day, implanted in my heart, has been extended and strengthened more than your kind heart, and that of my mother, could venture to hope." And scarcely two months later, on the birth of her son, the Count de Paris, she writes to her mother, "How merciful is God! Yes, your child is the happiest of mothers, and her heart seems almost too narrow to contain the whole of her bliss!" The birth of her second son, the Duke de Chartres, completed the measure of her happiness. Her heart overflowed with joy. But in this happiness she never forgot the duties of a mother. By her grace and intelligence she had drawn about her a select circle of the wisest and most gifted in the land of her adoption. How admirably she was fitted to be the directress of the early years of youths destined to the highest station, we may perceive from her letters written about this period. In one, she says, "You know that Nature has always had a great influence over me. I think that we cannot sufficiently identify ourselves with her by observation, for she is one of the admirable manifestations by which God speaks to our hearts. I think it is good to encourage this taste in children. In admiring the works of Nature, they learn to love the Creator. You may imagine, therefore, that I do not let a beautiful sunset or a bright moonlight escape me without pointing it out to my child, or without speaking to him of the Being who made these wonders!"

Then the sad presentiment had vanished? No. A sense of some unforeseen disaster was perpetually present to her. Its realization grew near. In the middle of the summer of 1841, her physicians urged the Duchess, who had been for a long time in a delicate state of health, to seek renewed strength from the waters of Plombières. It was with great reluctance that she consented to proceed thither. She went, however, escorted by her husband; and, on reaching the exterior Boulevards, they drove past a cemetery, adjoining the entrance of which were several shops displaying funeral-wreaths and ornaments for sale.

"I hate these people who trade upon grief!" the Prince said. "Look !" he continued, glancing over the different inscriptions, "they have calculated for everyone; here are garlands for a young girl, and here is one for a little child.”

The thought of the beloved children left behind occurred to the anxious mother, and her eyes filled with tears. The Prince smiled, took her hand, and added"Well, then-no, it shall not be for a child; it may, perhaps, be for a man of thirty-two."

The Duchess raised her head, and lovingly reproached her husband with trying to banish one sorrowful thought by another infinitely sadder.

Plombières was reached. After a month's sojourn there, the health of the Duchess was greatly improved, and she began to take pleasant rambles with her husband, who came at frequent intervals, though his duties with the camp at St. Omer did not permit him to stay longer than twenty-four hours at each visit.

On the evening of the 5th of July, the Duke and herself went to see the pretty village of St. Loup. Perceiving the Duchess gathering some flowers, her husband plucked a bunch of wild scabions (called in France the "widow's flower") and offered them to her. Early on the morning of the 7th, the Duke left Plombières-never to return. On the afternoon of the 14th, as Madame de Montesquieu, lady in waiting to the Duchess, was about to dress for dinner, a letter was handed to her, containing only this fatal phrase, “The Prince Royal is dead!" How could these terrible words be told to the Duchess?

The physician and the prefect were summoned, and, in a distant apartment, they concerted as to the best mode of communicating the irreparable calamity to the unconscious lady, who, already in a precarious condition of health, might be killed by the sudden shock. It was determined that the prefect should compose a false despatch, announcing that the Duke had been seized with a serious illness at Paris. The royal lady, having finished her toilet, appeared graceful, smiling

"But what is the matter?" she cried, observing the melancholy embarrassment of her attendant. "You are very pale! What has happened to you? Some misfortune has befallen you!"

"No, madame, no misfortune has befallen me; but I am very unhappy nevertheless. I have to tell your Royal Highness

"Good Heavens! What has happened? My children! The King!"
"Alas! madame, the Prince Royal is dangerously ill !”
"Oh, God! he is dead-I am sure of it! Tell me

fell on her knees-crying, praying.

And the Duchess

The despatch was read over to her. The Duchess rose-out of her unbounded love for her husband, came unwonted firmness. She would fly to him.

"I will set out this instant," she said through her tears. "I may still be in time to nurse him."

Weary journey! Alas! that ever-present, melancholy foreboding of ill! Was its realization at hand? Through the gloom, a carriage was descried coming from Paris-from the scene of her husband's anguish.

"Open the door!" cried she. And she was with difficulty prevented from rushing out of the carriage. It was M. Chomel, the royal physician. The terror that was pent up in the Duchess's heart burst forth in a piercing shriek as she caught sight of him. "Monsieur Chomel! Oh, Heaven! The Prince ?"

66

Madame, the Prince is no longer living!"

"What do you tell me? carried him thus suddenly?

No, no! it is impossible! What disease could have
Speak, and kill me at once!"

"Alas! madame, a strange and terrible catastrophe. A fall from a carriage. He never recovered his consciousness. A few words of German, uttered from time to time, were the only signs of life. No doubt, it was some remembrance to your Royal Highness !"

The Duchess was overwhelmed with grief, and sobs stifled her words. The royal lady sat thus, on the highroad, in her carriage, with the doors open-the sky without a moon, and profoundly dark-breaking the silence of the night with passionate sobs; life seemed departing from her; all her affectionate soul appeared to escape in lamenting him she loved so dearly. This terrible anguish endured for an hour; the Duchess refused to be comforted, and her suite sat on the coach-steps, vainly endeavouring to hide their own sorrow.

Another day and a second night were passed ere the bereaved lady reached Neuilly. The King received her on her arrival; and the attendants could only catch the sound of broken phrases from time to time.

“Oh, my dear Helen! the greatest of all misfortunes has fallen upon my old age," said the King, as he conducted the Duchess to the chapel where lay the body of her beloved Prince.

