The Sun.
London, England, 1846-01-06 00:00:00

air of invidious scrutiny, and reddening as he spoke,
replied :
" There are no longer any messieurs in France, but
only citizens.'
" Well then, pardon me, citizen, if I have given
you offence.'
" You are not a Frenchman,' he resumed, with an
embarrassed sir, and cannot, therefore, be aware of
our new usages.'
"6 If peace be established, I shall certainly visit
France.'
" You, sir?' he rejoined with warmth, never shall
set foot there, so long at least as I live
" Do Sou mean personally to designate me, or my
countrymen in general ?'
" The young officer, fixing upon me a pair of hand-
some, but fierce eyes, rejoined:—
" Sir, my name is Murat, and I have served in the
constitutional guard of the ty— last king.'
" Then, with a less lofty manner, and lowered tone,
he continued :
" I know who you are, sir, and lam very sorry that
I have met you.'
'" You are a soldier and a man of honour,' I replied,
and I can have nothing to fear from you.'
" Country before all,' answered Murat, ' yes, before
all ! Such at It est ought to be my maxim. Monsieur,
I advise you not to sleep here.'
" With these words he bowed, and quickly with-
drew. I reflected upon the course which I ought to
pursue, and prudence suggested the impolicy of trusting
to the dubious generosity of a hotheaded republican. I
consulted d'Avaray, who became alarmed for my safety,
and would not be satisfied till we had resumed our
journey.
" When fortune, at a later period, had raised Joachim
Murat to the throne of Naples, I recognised in him the
young French officer who had driven me so abruptly
from my sleeping quarters. I could not be certain whe-
ther he had betrayed or kept the secret of my birth,
end in this dilemma, felt in his regard. some sort 'of
grateful feeling. When, therefore, I returned to France
a second time, and heard that he was an unfortunate
fugitive, I gave express orders that, if arrested in my
dominions, his life should be spared."
The writer of this article is evidently strongly pre-
judiced in favour of the elder branch of the Bour-
bons, and as strongly prejudiced against the Orleans
dynasty; but he is an honest recorder of facts, and
those facts prove that the elder race were, to a man,
weak, grovelling, superstitious, ignorant—nay, even
incapable of education. They were firm believers in
astrology, prognostics, dreams, ghosts—
" IZ,lack spirits and white,
Red spirits and grey."
Witness the solemn relations of the prophecy found
by the Comte de Provence on his table, on the day of
the birth of the Dauphin, of the horoscope of the three
Princes, drawn up by the Count de St. Germain ; of
the mysterious appearances preceding the death of
Catharine of Russia, and of the dream of the Sa-
cristan previous to the execution of Louis XVI.
Nothing could exceed the folly of the friends of that
unfortunate monarch at this period. Just as
his trial was about to take place, the Comte
de Provence, then an exile, addressed a letter to the
Duke of Orleans, couched in the most haughty
and arrogant terms, commanding, rather than request-
ing, that he should not interfere in the trial. Among
many absurdities, we give the following as a speci-
men :—" The king" (at the time a prisoner in the
Temple, and about to be tried on a capital charge)
" is disposed to indulgence, and indeed oblivion of
the past would be for all of us the wisest course."
If anything could exceed the mad folly of pen-
ning such a missive, it would be the manner in
which it was presented to the Duke of Orleans by
Boissy d'Anglas, the secret agent of the Comte de
Provence in Paris. He himself, in a letter to the
Comte de Provence, thus describes his reception at
the Palais Egalite :
" Your cousin,
_Monseigneur, by the graciousness of
his reception, made amends to me for the insolence of
his officious attendants. He is always the pink of polite..
ness, and begged me to sit down, which I refused to do,
perhaps from a mischievous wish of reminding him that
he is still a prince."
Why, if the Comte de Provence and his agent had de-
sired to prevent the Duke from exercising his influ-
ence in the King's behalf—if they had desired to goad
him on to the King's destruction—could they have
done so in any manner more effectually ? Can any-
thing prove more completely the utter heartlessness
both of the Count and of his agent, than the compla-
cent manner in which the one relates, and the other
records, his reason for refusing to set down " a mis-
chievous wish of reminding him that he is still a
prince ?" What nature that was not utterly frivo-
lous, utterly incapable of forming a good or a noble
aspiration, could have imagined such an espieglerie at
such a time? The whole history of the Revolution
goes to prove that poor Louis XVI fell a victim to
the unprincipled, uncalculating, heartless, frivolous,
incural ly vicious folly of his soi-disant friends, ra-
ther than to the malice of his enemies ; and if any-
thing could excuse the excesses of the Reign of Terror
towards " the Aristo ',rats," it would be the revelations
which these aristocrats ever and anon make of them-
selves. The more we study the history of this
Revolution, the greater is our admiration of the cha-
racter of the present King of the French. Louis
Philippe is the most statesmanlike king that France
has ever possessed—the wisest, and, perchance, the
greatest man that France has ever produced. That
his sons inherit his great talents, his manly courage,
his energy, his activity, they have already given
abundant proofs. Let us hope, for the sake of
France, of Europe, and of the world, that they also
possess his prudent firmness, his wise caution, his
unerring tact, and his sound judgment.

LOWE'S EDIA B C GH MAGAZINE.
This is a new work, to be devoted chiefly to
theological subjects and general literature and science,
with intelligence in regard to public events, political
as well as religious. We believe it is brought out
under the patronage of what is called the Free Church
party in Scotland, and if this is the fact we rejoice at
the principles which it professes, for they are of a
truly Christian character. To give intensity and ex-
pression to " longings" after true Christian unity,
says the editor, " shall be one of our chief objects ;
and we can only do so by maintaining a truly Catholic
position, endeavouring, with the eye of brotherly
love, to trace in each individual Church the linea-
ments of our common parentage, and the pledge of
eur common inheritance—to discover, amid much
diversity in the details of organisation, of govern-
ment, formulas, and rituals, the recognition of One
Lord, One Faiths One Baptism.' On this point we
have only farther to remark, that while it will not be
possible that each article in our pages, taken singly,
cart fully exhibit this Catholic impress, our hope is
that the whole, taken together, shall do so ; and that
all of them shall be pervaded by the calm and
_genial
spirit of Christian love." The theological articles in
the present number are on " The Liverpool
as an
pool Confer-
enceln- on Christian Union," and " psey
terpreter of Nature," which are well
tshueitr,dsttfcoortish
the
object in view. There is another, on
hero, Wallace," which will cause disappointment--
because such a notice leads the reader to expect some-
thing new and interesting respecting this wonderful
character, while his deeds are hardly mentioned, and
the greater part of the article is devoted to a sort of
genealogical history of the Saxon and Celtic races,
Theand accountsreeder
cares
a or
ef
sthveerdye
wohfetthheer
littlesceilt ances-
torssallaces
ScotchO
herWo'
were Normans, or An I Sg o- axons, or Danes, or
Dutch—he was a native of Scotland—he gloried in
defending her liberties—he was a Scotsman of the
13th century—and that is quite enough for the pur-
pose. The paper is left unfinished, with a notice that
the subject will be resumed in another paper. This, we
may tell the editor, is bad policy, for it is infinitely
preferable to make an interesting article rather dis-
proportionally long than to give part in one month,
which will be forgotten when the next comes.