LOUIS PHILLIPPE.

his associates by a renunciation of all claim to the throne. He was rich and popular, two qualifications which rendered him obnoxious to the Jacobins. They wanted his money, and dreaded his influence. He suffered under the guillotine, in November, 1793, by virtue of a sentence of an instrument of Robespierre's vengeance, called a revolutionary tribunal.

His son was then twenty years old; he escaped the fate of his father by flight; and became a wanderer and an exile, from 1793 to 1814, in various parts of Europe, and in the United States. His patrimonial estates were all confiscated to enrich the persecutors of his family. In his wanderings, Louis Phillippe visited Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Lapland, and the North Cape, beyond the arctic circle; concealing his rank, and travelling under a feigned name; sometimes alone and on foot, and at others, employing himself as a schoolmaster for subsistence. After these wanderings in Europe, he arrived in Philadelphia, in October, 1796, visited most of the states from Virginia northward, descended the Mississippi to New Orleans in the winter of 1798; and in February, 1800, he arrived in London from New York. From that period, he resided principally at Twickenham in England, until the restoration of the Bourbons.

Phillippe possessed, in an eminent degree, that important and necessary quality, common to most of his countrymen, that of accommodating his mind to his circumstances. At the restoration of the Bourbons, he returned to his country, and obtained his patrimonial estates. Not adopting fully the arbitrary principles of the elder branches of the dynasty, he lived most of the time from 1814 to 1830, in retirement at his country seat at Nevilly. In the period of his exile, he became intimately acquainted with the principles of the governments which he visited.

In the revolution of July, 1830, the last which France has yet experienced, eighty-nine persons, who had been chosen to the chamber of deputies, and whose election Charles X. had annulled assembled at Paris, and appointed Louis Phillippe lieutenant general of the kingdom. On the third of August, he opened the session of the chambers in that capacity; the chamber of deputies, then consisting of the eighty-nine persons, who had made him lieutenant general, and a number of their associates, and the house of peers, consisting of those who had been created by the Bourbons.

In his address, he communicated to them the abdication of Charles and his son, and the consequent vacancy of the throne; and recommended to them to fill it. The response to this address was an invitation to the duke of Orleans, to assume the title of king of the French, under a new or amended charter providing for a more liberal and popular administration of the government. On the 9th he accepted, and took the coronation

LOUIS PHILLIPPE.

oath. Lafayette believing that a limited constitutional monarchy was the government best suited to the condition of France, and that Phillippe would administer it upon correct principles, took an active part in his elevation.

But so intoxicating is the possession of power, that in the course of five years next succeeding the elevation of this patriot king, he had become as despotic as any of his predecessors. The liberals had become dissatisfied, and the carlists continued their opposition, leaving him but few friends. July the 28th, 1835, the fifth anniversary of the last revolution was celebrated with great pomp and festivity. As the king and royal family, with a numerous train of nobles and citizens, were passing in front of the national guards, opposite the Boulevard of the temple, at 12 o'clock, an explosion took place from a window, which killed and wounded thirty-four of the train, sixteen of whom died almost instantly. Marshal Mortimer, one of Bonaparte's distinguished generals, was among the slain. A ball grazed the king's arm, and his horse was wounded in the neck. A second's delay in the discharge saved the king's life. This instrument of destruction was made in a small room about seven feet square, built of wood, braced with iron. Two uprights supported two cross-bars of wood, placed parallel to the window, on which

were fixed twenty-five gun barrels, fully charged, and connected by a train of powder. The front cross-bar, fixed about a foot from the window, was something lower than that behind, so that the balls might reach the bodies of men passing the street on horseback. The guns were so heavily charged that five of them burst, and severely wounded the principal assassin.

In 1831, the question of abolishing the hereditary quality of the peerage, agitated France. In October, a law to that effect passed the chamber of deputies, 324 to 86. It was violently opposed in the house of peers, a great number of whom would

TALLEYRAND.

RESULTS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

be affected by its operation. In order to secure its passage in that body, the king created thirty-six new peers for life, and with the aid of their votes, the law was passed.

The duke of Nemours, the oldest son living of the reigning monarch, was born October, 1814, and elected king of Belgium by the congress of that nation in February, 1831. His father declined for him this honor, on the ground that it would make France a party to the war between Holland and Belgium, and further disturb the peace of Europe.

