our regrets upon some particular charm that is wanting in this world of beauty, we find that nature is ever true to her divine Master, and that nothing in the creation ever fades, or dies, but to give place to fresh beauty and life.

CHILD.

Then you will love the morning as I do, dear mother.

MOTHER.

I do love the morning, my child, yet I repeat that the evening brings me more peace, and consequently more satisfaction.

CHILD.

I thought that evening had been the time to rest, and night the time to sleep.

MOTHER.

Surely they are so.

CHILD.

Then ought we not to love the morning better, because it is the time to think and to work? Let us sleep when we are weary, and can serve God no longer; but let us wake to think of his goodness and to do his will. If we have been unkind, ungrateful, or have sinned in any other way, morning is the time to prove that we are sorry. If we have never done anything to please God before, morning is the time to begin-and can any thought be happier, than that he has given us another day to love and serve him better.

MOTHER.

You are right, my dear child: you have taught me a useful lesson. Though morning and evening are both lovely, though both have their pleasures, and both ought to fill our minds with the goodness and the greatness of God; yet to sleep, to rest, to feel that we are gathered under the shelter of his wings, is to be satisfied with our own good, rather than to seek his glory. Another, and a more important part of duty, is to be willing to go forth at his bidding, to act or to suffer as may best promote the happiness of our fellow-creatures, and to look upon safety, and slumber, and repose, as blessings bestowed by his hand, to preserve and fit us for entering afresh each day upon his service.

6

212

THE CITIZEN KING."

.3.2

IF the history of the kings and heroes of past ages be a subject of interesting investigation, and profitable study, it is at least equally important that we make ourselves acquainted with the character and experience of the great men who live in our own times. It is true, this is sometimes a difficult task; because delicacy toward the feelings of the individuals themselves prevents many things being said of them while living, which are, nevertheless, true; and because the influence of party feeling is such, that both their friends and their enemies say many things about them while living, which are not strictly true. Thus it seems almost necessary, before we can come to a right understanding of the merits or demerits of any distinguished person, that all party-feeling, either for or against them, should have subsided; and that the friends who over-estimated their virtues, as well as the enemies who would not believe them, should both have passed away from the earth, and have given place to other judges, whose unbiased minds may be more willing, as well as more able, to render justice to the illustrious dead.

Still there are facts in the experienee of every one, with which prejudice, or partiality, can have little to do-facts, which in the case of great men belong to the political history of the country or

>

the times in which they live; and which, there fore, constitute not only some of the most interesting subjects of consideration, but are also most important truths with which to make ourselves acquainted.

22

19

Louis Philippe, the present sovereign of France, not unfrequently called the citizen king, is a striking exception to the rule, that kings and princes are more ignorant than other men of the common and familiar affairs of every-day life owing to the elevated sphere in which from infancy they are compelled to move, shutting them out, as it were, from the social fellowship of mankind in general, and thus limiting their observations upon human nature to a comparatively narrow and partial circle.

10

L

6

The following anecdote of the king illustrates, in his own words, the difference between his preparation for the duties of government, and that of princes in general: "An English nobleman having had the honor of dining with the king, in that unceremonious manner in which he delights to withdraw himself from the trammels of state, the conversation was carried on as if between equals, and his majesty remarked, that he was the only sovereign now in Europe fit to fill a throne. The nobleman, somewhat staggered by this piece of egotism, forced himself to utter some commonplace compliment upon the great talents for government which his royal entertainer had always displayed, when the king burst into a fit of laughter, and exclaimed: No, no, that is not what I mean; but kings are at such a discount in our days, there is no saying what may happen;

፡

and I am the only monarch who has cleaned his own boots, and could do it again." "

The marriage of Louis Philippe Joseph, Duke of Chartres, father to the present king, to the wealthy heiress of the house of Penthievre, was an event which, as far as human calculations might be depended upon, promised to be productive of happiness and prosperity both to the parties immediately concerned, and to their posterity. Many circumstances contributed to render this great alliance peculiarly hopeful in its results. The princess was high-minded, amiable, and gifted with uncommon abilities; the duke was open, generous, and the supreme object of popular favor: while their united fortunes formed the largest private estate possessed by any subject in Europe.

Their oldest son, Louis Philippe, Duke of Valois, was born in the year 1773; and it is no trifling honor to the female sex, that from the age of eight years his education was conducted under the superintendence of a highly-gifted woman, who has left on record many delightful and deeply interesting traits of character, as exhibited by her young and noble pupil, during those years of natural and familiar companionship which they spent together. Indeed, the whole system of discipline pursued by his governess, Madame de Genlis, was such as to place the subject of it far above the rank of an ordinary man, in those moral and manly qualities which are not the less to be admired when they adorn the highest station.

"How often," says this lady in the history of her own times, "have I congratulated myself on the education I gave him-on having made him