been the Aaron woe that swallowed up all the rest to the unhappy Marie Antoinette. This must have been the sting of death to her maternal heart, the grief paramount, the "crowning" grief--the prospect, namely, that her royal boy would not be dismissed from the horrors of royalty to peace and humble innocence; but that his fair cheek would be ravaged by vice as well as sorrow; that he would be tempted into brutal orgies, and every mode of moral pollution; until, like poor Constance with her young Arthur, but for a sadder reason, even if it were possible that the royal mother should see her son in "the courts of heaven," she would not know again one so fearfully transfigured. This prospect for the royal Constance of revolutionary France was but too painfully fulfilled, as we are taught to guess even from the faithful records of the Duchesse d'Angoulême. The young dauphin, (_it has been said_, 1837,) to the infamy of his keepers, was so trained as to become loathsome for coarse brutality, as well as for habits of uncleanliness, to all who approached him--one purpose of his guilty tutors being to render royalty and august descent contemptible in his person. And, in fact, they were so far likely to succeed in this purpose, for the moment, and to the extent of an individual case, that, upon that account alone, but still more for the sake of the poor child, the most welcome news with respect to _him_--him whose birth [4] had drawn anthems of exultation from twenty-five millions of men--was the news of his death. And what else can well be expected for children suddenly withdrawn from parental tenderness, and thrown upon their own guardianship at such an age as nine or ten, and under the wilful misleading of perfidious guides? But, in my brother's case, all the adverse chances, overwhelming as they seemed, were turned aside by some good angel; all had failed to harm him; and from the fiery furnace he came out unsinged.