y.
The dethronement by Elizabeth of Russia of the innocent Prince Ivan, her
near relation, while yet in the cradle, gives the Northern Empress a
claim to a similar character to the British Queen.]

She had never, in any way, interfered in political events. Malice
itself had never whispered a circumstance to her dispraise. After this
wanton assassination, it is scarcely to be expected that the innocent
and candid looks and streaming azure eyes of that angelic infant, the
Dauphin, though raised in humble supplication to his brutal assassins,
with an eloquence which would have disarmed the savage tiger, could have
won wretches so much more pitiless than the most ferocious beasts of the
wilderness, or saved him from their slow but sure poison, whose breath
was worse than the upas tree to all who came within its influence.

The Duchesse d'Angouleme, the only survivor of these wretched captives,
is a living proof of the baleful influence of that contaminated prison,
the infectious tomb of the royal martyrs. That once lovely countenance,
which, with the goodness and amiableness of her royal father, whose
mildness hung on her lips like the milk and honey of human kindness,
blended the dignity, grace, elegance, and innocent vivacity, which were
the acknowledged characteristics of her beautiful mother, lost for some
time all traces of its original attractions. The lines of deep-seated
sorrow are not easily obliterated. If the sanguinary republic had not
wished to obtain by exchange the Generals La Fayette, Bournonville,
Lameth, etc., whom Dumourier had treacherously consigned into the hands
of Austria, there is little: doubt but that, from the prison in which she
was so long doomed to vegetate only to make life a burthen, she would
have been sent to share the fate of her murdered family.

How can the Parisians complain that they found her Royal Highness, on her
return to France, by no means what they required in a Princess? Can it
be wondered at that her marked grief should be visible when amidst the
murderers of her family? It should rather be a wonder that she can at
all bear the scenes in which she moves, and not abhor the very name of
Paris, when every step must remind her of some out rage to herself, or
those most dear to her, or of some beloved relative or friend destroyed!
Her return can only be accounted for by the spell of that all-powerful
'amor patriae', which sometimes prevails over every other influence.

B