The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1848-01-25 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

SISTER AND BROTHER.—M dame Schopenhauer describes at great length a scene of almost unexampled magnificence which she witnessed at Versailles. It is as a large picture, which we are unable fully to describe or lack time to copy ; but there is a portion of it that is a picture in itself, as our readers will say who peruse the ' following :—" A smiling little boy was sitting in a child's carriage on the great terrace close to the palace; and a slim, pale, little girl, of about eight years of age, walked by his side holding his hand, and looking with merry eyes on the gay world around her. That boy was the mest innocent sacrifice of the time—it was the dauphin ; the delicate little nymph was his sister, alterwards Ducht ss of Angouleme, one of the most unfortunate of her family." That poor boy ! Torn from the comforts and refinements of the condition in which he was born, he was given up to the keeping—no, not the keeping, hut the cruelty—of persons of the lowest class : he was maintained in darkness, filth and hunger: he was tatvzht to utter the obscenity which he happily did not comprehend : he was savagely beaten if he bore his ills in silence, as one who was sullen : and he was still savagely beaten if he ventured to sigh audibly, as one who was rebellious. That poor boy ! The heroic child endured a thousand horrid deaths—his murdered parents hut one : disease daily devoured him, and compelled dirt and squalor sharpened the pangs of disease—hunger lacerated him—obscurity terrified him, though from the breast of the little martyr it could hardly ring a groan ; and obscure blasphemy belched imprecations and taunts, inure cruel than daggers. into the dungeon which was rendered as like unto hell as heartless, human demons could make it. Such was his passage to the brink of the grave, into which the son of a race of kings fell in such foul and hideous condition that loathsomeness itself would turn sick to contemplate; and all this inflicted by men, by Frenchmen. on a defenceless and a guiltless child ! Again, we say, that poor boy ! Heaven and earth, things animate and inanimate, yet cry aloud for vengeance on France for that most unnatural of all unnatural murders; hut vengeance is the Lord's and in His own good time it will exact national expiation for a national infamy. And where is that bright little sister who, in the era of earthly greatness, walked by his side, and held his delicate hand, and " looked with merry eyes on the gay world around her ? " Go some autumn eve to the Prater at Vienna—go when the leaves are falling and unkind winds are blowing ; or to the Hradschin at Prague, when storms howl over that deserted throne of by-gone kings—go searchingly about when Bloom is in the sky, and on the earth, and in the soul, but never when sunshine and gladness are abroad, and you shall haply see an aged woman moving purposelessly about as one on whom something like insanity has gently descended ; but, if you have time to mark her well without offending respect, you will see that she feels the iron that is in her own soul. Those aged eyes still weep for parents mur dered and a brother slain; and as that venerable woman passes on, you may perceive, directed as her thoughts are to lirtorra nod forgiveoes, of her elicatiGn. amt. .7.lasn still 1has'tierce and bitter memories of the things on earth, and that among them she remembers that tl e throne of her dead husband is usurped by the son of one of the murderers of her father ! Into' such a time-and-sorrowstricken woman has developed that glad little girl who, once in her life, and but once, "looked with merry eyes on the gay world around her."—Church of England Quarterly Review.