* -"Je suis las de la portion de tyrannie que j’exerce.”—–­“I am
     weary of the portion of tyranny which I exercise.” 
                                   Rabaut de St. Etienne

—­The remains of the Brissotins, with their newly-acquired authority, have vanity, interest, and revenge, to satiate; and there is no reason to suppose that a crime, which should favour these views, would, in their estimation, be considered otherwise than venial.  To these are added Sieyes, Louvet, &c. men not only eager to retain their power, but known to have been of the Orleans faction, and who, if they are royalists, are not loyalists, and the last persons to whose care a son of Louis the Sixteenth ought to have been intrusted.

At this crisis, then, when the Convention could no longer temporize with the expectations it raised—­when the government was divided between one party who had deposed the King to gratify their own ambition, and another who had lent their assistance in order to facilitate the pretensions of an usurper—­and when the hopes of the country were anxiously fixed on him, died Louis the Seventeenth.  At an age which, in common life, is perhaps the only portion of our existence unalloyed by misery, this innocent child had suffered more than is often the lot of extended years and mature guilt.  He lived to see his father sent to the scaffold—­to be torn from his mother and family—­to drudge in the service of brutality and insolence—­and to want those cares and necessaries which are not refused even to the infant mendicant, whose wretchedness contributes to the support of his parents.*

* It is unnecessary to remind the reader, that the Dauphin had been under the care of one Simon, a shoemaker, who employed him to clean his (Simon’s) shoes, and in any other drudgery of which his close confinement admitted.

—­When his death was announced to the Convention, Sevestre, the reporter, acknowledged that Dessault, the surgeon, had some time since declared the case to be dangerous; yet, notwithstanding policy as well as humanity required that every appearance of mystery and harshness should, on such an occasion, be avoided, the poor child continued to be secluded with the same barbarous jealousy—­nor was the Princess, his sister, whose evidence on the subject would have been so conclusive, ever suffered to approach him.

No report of Dessault’s opinion had till now been made public; and Dessault himself, who was an honest man, died of an inflammatory disorder four days before the Dauphin.—­It is possible, he might have expressed himself too freely, respecting his patient, to those who employed him—­ his future discretion might be doubted—­or, perhaps, he was only called in at first, that his character might give a sanction to the future operations of those who were more confided in.  But whether this event is to be ascribed to natural causes, or to that of opiates, the times and circumstances render