DEATH AND RECOLLECTIONS OF LOUIS PHILIPPE.

Louis Philippe, the deposed Ring of the French, expired at Claremont on Monday morning. The declining health of the Count de Neuilly has been well known to the public for some time • last week it assumed the phase of an extreme debility, warning the medical attendants that the last scene was near. The Count was made aware of his approaching dissolu- tion on Sunday; and with calm promptitude ho immediately set his house in order. After a conversation with the Countess de Neuilly, he dictated with remarkable clearness a conclusion to his memoirs ; the composition of which his illness had for some months compelled him to suspend. His chaplain was then summoned, and in the presence of his wife, his child- ren and grandchildren, he received the last rites of the Ronnith Church. Towards seven in the evening, the weakness which he suffered was dis- placed by fever; but it did not disturb the composure of his mind. At eight on Monday morning the fever reached its height, and Louis Phi- lippe died ; his last serene moments being consoled by the presence of his faithful consort and beloved children. Louis Philippe, the deposed Ring of the French, expired at Claremont on Monday morning. The declining health of the Count de Neuilly has been well known to the public for some time • last week it assumed the phase of an extreme debility, warning the medical attendants that the last scene was near. The Count was made aware of his approaching dissolu- tion on Sunday; and with calm promptitude ho immediately set his house in order. After a conversation with the Countess de Neuilly, he dictated with remarkable clearness a conclusion to his memoirs ; the composition of which his illness had for some months compelled him to suspend. His chaplain was then summoned, and in the presence of his wife, his child- ren and grandchildren, he received the last rites of the Ronnith Church. Towards seven in the evening, the weakness which he suffered was dis- placed by fever; but it did not disturb the composure of his mind. At eight on Monday morning the fever reached its height, and Louis Phi- lippe died ; his last serene moments being consoled by the presence of his faithful consort and beloved children.

From the notices compiled for the daily journals we collect such pro- minent facts as recall the stages rather than incidents of a life almost un- paralleled in vicissitude either in history or romance.

Louis Philippe was born in Paris, on the 6th of October 1773. He was the eldest son of Louis Philippe Joseph Duke of Orleans, more popularly. known under the Revolutionary title of Philippe Egalite, and of Marie, only daughter and heiress of the wealthy. Duke of Penthievre. The Orleans branch of the Bourbon family, of which Louis Philippe became the head, originated in Philippe younger son of Louis the Thirteenth, created Due d'Orleans by his elder brother Louis the Fourteenth, and of whom Louis Philippe was the grandson's great grandson. Philippe the first Duke of Orleans was twice married ; his second wife being Elim beth Charlotte, of Bohemia, granddaughter of James the First of England. From this stock the Orleans family are descended. The early education of Louis Philippe, and of the other four children of Philippe Egalite, was intrusted to the care of Madame de Sillery, afterwards better known by her subsequently adopted title of Countess de Geniis. While receiving instruction in various branches of polite learning, the young Duke of Valois, (as the late Monarch was at that time styled,) the Duke of Mont- pensier, the Count Beaujolais, and their sister the Princess Adelaide, learned the English, German, and Italian languages; through being attended by do- mestics who respectively conversed in those languages. The boys also were trained to endure all kinds of bodily fatigue and were taught a variety of amusing industrial exercises. At St. Leu, a pleseont country residence near Paris, where the family resided under the charge of Madame de Geniis, the young Primes cultivated a small garden under the direction of a German

mei and they were instructed in botany and the practice of medicine

by a medical gentleman who was the -companion of their rambles. The young Duke of Valois took a pleasure in these pursuits, and in the industrial occupations of the ateliers constructed fbr them, in which they were taught turning, basketmaking, weaving, and carpentry. The Duke excelled in cabinetmaking ; and, assisted only by his brother the Duke of Montpensier, made a handsome cupboard, and a table with drawers, for a poor woman in the village of St. Leu.

