Messrs. CHATTO AND WINDUS have omitted one thing that would have
contributed to the full success of their publication of _The Memoirs
of the Duchesse de Gontaut_, done out of the French by Mrs. W. DAVIS.
They ought to have engaged the services of our E. T. R., who would
have been quite at home in illustrating the prehistoric peeps here
opened. The Duchesse was _gouvernante_ to those she fondly styles the
"children of France" during the Restoration. Of her charges one was
"The Child of Miracle," born to the DUCHESSE DE BERRY after the murder
of her husband. He was subsequently known to French Royalists as HENRI
THE FIFTH, and to the rest of the world as the Comte DE CHAMBORD. What
is amazing, in a sense fascinating, to readers at this end of the
century, is to find a state of things existing in which such a poor,
common-place, fatuous creature as CHARLES THE TENTH could be regarded
with reverence, almost worship, by his fellow-creatures. Madame DE
GONTAUT, a high-minded, well-educated, sensible woman, almost weeps
over the king as in the days of July, 1830, he sat on the balcony at
the Palace of St. Cloud playing whist, the game interrupted from time
to time by the sound of the tocsin, and the flashing forth of fresh
fires in the streets of revolted Paris. On the 28th of July overtures
were made from the revolutionary committee in Paris, which might,
temporarily at least, have saved the throne had the king accepted
their moderate conditions. "I think," he said, for all response, "it
is a great impertinence to bring me such propositions." Three days
later, at two o'clock in the morning, the king was roused out of his
peaceful sleep, and packed off to Dieppe by friends, anxious to save
him from the fate of LOUIS THE SIXTEENTH.