THE DAUPHIN (LOUIS THE SEVENTEENTH).

WITH A PORTRAIT.

EVERY heart capable of human sympathy grows sad on recalling the sufferings and fate of the fair child who, while life was yet in its earliest spring, was hurled from the summit of worldly hopes to the lowest extremity of debasement and misery. This victim to the intemperate fury of revolution, has since, by the hollow mockery of a political formula, been enrolled amongst the legitimate sovereigns of the world, as Louis the Seventeenth, King of France and Navarre,-the lineal representative of an uninterrupted line of sixty-six powerful monarchs. Hereditary misfortune has clung to the descendants of certain royal houses for many succeeding generations. The Stuarts of Scotland and England, the Carlovingian dynasty of France, with the second line of Valois, including their successors, the collateral branches of the house of Bourbon, have often been quoted as pre-eminent examples. History here presents us with an almost unvarying record of tragedies, invaluable as instructive lessons, although acutely painful by the mode in which they are conveyed. The history of the young Dauphin is by far the most heart-rending episode in this long tissue of calamity. A child, not actually assassinated by a blow, merciful in its conclusive suddenness, but virtually murdered by slow, homœopathic doses of poison, directed unceasingly against the mind and body. The guillotine, the bowl, or the bowstring, would have been expedients of humanity compared to this protracted torture. A thousand qualifying circumstances sustain, alleviate, or dignify, the sufferings, the imprisonment, the execution, of maturity or age. There is manly or matronly fortitude, arising from religious conviction, the innate consciousness of rectitude, But the feeble innocence, the or the firmness of moral courage. half-developed intellect of childhood, has none of these sustaining Like the reed before the blast, it bends in powerless submission. Our own annals supply examples of barbarism sufficiently revolting, but they arose from individual tyranny or jealousy, and can scarcely be stigmatised as national crimes. The captivity and murder of Prince Arthur were prompted by the fears of John; the assassination of Edward of Caernarvon was contrived by Queen Isabella, and her paramour Roger Mortimer; Richard the Second fell under a private conspiracy; the young princes, sons of Edward the Fourth (if they were murdered in the Tower), were the victims of their uncle Gloucester; the catastrophes of Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey, and Mary of Scotland, however pitiable, were not without some colouring of justification, and were still acts of private vengeance rather than public cruelty. But the gradual, predetermined destruction of the young Dauphin, was the deliberate deed of a nation acting through its chosen repre

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VOL. XXXV.

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the unhappy Dauphin became silent, abstracted, immoveable, and insensible to blows or the affectation of kindness. Tears would roll involuntarily down his cheeks, but he said nothing. His head sank on his hands, and resting on the table, he could seldom be induced to look up, to evince emotion, or reply to any interrogatories, although accompanied by threats and violence. Once he spoke, and if the heart of Simon had been less hard than the nether millstone, he must have shrunk from the reply to his question. He was wont to drag the wretched captive confided to his charge out of his bed on a cold night, merely for the pleasure of buffeting or kicking him away again. On one of these occasions, when the boy had fallen half stunned upon his own miserable couch, and lay there groaning and faint with pain, Simon roared. out with a savage laugh, "If these Vendeans should make you king, Capet, what would you do to me?" The child thought of his father's dying words, and said without hesitation, "I would forgive you." It was impossible that human nature could much longer endure this treatment, which had already lasted nearly two years. The end was at hand. A slight indication of humanity appeared in the re-construction of what was then denominated the Government of France, and in February, 1795, commissioners were appointed to visit Louis Charles, as he was now called, and to make a report on his actual condition. They found him seated at a common deal table, playing with dirty cards. They spoke to him kindly, but he never raised his head, and made no reply. He appeared to listen with attention, but no words escaped his lips. Either he was unconscious of what they said, or he remembered a former interview, when other emissaries decoyed him into the signature which he had since learned was used against his mother. He knew not that she was now beyond their vengeance, but he internally determined not to be entrapped a second time. They offered him playthings, playfellows, bonbons, cakes, permission to walk in the gardens, or ascend the summit of the tower. They then grew tired of kindness, and proceeded to menaces. All means were equally fruitless. They desired him to walk across the room. He obeyed without speaking, and then returned to his seat. They asked him to walk a little longer, whereupon he sat down, placed his elbows on the table, and hid his face in his hands. It was impossible to make anything of him, he was either dogged or idiotic. He ate his homely dinner without remark, and when they offered him raisins, received and swallowed them, uttering no expression of thanks or consciousness. At this time, he was covered with tumours, and exhibited all the symptoms of rapid consumption. His intellect became gradually weaker and weaker. Had he even survived, it would have been in a state of mental imbecility, more melancholy than death itself. But the fiat had gone forth-his days were numbered. At the twelfth hour the Committee of General Safety ordered the celebrated physician Desault to attend their prisoner. Desault pronounced him in extreme danger, yet undertook the case with the confidence of success. But Desault died suddenly, and was succeeded by Dumangin and the surgeon Pel

