THE FRENCH ROYAL FAMILY. (From the Times, March 4.)

New Zealander, Volume 4, Issue 227, 2 August 1848, Page 3

THE FRENCH ROYAL FAMILY. (From the Times, March 4.)

It is w'nh the greatest pit asm c that \v\j announce the wife or ival of the last und most illustrious itifctahntnt of tie royal fugitives ou these shores. Fur a whole w ek t e ex-King of the French, alter playing for eighteen yeais the m< st conspicious part on the most conspuiuu-, stage of European affairs, hai totally disappeai ed from the scene. His place could nowhere be fi'Uhil ; and, shocking at all would have felt it, it was at least as probable a conjecture in any other, that his Majesty hxd perished in the Channel. The Expreis steamer brought them yeslnrday morning from Netvhuvn, where they had to wait for some hours till the state of the tide would enable tlum to enter the harbour. At last they landed, and were glad to receive a very hearty welcome to the well-known shore. Fui the rest we must refer to the particu ars which we have been enabled to supply, and to winch the rank, the misfortune, and, it must be added, the errors of the dibtuiguibbed sufferer, will impart so peculiar an iu'erest. It may be safely said there is nothing in history, nothing, ut least, in ihe examples which most teadily occur to the mind, that at all comemearlo the tiementlous suddenness of the present royal leverse. This day fortnight Louis Philippe was the most prosperous, the mosi powerful, and accounted the ablest Sovereign in the woild. If the reader will just think of it, he will find that this wondeiful man had attained the very acme of success, consideration, and power. It is a work of time to inumerate the many circumstances of his splendid condition. His numeious, handsome and dutiful children ; the brilliant a'liames— one of them recently concluded, -which brought in o one family interest the vast region from Antwerp to Cadiz ; the near prospect of an event which would probably make his grandchild the sovereign, his son the Regent of Spain ; the great crosg and drawback of his reign just removed^— Algeria pacified after eighteen yeais 1 war ; his immense private fortune j his eleven or twelve palaces, unequelled for situation and magnificence, on all of which he had recently spent immense 6ums of money ; his splendid army of four hundred thousand men, in the highest dikoipline and equipment ; a Minister of unequal.cd energy and genius, who had found out at last the secret of France ; a metropolis fortified and armed to (lie teeth against all the world ; the favourable advances lecently made by those Powers who had previously looked down on the royal parveuu ; the weilbulanced state of his foreign relations, and the irmlygrasped reins of the political car j— all these gifts of fortune, and more, if we had time to go on with the list, were heaped on one man, in such profusion as really to pall the imagination. What crowned it all was, that Louis Philippe was allowed the entire credit of hissuccesi. It wai all the work of his own hands. He might stand like the ancient king on the walls and towers which he had drawn round bis city, and contemplate the perfect work ql beau'y and policy which himself had made. The balance of Europe, tue causes of

