people universally deplored their "good Queen Anne," to whose gentle influence they had many times owed their escape from the evils brought upon them by their readiness to listen to the counsels of those interested in alienating them from their sovereign, and by the struggles of the times in which she lived.

A NOTICE OF

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CATHARINE,

CONSORT OF HENRY THE FIFTH.

BY F. MANSEL REYNOLDS, ESQ.

HENRY V. was a conqueror, and a votary of "the goddess of battell, called Bellona," who, Holinshed adds, "has three handmaidens ever of necessitie attending her, as blood, fire, famine;" yet has he succeeded in transmitting to posterity a name not unaccompanied by agreeable associations. For this advantage he is indebted, in some degree, to his own personal qualities, and, in a still greater measure, to the genius of Shakspere. Thanks to the latter, what a host of pleasant memories is summoned by the mere mention of the " chartered libertine," Harry, Hal, the merry and reckless Prince of Wales, and his jovial confederates! A sort of Arabian-Night charm is attached to the pococurante crew; the veriest disciplinarian in morals grows bewildered and benighted as he reads; little by little he loses all clear perception of the difference between right and wrong, until at last he becomes convinced that it is certainly venial, if not quite virtuous and laudable, to rob a coward traveller on Gad's hill. Rightly said Dr. Johnson, that "perhaps no author, ever in two plays, afforded so much delight," as has Shakspere in the first and second parts of Henry IV. The trifler, who is roused into a hero, and then again reposes in the trifler, Falstaff, unimitated, inimitable Falstaff, Shallow, Bardolf,

Pistol, and the rest, form a group of personages so masculine, easy, various, and pleasant, that they equally fascinate the mature and accomplished scholar, and him who is utterly ignorant of all the canons of art and criticism. In fact, age and youth, the grave and the gay, the reasoning and the thoughtless, can all feel the spell of this unrivalled combination of history and fiction.

But our task is, to treat of Catharine; and therefore, for the present at least, we must eschew further mention of the amiable warrior and chivalrous monarch, her husband, and begin at the beginning.

Catharine was the daughter of Charles VI. of France, surnamed the Well-Beloved, seemingly lucus a non lucendo, for his life was the counterpart of that of his unfortunate. grandson, our own Henry VI. A sort of football between contending factions, he appears to have been kicked by everybody in turn; the love which his subjects shewed for him resembling that which the duke and duchess may be supposed to have possessed for Sancho when they made him governor of Barataria. And, like his illustrious parallel, the poor king might have said to the potent and turbulent nobles, who successively bedecked him with the semblance of royalty, in order to possess the reality for themselves and their own party: "Give way, gentlemen; I was not born to be a governor, nor to defend islands or cities from enemies that assault them. Give way, and let me pass; let me begone to plaster myself; for I verily believe all my ribs are broken."

Yet, like many another unfortunate monarch, Charles's career commenced not inauspiciously. He succeeded to the throne in 1380, when he was twelve years and nine months old. Between this period and 1390, he quelled a formidable insurrection of the common people, fought the famous battle of Rosebecque, in which Philip d'Artevelle and twenty-five thousand Flemings were killed; and subdued the Duke of Gueldres, whom he compelled to return to his