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The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851

Book 3 — THE JOURNALS OF LOUIS PHILIPPE.

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Our readers know that one of the points of the singular but admirable education that Madame de Genlis gave Louis Philippe and his brothers, was to teach them to examine and regulate their mind and conduct by the keeping of a journal; and this Louis Philippe has done, not, we suppose, continuously, nor even, perhaps, for the greater part of his busy life, but for particular periods—during seasons either of peculiar interest or of unusual leisure. A fragment of his early journal, extending from the autumn of 1790 to the summer of 1791, was lost or stolen in the tumults and pillage of the first Revolution, as the memoirs of 1815 have been in the late one, and like these, published by an illegitimate possessor. That most curious little tract had become very rare—so rare, indeed, that Louis Philippe himself had not a copy, till a friend of ours lately presented him the copy from which we ourselves had made a translation, which we published in extenso in our article on "The Personal History of Louis Philippe." The King had also written and printed the "Journal of the Hundred Days," just mentioned; and we were permitted to see and make extracts in our last March number from his Journal of February and March, 1848. It is known, too, that during his residence at Claremont, as at former intervals of repose, he amused himself in recording his recollections; but no information has yet transpired of the extent (either as to bulk or time) of what he may have left—beyond the conjecture (which is, however, only founded on an accidental expression of his which was repeated to us some months ago) that the portion which he was so anxious to complete related to his return to France in 1814. * * But whatever Louis Philippe may have left, it will be curious and valuable, as the production of so powerful a mind, always engaged in, and for a long period actually directing, the most extraordinary series of events in the history of the modern world. Its publication, however, must be, of course, a matter of great delicacy, and of mature deliberation, and we have not as yet heard even a rumor on the subject.

These facts are from an interesting paper in the last number of the Quarterly Review.

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