peoples and kings, the issues of peace and of war, were in his hands. If there wai an amari ahquid in this garden of roies and delights twenty impregnable forts and a hundred thousand armed men were no insignificant watch upon a few disorderly subjects Solomon himself would hardly have ventured to preach upon hii envious text, ante obitum nemo, to so safe a man. What we have described was a sober and solid reality. What we now come to reads like the preposterous incidents of a nursery talc A mob of artisans, boyi, and some women, pours through the streets of Paris. They make for the ptlace. Eighty thousand infantry, cavalry, and artillery, are dumbfoundtd and stultified. In a few miuutes an elderly couple are seen bulling away fmm the hubbub ; they are thrust into a hack cab, and diiven out of the way. The mob rushes into the Senate and proclaims a Republican Government, which exists, wh.cli is ruling the nation with great energy and judgment, and is ahcady communicating witk the representatives of foreign powers, hut, let us follow the Princes. We say it without intending any disrespect, and only as relating the simple truth of the affiir. No family of Itish trampers was ever so summarily bundled out of the way a* tins illustiious group. The Queen, we are told, had run back to n, bureau for some silver, but it seems it was not enouph, as a hut was sent round for the Royal couple at St. Cloud, and a small sum clubbed by the National Guard. At Dieux they were left with a fivefrance piece between them. Flying " when none pursued," they get to Louis Philippe's once celebrated chateau at Eu, which they are afraid to enter. So there they disappear into space. They were to be at Eu, and for a week,— th«\t is all we know of them. Meanwhile the reit had dropped in one by one. They come like foreign birds, dashed by a storm against a. lighthouse. The Duke de Nemours and certain Saxe Coburgs came one day, knowing nothing of the rest. They parted in the crowd. A Spanish Infanta, for whose hand nil the world was competing the year before last, scrambled out another way, through bye roads and backdoors; and — strange event— is likely to give Spain an Englishborn Sovereign, under Victoria's kindly auspices. No sooner, however, have the fugitives found a friendly asylum than they are obliged to seek another roof. Other princes and princesses turn up here and there. A Lady-m- Waiting rejoins her mistress. A Cabinet Minibter is found. The children and governess of another arrive. The rencinlres tnd ? enueons are strange enough. A Prince of the Blood and an ex-Piefect meet in disguise and do not know one another. Veiy late a youthful heir of the C.own of France, and who had been actually acknowledged as reigning King by the deputies, is discovered at a Cham el Island with his mother and brother. The two children had been almost lout in the mob on leaving the Chamber, had been got somehow to Eu, with their mother, wearied, and bearing muddy marks of 'rough travel. Thence by heavy bribing they had procured a passage to the first British rock. Thus they are driven and scattered by the besom of revolution. They arrive penniless, without a change of raiment, dejected and bewildered, telling one another their stories of many strange adventures, having each come a d iTerent journey, though starting at one point and almost at one hour. After trany days' suspense, the king and queen are heard of, on some private information, on the coast of Normandy, where they had been "on the run " fiom house to home, and content with humble hospitality ; the king, we are t'lld, ih strange disguises. They still have a small retinue. Thetc halfdizen invaders, without either arms or baggage, do not mid it so easy to cross the channel. Stationing themselves nt Honfleur, within 20 minutes sail of Havre, they watch oppoitumty aud the weather, which list delays thei passage several days. At length they get into a British steamer. Anived at Newhnven, after a lough paisage, they encounter fresh delays, as if to prove that England is not so easily surprised. Louis Philippe, who was to biidge the Biiti h Hellespont, crosses it with foreign aid and lands in a pea jacket borrowed from the English Captain. He Hods himself at home. The* associations aud the friends of his former exile greet him. A generation passes like a dream, and the aged Monuicli finds himself the Duke of Orleans, the banished son of old Egaliic again. Would that all could be forgotten ! But, if what is said be true, some recollections did occur of an acusing character. The frequent exclamation, " Like Charles X.," we are told, betiayed the current of his thoughts, "We are very guilty concirning our brother— therefore is this distress come upon us." At the very moment the missing ku q appears at one port his lo»t Minuter is heard of ai another. Guziot is now ia London. His day for active life is over ; he is again the philosopher and historian ; and, doubtless, like the Roman orator, will forthwith occupy his political retirement with studies far more suited to his genius, aud more conducive to his reputation, than the government of states. England's path is clear. She is the refuge of exiles and opens her shores to the unfortunate of every land or party. She would at once preclude herself from offering this hospitality, and leave Europe wit Lout a refuge, if she involved herself in the ruined causes and prettntions of her royal visitors. She can only, receive them as exiles, not as pretenders. It may be with some violence to feeling, but it is nevertheless necessary to let it be clearly understood by these differences within the rage cf courtly etiquette, that while the persons of the unfortunate are pitied and respected, and their former rank remembered, they still possess no higher character than what their own nation chooses to allow. Folkstone, Tuesday Morning.— A government messenger passed through hut night from Boulogne, with important despatches from Lord Normanby. They are believed to contain the formal announcement by the Provisional Government, that 'he Prench people have agreed to establish a republican form of government as mere favourable to social orde , equality, and progress. Loid Normanby 's despatch will be found to contain the assurance that, judging from recent events, the new government possesses the power to preseive order, and to cause itself to be respected. But it is understood that our ambassador expresses grave doubts whether the peace of Europe I can be maintained if any attempt bhould be made to extend the present frontiers of France as guaranteed by the treaty of Vienna. The reply of the cabinet of St. James's to th|B important despatch is regarded with intense interest in Parii. The more moderate " men of the situation ' trust that Lord Palmerston may strengthen their hands by a prompt recognition of the right of the Fiench nation to choose their own form of government, coupled wiih the strongest and most friendly representation oJ the dungcr ol un isolated and aggressive policy If by such advice and mediation by an arhiter, the French can be dissuaded fiom marching an army to drive the Austmns from Lombardy, as it was yefcterday reported they hud resolved to do, the peace of the world will be preserved.— Standard j