During his early youth, the Duke de Valois showed evidences of a good

& osition ; which Madame de Genlis sets forth in flattering terms-

' The Duke of Chartres [he had succeeded to this title on his father's be- coming Duke of Orleans, in 1785] has greatly improved in disposition during the past year : he was born with good inclinations, and is now become in- telligent and virtuous. Possessing none of the frivolities of the age, he dis- dains the pnerilitiee which occupy the thoughts of so many young men of rank—such as fashions, dress, trinkets, follies of all kinds, and the desire for novelties. He has no passion for money ; he is disinterested; despises glare ; and is consequently truly noble. Finally, he has an excellent heart; which is common to his brothers and sister, and which, joined to reflection, is capable of producing all other good qualifies."

A journal which was kept at the instance of his_peeceptress has been made public : the agitation which preceded the great Revolution was now in full swing, and some extracts from this journal show the Duke's early political associations, as well as his practical diligence in the acquisition of "useful lmowledge.*, " Nov. 2. (1290)-1 was yesterday admitted a member of the Jacobins, and much applauded. I returned thanks for the kind reception they were so kind as to give me, and I assured them that I should never deviate from the duties of a good patriot and a good citizen.

"Nov. 26. I went this morning to the Hotel Dieu. The next visit I shall dress the patients myself.

" Dec. 2. I went yesterday morning to the }Mel Dieu. I dressed two patients, and gave one sin and the three others six livres.

" Jan. 8. (1791 In the morning to the Assembly; at six in the evening to the Ja- cobins. M. de Noailles presented a work on the Revolution by Mr. Joseph Towers, in answer to Mr. Burke. He praised it highly, and proposed that I should be ap- pointed to translate it. This proposition was adopted with great applause ; and I foolishly consented, but expressing my fear that I should not fulfil their expecta- tions. I returned home at a quarter-past seven. At night my father told me that be did not approve of it, and I must excuse myself to the Jacobins on Sunday." Some years before thin he had been appointed honorary Colonel of the Fourteenth Regiment of Dragoons. In June 1791 he proceeded to Vendome, with M. Pieyre, and assumed the personal command. The refusal of a nu- merous body of the clergy in many parts of France to take an oath prescribed by the Constitution, to which Louis the Sixteenth had assented, led to con- siderable commotion. During the stay of the Duke of Chartres at Vert- dame, a popular ferment on this subject broke out, and two of the nonjuring elergymen would have been murdered had not the Duke come to their rescue. He thus describes the occurrence in his journal- ., June 27.—At noon I had brought back the regiment, but with orders not to un- boot or unsaddle. I asked Messrs. Dubois, d'Albis, Jacquemin, and Phillippe, to dinner. They brought us word that the people had collected in a mob, and were about to hero two priests. I ran immediately to the place, followed by Pieyre, Du-

bois, and d'Albis The Mayor stood motionless before the doer, not opening his mouth. I therefore addressed some of the most violent of the mob, sad endea-

voured to explain ' hew wrong it would be to hang men without trial; that, more. over, they would be doing the work of the executioner which they considered infs. mous : that there were judges whose duty it was to deal with these men.' The mob answered that the judges were aristocrats, and that they did not punish the guilty. I replied, `That's your own fault, as they are elected by yourselves ; but you must n ot take the law into your own hands.' There was now much confusion ; at last one voiee cried—• We will spare them for the sake of M. de Chartres.' • Yes, yes, yes!' cried the people ; he is a good patriot; he edified us all this morning. Bring theft out; we shall do them no harm.' I went up to the room where the unhappy men were, and asked them if they would trust themselves to me? they said yes. I preceded them down stairs, and exhorted the people not to forget what they had promised. They cried out again, ' Be easy; they shall receive no harm.' I called to the driver to bring up the carriage: upon which the crowd cried out, • No voiture—on foot, on foot, that we may have the satisfaction of hooting them and expelling them ignominiously from the town.' • Well,' I said, ' on foot; be it so ; 'tis the same thing to me, for you are too honest to forfeit your word.' . . . We passed a little wooden bridge of a few planks without rails : there the mob cried to throw them into the river, and endeavoured, by putting sticks across, to mak* them fall into the water. I again reminded them of their premise, and they became quiet. When we were about a mile out of the town, some of the ecnintry-people tams running down the hill, and threw themselves upon us, calling out, ' Hang or drown the two rascals!' One of them seized one of the poor wretches by the coat, and the crowd rushing in, forced away the Mayor and M. d'Albis It is but justice to the people of Vendome to say that they kept their word, and tried to induce the pea- sants to do no violence to the men. Seeing. however, that if I continued my march, some misfortune must inevitably occur, I cried, we must take them to prison ; and then all the people cried, • To prison to prison !* Some voices cried, • They must ask pardon of God, and thank M. de Chartres for their lives: That was soon done, and we set out for the prison."

