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F the moral portraiture of the founders and progenitors of distinguished families had been drawn with but moderate truthfulness and skill, the "boast of ancestry' would long since have been seen to be, in the immense majority of cases, one of the silliest vaunts of vainglorious humanity, and really significant of nothing but the folly of the boaster. The 'Bourbon' especially is one of the most illustrious names—a sunbeam on the stream of time, if we are to believe the historiographers of the celebrated race. One of the most enthusiastic of these, M. Désormeaux, whose book was printed at the 'Imprimerie Royale,' Paris, in 1788-how brief a space before Santerre's drums drowned the voice of one of the best and gentlest of his line, vainly struggling in the grasp of masterful violence!-recounts in an ecstasy of loyal exultation, that from the parent stock of this great family there had already proceeded thirty-five kings of France, thirteen of Sicily, twenty-three of Portugal, eleven of Navarre, four of Spain, four of Hungary, Croatia, and Slavonia, seven emperors of Constantinople, one hundred dukes of Burgundy, Brittany, Anjou, Lorraine, Bourbon, and Brabant, besides crowned and ermined vassals of the royal house without number; an enumeration of thrones, principalities, and powers enough to take away the breath of any less enthusiastic man than the historian of the famous house, who had yet power to exclaim exultingly, as he concluded the glittering muster-roll, Tu regere imperio populos, o Galle memento! But, alas! the lettering and gilding of the Imprimerie Royale will not, carefully and elaborately as it is executed, bear exposure to the common light of day, much less rude and irreverent handling. The long list of high, dread, and puissant lords and princes, of serene and august ladies and No. 25. VOL. IV.

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