TWO ILL-USED YOUNG MEN.
THERE are two young men who have been shamefully treated by their own blood relations--the Duke of Bordeaux, and the son of Don Carlos. Some fifteen years ago, the Duke of Angouleme made to his unlucky nephew a solemn deed of gift of all his own rights and claims to the crown of France; and now Don Carlos transfers with equal solemnity to his son all his rights and claims to the crown of Spain. Two grave elderly gentlemen, sick and wearied with a bootless struggle—conscious that they never can attain what they have been striving for—bequeath the unavail- ing chase to their heirs. Not contented with retiring to take their ease at their inn, they seek to heighten their relish of re- pose by the reflection that some one is struggling in the toils from which they have escaped. They encourage two innocent unreflecting lads to waste out life in an impossible endeavour—to sacrifice all the happiness that might otherwise be within their reach for indulgence in wishes that can never be realized.
Voltaire introduces his Candide to no fewer than seven dream- kings at Venice—the English Pretender and six others. The Duke of Angouleme and Don Carlos have decreed that the un- ucky race shall not become extinct. They., have placed an unreal sceptre in the grasp of their unfortunate heirs. They have mocked them with a hollow title. They have taught them to sit apart and imagine that they are what no other person takes them to be. The victims of this bad counsel have the isolation of kings with- out the power which in part compensates for it. Their state is as unreal as that of a stage monarch, without even the hour's applause and admiration he can command. They are mere tools in the hands of designing. and discontented men. Their name is a cloak under which irritated and unprincipled politicians may betray silly men to the gallows. One knave will lay'hold of them as another looses his hold, and quit them in like man- ner when his purposes are served or his safety renders it advisable. Their lives will be wasted in petty intrigues con- stantly baffled. Their wits will be constantly stretched to preserve appearances—to keep up a state which they have not the means of maintaining. Experience will teach them to distrust the professions of all who offer to serve them, while necessity will make them affect to be deceived. They will be- come frivolous as their pretensions to royalty, false as the in- triguers who make them their tools.
To such a life has vanity led an uncle and a father to devote two innocent lads whose natural protectors they were. They have doomed their protégés to a life of misery and degradation, rather than confess that they were defeated—that they had failed to make themselves kings. When Caesar fell, he wrapped his mantle round him, soiling it in-blood and dust, that he might fall decorously. The modern Caesars have dabbled uncontaminated hearts in the paltriest falsehoods that can degrade humanity, to cloak their fall.
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