Another entry describes his good fortune and cool readiness in saving a man's life.

" August 3.—Happy day! I have saved a man's life, or rather have contributed to save it. This evening, after having read a little of Pope, Metastasio, and Emile, I went to bathe. Edward and I were dressing ourselves, when I heard cries of ' Help, help! I am drowning!' I ran immediately to the cry; as did Edward, who was far- ther. I came first, and could only see the tops of the person's fingers. I laid hold of that hand ; which seized mine with indescribable strength, and by the way in which he held me, would have drowned me, if Edward had not come up and seized one of his legs, which deprived him of the power of jumping on me. We then got him ashore. He could scarcely speak ; but he nevertheless expressed great gratitude to me, as well as to Edward. I think with pleasure on the effect this will produce at Belleehasse. I am born under a happy star ! Opportunities offer themselves in every way : I have only to avail myself of them. The man we saved is one M. Siret, an inhabitant of Vendome, sub-engineer in the office of Roads and Bridges. I go to bed happy!

" August 11. Another happy day. I had been invited yesterday to attend at the Town-house with some non-commissioned officers and privates. I went today, and was received with an address; there was then read a letter from M. Siret, who pro- posed that the municipal body should decree that a civic crown should be given to any citizen who should save the life of a fellow creature, and that, of course, one should be presented to me. The municipal body adopted the proposition, and I re- ceived a crown amidst the applause of a numerous assembly of spectators. I was very much ashamed. I nevertheless expressed my gratitude as wen as I could."

The habits of regulated study which preceding references indicate, are very prominently illustrated by many such entries as this— Yesterday morning at exercise. On returning, I undressed, and read some of Henault, Julius Caesar, Stemheim, and Stably. Dined, and alter dinner read some of Ipsipyle, Metastasis, lieloise, and Pope. At five, to the riding-house; and after- wards read Emile."

Such were his youth and earliest manhood. In 1791 he moved with his regiment to Valenciennes, and entered on a more stirring military life. He made his first campaign in the year which followed the declaration of war against Austria in 1792; fought at Valmy, under Kellerman, with a bravery that is emphatically praised. by contemporaneous English newspapers—then little expecting that they were lauding a future King ; and again distin- guished himself under Dumouriez at Jemappes.

The Revolution had now reached its climax—in 1793: on the 21st of Janu- ary in that year, Louis the Sixteenth was led to the scaffold. About the same date, the Duke of Chartres and General Dumouriez were summoned before the Committee of Public Safety. Already apprehensive that the cause of moderation was lost, and sensible how vain would be their pros- pect of life in the hands of' such judges, they fled to the frontier ; evaded a close pursuit ; and reached first the Spanish Netherlands, and ultimately Switzerland. The Duke's sister, Mademoiselle Adelaide, afterwards his at- tached and influential counsellor through life, had also reached Schaffhausen with Madame de Gentle, and the two parties proceeded together to Zurich. But the emissaries of the Directory were unceasing in their quest of him through central Europe : Mademoiselle Adelaide was therefore placed in the convent of Sainte Claire, near Bremgarten; and the Duke set out on a series of wanderings in disguise. From these he was recalled by M. de Mon-

niou, to take a place, incognito, as teacher in the Academy of Reiehnau, a village at the junction of the two Upper Rhines in the South-eastern part of Switzerland. He arrived in the hutuble condition of a pedestrian, a 'stick in his hand and a bundle on his back, and furnished with a letter of intro- duction to M. Jost, the head master of the establishment. Being examined by the officers of the institution, he was found fully qualified for his proposed duties, and, although only twenty years of age, was unanimously admitted. Here, under the feigned name of Chabaud-Latour, and without being recog- nized by any one save M. Jost, he taught geography, history, the French and English languages, and mathematics, for the space of eight months. He not only gave satisfaction to his employers and pupils, but earned the esteem and friendship of the inhabitants of lteichnau.

