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Sovereign's good fortune, so apparently attached to his destiny, and one with himself, is, in its intense desire to get rid of him, the cause, four years later, of his utter and irremediable ruin!

Inasmuch as succeeding events have proved how lamentably true is, in France, the phrase, "tout arrive;" and since each original picture of its modern political history has generated at least one copy, there is interest in comparing the two recent epochs to which we have been alluding, and noting the slightest feature of resemblance, or the reverse, between them. For instance, when viewed by the light of we hope our definitive alliance with France, how strange it is to find the record of how the two nations felt towards each other upon the occasion of an event similar to that which took place some few weeks ago! The Moniteur of the 27th March, 1811, in a paragraph dated Cherbourg, says :-"The English, who, nothwithstanding their pretence of blockading our port, cannot prevent the constant arrival of ships, must have heard from their own vessels our shouts and songs of joy, and must have quivered with jealousy and rage." And two days later, in a despatch from Boulogne, the same official journal, after alluding to the public rejoicings, remarks that, "the wind setting that way, the sound of the French guns upon the ramparts was instantly borne across to the English shore."

This fact is equally noticed in our English paper The Star, of the 21st March, 1811, which says,-"It is supposed the French Empress has been confined, for yesterday the French batteries fired great volleys of rejoicing; and according to the number of discharges, it would seem that the Emperor had a son."

Now of the four births, imperial and royal, which have taken place during the last forty-five years in France, two, viz. that of the King of Rome and that of the Duc de Bordeaux, were significant to the popular mind. The first meant, "The French nation has broken with the Bourbon race,- -a conqueror has come, who governs with a strong hand, reaps glory throughout

1 Moniteur, 27th March, 1811.

This is copied from the Moniteur, which of course only alludes to Napoleon by his title of Emperor.

the world, and whose descendants will rule over France: this is sure, and the hand of Providence is manifestly at work." The birth of the Duc de Bordeaux meant,-"The French nation has not broken with the Bourbon race, because all its really national greatness is indivisible from the national dynasty of the Capets, from the descendants of Louis IX., Francis I., Henri IV., and Louis XIV.; the Revolution was a mistake, and the reign of a foreign conqueror, of the Corsican usurper, a mere passing incident: this is sure, and the hand of Providence is manifestly at work." These two opposite significations were similar in kind, and each might and did find enthusiastic partisans,-partisans who proclaimed and who believed in the definitive character of the past event. But when other analogous, but not identical, occurrences took place, what was the signification to be given to them? Above all, what was to prevent them from seeming as mere copies of former events, which, it was now proved, had in fact had no definitive character? The return of each was in future only a mark of instability; for the King of Rome having been replaced by the Duc de Bordeaux, why should the son of another Bonaparte not be succeeded by the son of another Bourbon? Why should not the descendant of Henri IV., or the grandson of Louis Philippe, once more restore to France what their forefathers restored? We are not here examining by any means the probabilities or improbabilities of the thing itself, we are merely stating what must naturally have been, since 1830, 1848, and 1852, the arguments, more or less, of all parties, and what must inevitably militate against the notion of definitiveness attaching now, in France, to the establishment of any dynasty whatever.

Let us now follow the chronological order of events, and revert to the birth of the second heir to sovereignty in France.

On the 29th of September, 1820, the Moniteur, at five o'clock in the morning, had the following announcement :"We suspend the press. The cannon fires. Her Royal Highness the Duchess de Berry is confined of a prince."

The witnesses to this birth were, amongst others, Suchet, Duke d'Albufera, a marshal of the Empire; and, as he him

self says in his deposition, "several national guardsmen, who arrived before him."

And now, if we follow step by step the details of what took place in the royal mother's chamber, we shall find an instance of the imitation of which so recent an example has been furnished by another race; the child that descends from Henri IV. must be dealt with after the fashion which tradition represents as having been adopted for the Béarnais. "No sooner was the infant born," says the first femme de chambre, Madame de Cazeau, in her deposition in the Procès Verbal, "than some Jurançon wine and a clove of garlic were brought, and her Royal Highness desired that her son might be made to drink of the wine, and might have his lips rubbed with the garlic! And this was done, and by the King himself, who had just come into the room."

Here is for ever the same rage for linking the new-born babe with ancestors to whom he is not destined to succeed! The same determined wish to direct the first steps of the barely living being into the foot-prints of a dead and gone Past,-foot-prints effaced, washed out by the tide of events, and discernible only on the ever-shifting sand, to the eye of superstition! The same feeling which, on the 16th of March last, prompted the copy to be made of all that had been said and done in March, 1811, produced, in 1820, a repetition of what had, by mere chance, occurred at the birth of the glorious chief of the Bourbon family nearly 300 years before!

