The Sun.
London, England, 1852-03-15 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

MICHAUD' S LIFE OF LOUIS PHILIPPE
Translated by Mons .V. L. Chemery. Hamilton
Adams, and Company.
Agitated as the public mind has lately been both
in France and England by the confiscation of the
Orleans' property, it becomes a matter of peculiar in-
terest to refer to the pages of the brilliant volume in
which the history of Louis Philippe has been penned
by the master-hand of Michaud, the editor and
one of the authors of the celebrated Bio-
graphie Universelle. Thanks to the industry of
Mons. Chemery, the reading public of these islands
have been furnished in the book here submitted to our
criticism with a very careful and in many respects a
very admirable translation. Perhaps no more en-
thralling narrative could be adventured upon than the
account of Louis Philippe and his fortunes, the ac-
count of an extraordinary man and bis extraordinary
vicissitudes. That our estimate of the character of
that remarkable personage, as a sovereign, is very far
indeed from being flattering or even complimentary,
we conceive must long since have been to the majo-
rity of our readers sufficiently apparent. Consider-
ing hire, therefore, in his political capacity, our views
may be at once pronounced identical with those ex-
pressed in the work of M. Michaud. Nevertbeles,
when we observe the energies of that gifted and ex-
lpi enreiaetni
oc end
ofwriter
sdirectedn
di
oefv ear yo
oirnrsut apnt chen
at or
tt,hoef daen-
evil nature, and of a despicable temperament, when
we find this gloomy and fantastic caricature put for-
ward by him as the accurate resemblance of the late
ex-King of the French in his private as
well as his public capacity, in his domes-
tic as well as his despotic movements,
in his aspect as a man as well as a monarch—we
shrink from a coincidence of opinions which could
not but affect us very speedily with sentiments not
dissimilar from those inspired by -emotions of re-
morse. Even the devil, they say, is not so black as
he is painted. Admirable as the portraits of Rem-
brandt are as works of art in themselves, they can-
not but be regarded in those sombre shadows and
irridescent lights as to a very considerable extent
most unnatural. Reality but seldom, at least, has
such a very strongly defined chiaroscuro. As a
father and a husband we believe Louis Philippe to
have been no less entitled to admiration than he was
during the flower of his manhood, when struggling
through innumerable miseries, an exile from the
land of his ancestors, and a wanderer: over the
face of Christendom. Such, however, appears not to
have been the estimate formed of his character by his
present distinguished biographer. Imbued as the
mind of the latter is with his predilections in favour
of the elder branch of the House of Bourbon, he na-
turally enough, under the circumstances, regards the
son of the infamous Egalite through an atmosphere of
unconquerable prejudice. Already the animosity
cherished by M. Michaud.against the House of Or-
leans had been conspicuously rendered apparent by
his memoir of the Regent, given in the thirty-second
volume of the Biographic Universelle. Another his-
torical fragment from the same pen—relating, in the
same wonderful publication, to the father of Louis
Philippe, the ever-execrable Egalite—had revealed
how profound was his hatred, or rather, we
should say, his loathing for that wretched
man, who hatched in his villanous court
at the Palais Royale "all those plots which over-
turned the throne sad led to the scaffold the most
virtuous of those sixty kings who have reigned over
France"—the meek and martyred Louis XVI. Pre-
cisely a similar spirit is apparent throughout the
whole of the present volume as was manifested in
those remarkable and powerfully-written memorials.
Having alluded to the uncertainty of Louis Philippe's
parentage—an uncertainty which fixed upon him
the inuendo of bastardy—M. Michaud insists upon
the evil necessarily resulting from his education
having been intrusted to Madame de Genlis, " a hypo-
critical woman of infamous character," wbo, he adds
was notorious at the time for being his father's con-
cubine, The biographer insists in addition to this
that Louis Philippe was still further corrupted in his
youth by being initiated into all the basest
plots of that vilest epoch of the Revo-
lution—enjoying, moreover, the intimate friend-
ship of the most odious conspirators. His nar-
rative from that period advances in interest with

every successive chapter—recounting as it doss the
association of the fortunes of the young Prince with
those of General Dumouriez, through the stormy
battles of Valmy and Jemappes, until their simul-
taneous flight from the armies of the Revolution. Sub-
sequently to that notorious act of desertion, it proves,
to the discredit of the ex-Monarch, that he repeatedly
endeavoured to obtain military employment from the
enemies of his country, not only feeling no horror
whatever at being the pensioner of the foes of France,
but seeking eagerly to be enlisted among the forces
employed against his fellow-countrymen in Sweden,
in Sicily, in Spain, but more especially in the
latter instance, when the English were ad-
vancing triumphantly across the Peninsula under the
banners of Lord Wellington. The most interesting
periods in the life of the Duke of Orleans here men-
.