It was while thus filling the post of a humble schoolmaster, that he was made acquainted with the trial of his father the Duke of Orleans before the Revolutionary tribunal, and his death on the scaffold. Some political events taking place in the Orisons, Mademoiselle d'Orleans thought it proper to quit the convent at Breingarten, and to join her aunt, the Princess of Conti, in Hungary. M. Montesquieu believed he might now give an asylum to the Prince, of whom his enemies had for some time lost all trace. The Duke consequently resigned his office of teacher at Reiehnau, receiving the most honourable testimonials of his behaviour and abilities, and retired to Brem- garten. Here he remained, under the name of Corby, until the end of 1794; when he quitted Switzerland, his retreat there being no longer a secret. He again stepped :forth through the world, a wanderer without known rank, and almost without means • yet we find that he was never wholly destitute, and that his leading idea was ever the accumulation of know- ledge, especially the knowledge of nations and men. He essayed to cross the Atlantic from Hamburg; but funds failed him, and he walked through Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Lapland, towards the uttermost regions of Northern Europe : in August 1795 he stood on the icy headlands of the North Cape, but eighteen degreea from the Arctic Pole itself. Traversing Bothnia and Finland, but shunning Russia from distrust of the Empress Catherine, he returned to Co and remained there for some time in seclusion and poverty. The Directory, and in all their attempts to explore his hiding-place, opened negotiations with him through his mother ; and in 1796 it was agreed that be should emigrate to America, and be joined there by his two younger brothers Montpensier and Beaujolais, while the seques- tration put on his mother's property should be removed. 'The brothers joined each other at Philadelphia, in October 1796; and were treated with gr., General Washington, then at the head of the young Federal Re- ar. bowards the end of 1797, they learned the expulsion from Fiance of all the members of the Bourbon family remaining there, and the deportation of their mother to Spain. Endeavouring to reach Spain through Cuba, they

were treated with marked disrespect by the island Spanish authorities, and compelled to pass to England through the Bahamas. Queen Victoria's father, then Governor of the Bahamas as Duke of Kent, showed them sympathy and gave them the assistance and distinction of a passage to England in a vessel- of-war. From this country they renewed their efforts to gain Spain, the British Government giving them a passage to Minorca ; but their efforts were again thwarted. In 1807, the Duke of Orleans lost his brother Montpensier ; whose delicate constitution sunk under the hardships of his lot. The amiable and accom- plished prince lies buried among our own kings and warriors in Westminster Abbey. Beaujolais, of similar delicate frame, was accompanied by the Duke of Orleans to Malta, in the hope of prolonging his life ; but he died there, in 1808.

Proceeding from Malta to the court of Sicily, the Duke of Orleans pined the heart of Amelia, the King's second daughter' and married her, in No-

vember 1809. The Regency of Spain offered him military command, but did not fulfil their promise of terms : a few months' sojourn in Spain were followed by a retirement to Palermo. On the abdication of Bonaparte, in 1814, the scattered remnants of the French Royal Family assembled in Paris ; to be again dispersed for the memorable Hundred Days of Napoleon's return from Elba, in 1815. On the ultimate fall of the Emperor and the return of Louis the Eighteenth, the Duke of Orleans obeyed the ordinance authorizing all princes of the blood to take their seats in the Chamber of Peers : but, having become distasteful to the Government, he retired to England; and not having been summoned to the Chamber of Peers a second time, he turned his whole attention in retire- ment at Twickenham to the education of his family. From this retirement in the land of friendly foreigners he was again roused by political convulsions in his own country. In July 1830, that revolution