Unfortunately-and we cannot avoid remarking it here, for it is a thing not to be left unnoticed-unfortunately this narrow, puerile attachment to obsolete customs, wholly without significance in our day, is one of the most signal weaknesses of the so-called Royalist party, and this clove of garlic and vin de Jurançon are, after all, but emblems of the political acts of faith of the majority of Legitimists in France, if not of the Prince who personifies their hopes. We suspect that if the Comte de Chambord had a more substantial resemblance to his great ancestor, the days of the Revolution of June, 1848, would have terminated otherwise; yet we do not doubt his readiness to imitate Henri IV. in a hundred small ways; such as, for in

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stance, repeating the famous wish that "every peasant in France should have a fowl in his soup-kettle," or swearing by Ventre Saint Gris any given number of times, like the hero of Ivry and Moncontour! But crowns and sceptres are not secured or reconquered thus; and without meaning to be drawn into any active political discussion, we cannot help making this remark, which is suggested to us by the Duchesse de Berry's Jurançon and garlic.

Impartiality obliges us at the same time to confess, that between the language of the Moniteur and the etiquette observed upon the occasion of the births of the first and second heirs to sovereignty in France, the advantage of real dignity and simplicity is entirely on the side of the latter. It is impossible to be more quiet, and indeed homely, than is the entire circumstance of the Duc de Bordeaux's entrance into the world: there is no gaudiness or pomp, no trumpet-blowing, no searching after effect; and when the Moniteur for the whole month after has been carefully spelt through, one is forced to admit that upon such an event it could not possibly say less.

It is true that at the moment the Duc de Bordeaux was born, France was governed by one of the very cleverest men who— if you except the present Emperor-were ever at her head. Louis XVIII. was every inch a king, in every sense the word can have, and he knew how to be patriarchal so well, so thoroughly, that no one could for an instant fancy he was playing the part-nor perhaps indeed was he. The enthusiasm, which was far less for this second birth, than for the birth of the King of Rome, was of a much more intimate character; and certainly no one who witnessed the scenes of the few days following the 29th of September (and on this point we have consulted persons of all parties), no one could believe they beheld any but a close interchange of loving good-will between a confiding nation and a popular king. No one passing through Paris in October, 1820, would have credited a prophecy, if ventured on, as to July, 1830!

Peculiar circumstances, too, attached a peculiar and unusual interest to the person of the prince's mother. So very young a widow, so cruelly bereaved by the assassination of her husband,

was a fitting object for the liveliest sympathies of the French; and during the entire reign of Louis XVIII., and until the foolish narrow-minded policy of his successor had estranged the nation from the Bourbon race, the Duchesse de Berry remained universally and deservedly popular. Besides her exceedingly liberal opinions, the courageous, high spirit of Marie Caroline endeared her to a people who in fact put valour above every other virtue; and the approach of her confinement was really hailed by the masses with enthusiastic well-wishings. The existence of this popular sympathy was, during the last months of her pregnancy, the great consolation and support of the widowed duchess; and she so ardently reciprocated it, that her intention had been, as soon as the child was born, to arise from her bed, and wrapping herself up in a mantle, throw open the windows and herself present the heir of the throne to the crowds assembled in the gardens of the Tuileries. This she was of course prevented from doing, but four-and-twenty hours after her delivery she insisted on her bed being moved to the window facing the garden, and distinctly heard the cries of joy that welcomed her son every time he was shown to the multitude. This occurred repeatedly; for not only did the people clamour to see the new-born prince, but neither the royal family nor the medical attendants allowed any consideration to be an obstacle to perpetual exhibitions of him to the people. From the hour of his birth-or rather from a very few hours after that event-till his mother was able once more to show herself in public, the infant Duc de Bordeaux was usually called for once or twice in each day, and brought either by Madame de Goutant, the gouvernante, by the Dauphin, or by the King himself.

There can be no doubt that the manner of imparting the news of the birth to the people of Paris in the first instance is on this occasion infinitely simpler than in the case of the King of Rome. At an early hour of the morning of the 29th September, Louis XVIII. returning from his niece's chamber to his own apartments, caused the window of the great balcony to be opened, and came out upon it. The enthusiasm was immense, and would seem for the time to have been sincere and

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