We may not dwell upon this scene of suffering. After long grief and praying, the Duchess rose and put on that dress of mourning which she never afterwards laid aside.

We have seen the closing of this first sorrowful phase in the career of the Duchess of Orleans. In the death of her young and passionately-loved husband, she experienced the first realization of the forebodings which possessed her as she saw the sun set on her native land for the last time. Later we shall have to mark the noble resignation of her widowed days, the affection she displayed for the father and the relatives of that loved partner of her scanty measure of felicity, the sympathy and devotion she evinced for the land of her adoption, the wonderful foresight with which she remarked the approaching storm which was to make the old King, his family, and herself, exiles. And when that storm burst, we shall behold the brave woman displaying a resolution and a high-heartedness which it were well for the House of Orleans, had all the rest of that family shared her intrepidity. We shall see her asserting the rights of her son, the Count de Paris, in the Chamber of Deputies during the height of the revolutionary crisis, refusing to depart till the will of the nation had been made known, even though herself and the children whom she loved more than herself, were made the common target for the muskets of the frantic mob of insurgents that had invaded the national Council Chamber. Unwillingly leaving the land where her son should reign, we shall behold her watch every event that succeeded, inspired with a hope that each turn of the political struggle would be that which would enable her to assert once again the claims of her fatherless boy. This last hope destroyed by the establishment of the Empire, we shall remark her courageous resignation, her unwearied affection for the exiled family and for the devoted adherents of her cause, her solicitude for her sons. Finally, we shall see her noble spirit pass away from the earth, after a short, sad career, characterized by womanly tenderness, earnestness, and true-heartedness, which, while they graced her as the Royal Lady, would have made her the object of the highest admiration as a simple woman.

THIS is the month of roses, the sixth of the year, deriving its name, as some say, from no less a personage than Juno, the wife of Jupiter,

"King of Gods and Men." Others say that

it is derived à junioribus (from young people), who universally claim this month as their own. Little signifieth it, however, whence cometh the name, seeing that the month itself is so glorious, universally bountiful in

And fruits, and flowers on Nature's ample lap."

Welcome, sweet June! The ancients represented thee by a youth clad in a mantle of dark green, with his head coroneted with flowers, bearing on his right arm a basket of fruits, and on his left an eagle. This was in accordance with that figurative genius, displayed in poetical invention, for which they have, throughout all time, been famed. The "mantle of green," however, still continues to be the symbol of thy fresh and luxuriant loveliness, albeit tliou art

"With summer half- embrowned."

This was the month which suggested to the "Bard of Avon" that most sweetly beautiful, yet grotesquely fanciful, of creations, "A Midsummer Night's Dream;" and on that eve-the eve of St. John the Baptist-it was usual, in olden times, both in towns and cities, but more especially n country places, for the old and young to assemble together and to make merry round a large fire, which they kindled in some open space. Then would the young disport themselves with leap and wrestling-match, with dance and song, whilst the old sat apart, spectators of sports too vigorous for their old limbs, and consoled themselves with a mug of nut-brown ale. Thus would they pass the time till midnight, and sometimes even until the crowing of the cock. Alas! how things are changed!

In many of the customs of our ancestors, there was a geniality of feeling for each other, blended with a warmth of affection for the floral offspring of Nature, which has, we regret to think almost ceased to exist amongst their descendants. In his "Survey of London," John Stow

tells us that, "on the vigil of St. John the Baptist, every man's door, being shadowed with green birch, long fennel, St. John's wort, orpin, white lilies, and such-like, garnished upon with garlands of beautiful flowers, had also lamps of glass, with oil burning in them all the night; some hung out branches of iron, curiously wrought, containing hundreds of lamps lighted at once." Think of that, ye gentle readers of the ENGLISHWOMAN'S DOMESTIC MAGAZINE! think of your doors being shadowed with " green birch and white lilies," on a warm Midsummer's eve! The same worthy antiquary tells us of "bon-fires" being, on the occasion, burning in the streets, every man bestowing wood or labour towards them." We, however, have called this the month of roses,

"The pride of plants, the queen of flowers,"

as Sappho sings; but is it not also the month of the poets? Have they not sung of all that is to be seen, felt, and enjoyed in this delightful season of "balmy bliss ?" Have they not sung of every flower, from

"Earth's cultureless buds"

up to the "rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley ?" They have, and well and charmingly too! so let us hear some of their songs, culled by the fair hands of our own fair correspondents.

Now comes the rosy June; and blue-eyed hours,

With song of birds, and stir of leaves and
wings,

And run of rills, and bubble of bright springs,
And hourly burst of pretty buds to flowers;
With buzz of happy bees in violet bowers;
And gushing lay of the loud lark, who sings
High in the silent air, and sleeks his wings
In frequent sheddings of the flying showers;
With plunge of struggling sheep in plashy
floods,

And timid bleat of shorn and shivering lamb,
Answer'd in far-off faintness by its dam;
With cuckoo's call, from green depths of old
woods;

And hum of many sounds, making one voice,
That sweetens the smooth air with a melodious
noise.

WALLER, 1605-1687.

An Afternoon in June.

It was a bright and cheerful afternoon,
Towards the end of the sunny month of June,
When the North wind congregates in crowds
The floating mountains of the silver clouds
From the horizon, and the stainless sky
Opens beyond them like Eternity.

All things rejoiced beneath the sun--the weeds,
The river, and the corn-fields and the reeds,

With the visions of youth to revisit my age,
And I wish you to grow on my tomb.

CAMPBELL, 1777-1814.