occurred which eventually placed him on the throne. The cause of the elder branch of the Bourbons having been pronounced hopeless, the King in effect being discrowned, and the throne rendered vacant, the Provisional Govern- ment which had risen out of the struggle, and in which Lafitte, Lafayette, Thiers, and other politicians had taken the lead, turned towards the Duke of Orleans, whom it was proposed, in the first instance, to invite to Paris, to become Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, and afterwards, in a more regular manner, to become King. The Duke of Orleans during the insur- rection had been residing in seclusion at his country-seat, and, if watching the course of events, apparently taking no active part in dethroning his kinsman. M. Thiers and M. Scheffer were appointed to conduct the nego- tiation, and visited Neuilly for the purpose. The Duke, however, was absent, and the interview took place with the Dutchess and Princess Adelaide ; to whom they represented the danger with which the na- tion was menaced, and that anarchy could only be averted by the prompt decision of the Duke to place himself at the head of the new consti- tutional monarchy. M. Thiers expressed his conviction " that nothing was left the Duke of Orleans but a choice of dangers, and that, in the existing state of things, to recoil from the possible ,erils of royalty was to run full upon a republic and its inevitable violences. The substance of the communication having been made known to the Duke, on a day's considera- tion he acceded to the request, and at noon on the 31st came to Paris to ac- cept the office which had been assigned to him. On the 2d of August the abdication of Charles the Tenth and his son was placed in the hands of the Lieutenant-General ; the abdication, however, being in favour of the Duke of Bourdeaux. On the 7th, the Chamber of Deputies declared the throne vacant ; and on the 8th the Chamber went in a body to the Duke of Orleans, and offered him the crown on the terms of a revised charter. On the 9th he accepted the offer, and became, not like his predecessors feudal lord of France and King of the dominions of his hereditary line, but the elected constitu- tional monarch of the French nation.

Under all the circumstances of his career and elevation, there was a full confidence in the industrial and commercial classes of Frenchmen that his reign would encourage the steady advance of constitutional liberty. His talents for government were believed to be high ; his early sympathies had been with the people ; and his experience and great knowledge of the world would teach him that the best security of his crown would be to preserve that prestige which had placed him on the throne. How he failed to realize these hopes, is too well known to our readers to need any notice in this brief memorandum. As if distrusting the inherent strength of his position, he endeavoured to fortify it by successively allying his children to many reign- ing families of Europe. He married his eldest son, Ferdinand Duke of Or- leans, to the Princess Helen of Mecklenburg-Schwerin ; his daughter Louisa, to Leopold King of the Belgians ; his son Louis, Duke of Nemours, to the Princess Victoria of Saxe Coburg Gotha ; his daughter Clemenlina, to Prince Augustus of Saxe Coburg Gotha ; his son Francis, Prince of Joinville, to the Princess Frances Caroline of Brazil • his son Henry, Duke of Aumale, to the Princess Caroline of Salerno; and his son Antony, Duke of Montpensier, to Louisa, sister and heir presumptive of the reigning Queen of Spain. His government became marked, above all others in Europe, for the per- sonal ruling of the King alone; and the whole official machinery of the state became enervated, if not corrupted, by the pervading influence of centralized and unconscientiours officiality. Such a state of things could not endure in- definitely ; but the catastrophe was certainly unexpected even by those who desired to hasten it ; at least it was not deemed likely to befall till the re- moval of the skilful master-hand. In February 1848, however, the crisis arrived. A political agitation, headed by M. Odilon Barret, suddenly turned into panic ; in the midst of which even M. Emile de Girardin came to be re- garded as the emblem of moderation when he offered for signature a bulletin of the King's abdication in favour of his infant grandson. In the next scene we saw a noble mother silently presenting and pleading for the right of her royal son, before the National Representative Chamber of the Monarchy ; to be rejected with contumely by the mob of Paris, and amidst the wreck of the Legislature itself. The last scenes were the flight of the deposed King and his family, in detachments separated and scattered for increased chances of escape to foreign lands ; ultimately to our own protecting shores.