tinned are of course, his return to Paris in 1814, his
elevation to the throne in 1830, and his ignomindus
abdication and flight in 1848, when royalty gave
place to that renovated Republic, which has since been
happily consolidated under the aegis of the glori*s
name of Napoleon. As appendices we have papqrs
respectively on " The Conspiracies of 1816;" and
" The Assassination of the Duke de Bourbon, Prince
de Conde"—the writer insisting, in the latter case, th.
at
suicide was at once morally and physically impossible
The labours of editor and trl
slator in reference to
this enthralling work of M.' Michaud have, as the
title-page indicates, devolved upon Monsieur
V. L. Chemery, 8.L.,0f the University of Paris,
and ,Professor of odern Languages, Marlb6-
rough College—a gentleman whose capabi-
lities in both respects, as editor of a new
edition, and as translator into the English
language. have been alike here conspicuously mani-
fested. His industry in compiling the volume under
consideration will be gratefully remembered by those
numerous readers who cannot fail to be interested In
the examination of a career like that of Louis Phi-
lippe, a career fraught with changes not often paral-
leled in their diversity, a history variously colourtel
with shame and with splendour, with the most
pathetic alternations of fortune and the most romantic
vicissitudes.

THE BRITISH MUSEUM. No. I. I
Another weekly periodical ! And one, too, of a
somewhat novel awl therefore acceptible character.
Apart from one or two original compositions, prok
and poetical, the principal portion consists of extracts
of either a valuable or entertaining kind—extracts
from standard authorities or popular works of a mis-
cellaneous description—yielding either, as the calve
may suggest, information or amusement. Its con-
tents are distributed under a variety of headings,
ranging respectively over the departments of art,
science, and literature. The peculiarities of the new
periodical may be best conjectured from the headings
of the several departments, as Anecdotes, the Usefl,
Odds and Ends, "Notions" and " Fixins," Incidents
of Travel, Incidents of Character, Chit Chat, and
besides a large number of others, a Panopticon of
Science, including Astronomy, Chemistry, Geology,
Electricity, Meteorology, Mineralogy, Phrenology,
and Eleetro-Biology. •

WHO'S TO WIN THE DERBY! By tie
Wizard of the North. Vickers.
Under this quaint title a pamphlet has just made
its appearance, containing some extraordinary disclo-
sures about the turf, and professing to give a solution
of the Derby problem. It deals first with the odds,
and if the author's statements are true, but slight reli-
ance should be placed upon the Derby betting at this
period of the year. He says, "itis of essential import-
ance, that the returns of the odds should be made
with accuracy, as well as checked by a strict and vig
lant impartiality, as indeed they are in the majority
of cases. Of late years, however, the amount of busi-
ness transacted at Tattersall's has very materially
fallen off; et one time there was no other medium
but Tattersall's through which money could be in-
vested on horse ming, but since the abolition of
' Derby Sweeps,' ' Lists,' as they are termed, have
sprung up not only in every part of the metropolii,
but also in most of our large provincial towns,
such as Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds,
York, and Hull, where the public money is put on to
an almost fabulous extent. Parties who formerly
sent their commissions to the ' Corner,' now prefer
to lay out their money with some of the great list
proprietors, but nevertheless the returns from Tatter-
sall's are still recognised as the only authority for re-
gulating betting transactions upon racing events, and
_lve therefore wish in the onset of our undertaking
to draw attention to the views which these returns
and the first
tend to encourage." The pamphlet then
goes 0,, &
dation in favour
to trace what the writer calls the
" ups and downs ~ •
chapter introduces
of
concludes with a recommen-
dation in the odds for the last fifty years,
us"tHobbie Noble." The second
abuses
osthe " Tips," and here we are
Press, the practice of es
told that "of all the that degrade the Sporting
indiscriminately admitting tip
advertisements into its columns is the most pernicious.
subsequent it
aenergetics part of the be-
yondchap-
ter, which ruin
ca icualnadti
on. misery
Th whiche occasioned is
ter, which is written in a strong,
en-
deavours to prove this ; and certainly the
style,
seems to us, has performed the task well. author,H it
of the tipsters generally—" An old proverb tells us
that ' a little learning is a dangerous thing,' bust us
a
little success in betting is not only dangerous, but
too often leads to destruction, and many a tip sub-
scriber knows this to his cost. We happen to
have seen something of the romancing fraternity,
and without making a single exception, we unhesi-
tatingly denounce them as but one degree removed
from begging' letter impostors. They are no less in-
deed thin bangers-on it low List Hopes or dis-