themselves taking leave of their guide (with
many expressions of their obligation to him), not
at the door of a wigwam, or the entrance of a
tent, but outside his own pretty little home—in
the Regent's Park.

THE LAST LEWISES.
LITTLE CAPET.

A SKILFUL Belgian has painted a very touching
picture of a wan, squalid child, crouching
and shivering on the ground in the corner of a
miserable room. The face is one of those oval
French-child faces, very smooth and very yellow,
patterns of which we see flitting by us in
scores over the Fields Elysian, distracting their
screaming and bonnetless bonnes. A French
boy's face to the life; wanting only the little
frill round its neck, and those other elegancies
of dress with which the exquisite taste of French
mammas love to invest their offspring. But
this French child's face looks out with a piteous
stony insensibility. It seems to shrink away
from an unseen uplifted hand. Its clothes are
torn and ragged: its thin limbs, much shrunk
away, protrude. Shown at the Great Dublin
Exhibition in 1853, among other notable
pictures, it drew succeeding hemicycles of
commiserating spectators; faces—of mothers
especially—with tearful eyes, sorrowing over that
miserable child. The name of the skilful
Belgian is Wappers, and a little Bonnet Rouge or
French Cap of Liberty, tossed lightly in a corner,
tells us who is this boy with the French boy's
face: the most unhappy child—taking him in
reference to his station—that ever lived; the
miserrimus of little ones, the scape-goat of
tender years driven out into the desert,—third
of our series, and Louis the last but one.

Miserrimus of royal children: the little proto-
martyr of kings' sons! This is a piteous
distinction; a wretched notoriety. Never did child
of a royal line bear so many sorrows. When
the courtiers and noble ladies poured in to see
him at Versailles on the night of his birth, which
took place at "five minutes before seven in the
evening"—for events of this character are noted
as with, a stop-watch—and the cannon was
thundering from all the fortresses, and the
fireworks were squibbing off in the Place d'Armes,
and there was universal delight and congratulation
at this fresh introduction of royal flesh and
blood into the world—how would that smirking,
simpering ruck of fine ladies and gentlemen
have been aghast, had it been whispered to them
that the splendid infant just arrived, that tender
fleur-de-lis whom in a few hours the minister
was to invest in all state with the Order of the
Holy Ghost, would by-and-by become as the
most squalid little Arab of the most squalid
quarter of the city, and would give up its
persecuted spirit on a stone floor, fairly eaten away
with dirt and vermin, its heart worn out with
ill-usage and starvation! It would be only
natural that the suggestion—besides being
ungenteel and out of place in a royal palace—
should be dismissed as impossible. Poor child!
that walked from its cradle, always prattling and
gambolling, and saying pretty things, straight to
that hideous destiny. Better had some of the
hundred-and-one ogres—croup, whooping-cough,
and other ailments, that wait in ambush for
children of tender years—burst out and strangled
it; even with the result of obliging the noble
gentlemen and ladies of the court to exchange
their bleu-de-roi and rose-coloured silks for
unbecoming sables, and putting them through all the
gradations of the "greater and the little grief."

We know this Royal Boy intimately. Even
in the horror and agitation of those days of June
and August which preceded their removal to
the Temple, they thought of making him sit to
Monsieur Dumont—the famous miniature painter
—and who was besides "Painter in ordinary
to the Queen." Turning over the fashionable
"Who's who?" of the year—a boastful octavo
of vanity, bursting with strings of names and
offices, and christened the Royal Almanack—we
light upon this gentleman, set out gloriously
with all his style and titles. Someway, a reference
of this sort, a scrap, a newspaper cutting,
brings a period home to us with a greater
vitality. It is as though we had sent for the
Directory, and were searching out M. Dumont's
address with a view to calling on him
professionally. His miniature has come down to us;
for a marvel having escaped being crunched
under the hoof of an " unbreeched." The most
lovely chesnut hair, tumbling in profuse ringlets
upon his shoulders, large blue eyes of wonderful
sweetness and intelligence, with the rich
vermilion lips of his beautiful mother, and
a special dimple, for which she was noted,
exactly reproduced. He was the child whom
ladies would love to call over to them and take
on their laps and smother with kisses. His
little neck was open with a wide collar, turned
over, and a dainty frill; with a diminutive coat
and small Robespierrean flaps and buttons.
Such a pretty boy! so young, so sweet-
tempered, so gracious, so ready and clever! We
may be sure gossips marvelled at the absence
of the true Bourbon elements, and wondered
suspiciously how he could ever come to be
shaped into the true and genuine Bourbon type.
We, who look back, cannot see the makings of
that perfect character, which should develop
themselves into the stiff-neckedness, mulishness,
insensibility, cruelty, and other virtues
which adorn scions of that famous line.

The chronicles of this pretty child's sayings
and doings are very full—indeed, are almost
Boswellian in their abundance. If we are to trust
these note-books, he was making wise,
affectionate, smart, and witty speeches all day long.
But the truth is, most of these details come from
a suspicious direction, being furnished by a sort
of dynasty of Valets, whose work must necessarily
have a savour of their office. No doubt
there were brave and faithful menials about him,
from whom was purged away, as by fire, this
corrupting influence. Still, Mr. Carlyle cautions
us against what he calls men of the valet species,
not professionally filling that office, yet who
have a crooked flunkey twig tied up with their