letan. These declared that there was no hope. Accordingly, on the 9th June 1795, Louis the Seventeenth terminated his short and miserable existence. As a matter of course it was reported that he was poisoned, which many believed, while more maintained that he had escaped, and was still alive. But the fact that he died at the time, and in the manner we have related, is too well substantiated to admit of dispute. For some curious particulars respecting his last words, his hearing celestial music, and fancying that amongst the angelic voices he could distinguish that of his mother, we must refer to the details given by M. de Beauchesne, who states them on the authority of parties present, by whom they were communicated. We see no reason to dispute them, as instances equally remarkable have come under our own observation, of the strange fancies which flit across the minds of the departing, during the last struggle between life and death. What is there in the doctrines of our faith to contradict the supposition that the dying have revelations of the other world, while they are yet hovering on the confines of this? Two days after his decease, the body of Louis the Seventeenth was interred publicly, with common decency, but with no external marks of respect or reverence, in the cemetery of St. Marguerite. The grave was filled up-no mound marked its exact situation. The soil was restored to its former level, no trace remained of the interment, and subsequent researches have hitherto failed in discovering the spot or identifying the remains.

As in the case of Don Sebastian of Portugal, and other historical personages, whose death has not been ascertained beyond the possibility of dispute, many pseudo-Dauphins presented themselves from time to time, each claiming to be the legitimate representative of the house of Bourbon. Of these, the most plausible were, Hervagault, Bruneau, and Neundorf, well known in England as the "Duke of Normandy." These three obtained ardent partizans and supporters, and produced much annoyance to the Duchess of Angoulême and her family. But they were all gross and clumsy impostors, their tales so incoherently arranged and involving such palpable contradictions, that it appears extraor dinary how any persons, excepting only very enthusiastic old ladies, could have been misled by them for a moment. The case of Perkin Warbeck was of a much superior order. If not the real Duke of York (which many suppose he was), he almost deserved to be so from the consistent ingenuity of the assumption.

The biographical works we have named above are valuable contributions, and safe evidences to quote or refer to, on all matters connected with the conduct, treatment, and fate of the Royal Family of France. But for an ample and impartial record of the French Revolution in all its phases, the History of Mons. Thiers holds the leading position, and will continue to be read and relied on by present and future generations, as the standard authority; and one in which the author's clear intellect, and earnest desire of representing truth, have kept him free from the blinding influences of prejudice, political bias, or national partiality.

ASPEN COURT,

AND WHO LOST AND WHO WON IT.
A Tale of our Own Time.

THE "reading" of a new piece to the performers who are to play it, is a nervous operation for a young or inexperienced dramatist. It is a first performance without any stage aids. All the excitement which a lighted theatre, music, applause, novelty of effect, bring to his support, are wanting; and all his own share in the work stands out in naked isolation. A somewhat cheerless and gloomy room, a group of keen, but-until he has earned his spurs -not sympathising auditors, and, if he read his own piece, the incessant sound of his own voice, are adjuncts not likely to raise an author's courage. It requires much experience and many successes to teach him to look with perfect composure upon all this, to remember that the play is the result of his own calm and well-considering leisure, that he sees the drama as a whole, whereas the actors see it in parts only, those parts being their own, so far as they can identify them (for the characters are not distributed until the reading is over), and that their judgment upon those parts is swayed by influences which are natural enough, but which diminish the value of the opinion. When he has attained this composure, a reading becomes a very agreeable process, for by that time the performers have acquired a faith in his dramatic skill, and in his capacity for suiting them with characters, and they are prepared to laugh at his wit, or to applaud his more effective passages of declamation. Yet, even then, he learns to distrust the most sincere approbation of the green-room. The allusion, the equivoque, that calls out the unanimous shout of the company, often falls flat upon the audience, less trained, as a body, to appreciate the happiness of an expression, while a careless quibble, or a common-place retort, which the green-room passes over in deserved silence, will frequently convulse the public from pit to gallery. The author must make up his mind that he knows nothing further of the merits of his play, after the reading, than he knew before. The sole and real advantage of a good reading before intelligent actors, is the chance it affords them of detecting any accidental or intended plagiarism from other dramas (in which they are wonderfully acute), and the opportunity thereby afforded to the