ys people rarely wore their own gray hair.

He did not impress those who saw him as being in any way majestic;
indeed, he looked like what he was,--_le bon pere de famille_.
As such he would have suited the people of England; but it was
_un vert galant_ like Henri IV., or royalty incarnate, like Louis
XIV., who would have fired the imagination of the French people.
As a good father of a family, Louis Philippe felt that his first
duty to his children was to secure them a good education, good
marriages, and sufficient wealth to make them important personages
in any sudden change of fortune.

At the time of his accession all his children were unmarried,--indeed,
only four of them were grown up. The sons all went to _college_,--which
means in France what high-school does with us. Their mother's
dressing-room at Neuilly was hung round with the laurel-crowns,
dried and framed, which had been won by her dear school-boys.

The eldest son, Ferdinand, Duke of Orleans, was an extraordinarily
fine young man, far more a favorite with the French people than his
father. Had he not been killed in a carriage accident in 1842, he
might now, in his old age, have been seated on the French throne.

One of the first objects of the king was to secure for his heir
a suitable marriage. A Russian princess was first thought of; but
the Czar would not hear of such a _mesalliance_. Then the hand of an
Austrian archduchess was sought, and the young lady showed herself
well pleased with the attentions of so handsome and accomplished a
suitor; but her family were as unfavorable to the match as was the
Czar of Russia. Finally, the Duke of Orleans had to content himself
with a German Protestant princess, Helene of Mecklenburg-Schwerin,
a woman above all praise, who bore him two sons,--the Comte de
Paris, born in 1838, and the Duc de Chartres, born a year or two
later.

The eldest daughter of Louis Philippe, the Princess Louise, was
married, soon after her father's elevation to the throne, to King
Leopold of Belgium, widower of the English Princess Charlotte, and
uncle to Prince Albert and to Queen Victoria. The French princess
thus became, by her marriage, aunt to these high personages. They
were deeply attached to her. She named her eldest daughter Charlotte,
after the lamented first wife of her husband. The name was Italianized
into Carlotta,--the poor Carlotta whose reason and happiness were
destroyed by the misfortunes of her husband in Mexico