TALLEYRAND. One of the most singular characters which the French rovolution brought into view, was Charles M. Talleyrand, born in 1754, bishop of Autun. At its commencement, he represented the clergy of his diocese in the States general; he took an active part in abolishing the secular privileges of the clergy, and was deposed and excommunicated by the pope. During the most stormy period of the revolution, while Robespierre directed his vengeance against talent and property, Talleyrand retired to the United States, where he principally resided, from 1793 to 1796, apparently engaged in commercial pursuits; but profoundly studying the character of the government and people. He is next seen at the head of the French bureau of foreign affairs, figuring in a most singular intrigue with the American envoys, Marshall, Pinckney and Gerry, the object of which was to extort money from the United States for the use of the directory. In every change of the ruling powers Talleyrand appears an active and influential agent, alike necessary to the republicans, to the directory, to Bonaparte, to the Bourbons and to Phillippe. He is said to have taken thirteen different oaths of allegiance, to as many ruling powers, swearing fidelity to each with equal sincerity. With a sagacity rarely to be found, he could calculate with great certainty upon the success or defeat of any aspirant, and with a versatility natural to his countrymen, shape his course to meet the crisis. While others suffered at the guillotine and lamp-post on the success of their rivals, Talleyrand was found occupying a conspicuous place in their successive councils. Mr. Morris, the American envoy at Paris, in the early period of the revolution characterized him " as a sly, cool, cunning, ambitions, and malicious man.” From the age of seventy to eighty, when nearly all his cotemporaries had fallen from the hand of violence, or the stroke of time, Talleyrand appeared directing the councils of France at home, or representing her sovereigns abroad. A short time previous to his decease he resigned all public employment; he died in Paris on the 17th of May, 1838.

RESULTS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. The amount of loss of lives and property, and the extent of human suffering occasioned by these revolutions in France during a space of forty

years, are not the subject of calculation, or of probable conjecture. It be set down at some millions of lives, and some may thousands of millions of property, and nearly equally divided between France and other portions of Europe. If they are now terminated, the results are an exchange of an absolute, for a limited monarchy, preserving the hereditary principle, not for any supposed divine right, but because it is the most convenient mode of designating a chief magistrate, and with a power in the people to change the succession at pleasure; the dissolution, to every practical purpose, of the order of nobility; and the separation of the civil from the religious concerns of the state.

FRENCH COLONIES. The colonial possessions of France in America, are Martinique, Guadaloupe, and other dependencies, and two or three other small places, containing in the whole a population of 228,000. Several islands and factories on the coast of Africa, and several districts and factories in Asia.

PARIS. Paris, the capital of France and the second city in Europe, is situated on the river Seine, in latitude 49° north, 112 miles from the ocean, and 225 miles southeast of London. Its population according to the latest enumeration, is 900,000; annual births, 29,000, of which upwards of 10,000, or something more than one third, are illegitimate. Paris is remarkable for the strictness of its police, and its system of espoinage. A prefect of police, whose jurisdiction extends over the whole department, has in charge the public safety, as also the preservation of the health of the city and its protection from fire. The national guard, a corps of 80,000 men, are subject to his order. He keeps also in pay, an esponiage, employed to insinuate themselves into the company and confidence of suspicious persons, learn their objects and report to the police any thing they may observe in word or deed, unfavorable to the existing government.

PARIS.

The occupation, objects of pursuit, and means of support of all residents in Paris are known to the police, and those without regular employment or apparent means, are objects of suspicion. In the population of Paris it is estimated that 50,000 are strangers, resorting there for amusement, or for political and scientific objects. In proportion to its population there is less crime against person and property, and more offences against good morals, than in London. In the higher classes of European society, there is little difference in its character. In Paris it is distinguished for delicacy, refinement, and ease. The middling classes in Paris, as in other parts of France, are characterized for the elevated tone of their manners. The lower class is industrious, but improvident. In the late revolutions it has exhibited little of that ferocity which marked them in their first

Pere La Chaise.

stages. The revolution of 1830 exhibited the populace of Paris in a comparatively favorable light. The taste of the Parisians is singularly displayed in the ornaments with which their principal cemetery, PERE LA CHAISE, is decorated. Its approaches are strewed with flowers, which women are constantly employed in gathering, making into chaplets, and selling to the pious, to strew around the graves of their deceased friends. The cemetery more resembles a flower garden than the grave yards of other countries.

The higher branches of science are cultivated in the city, and in other parts of the kingdom, with great attention. Previous to the first revolution there were twenty-three universities in the nation; that of Paris was the most celebrated. The system