the first, foit pourvu qu'il regne, replies the lady. There is fomething like this related concerning Nero and Agrippina. True it is, that she brought the French king up to cruelty, and taught him betimes to fport with human life. His natural difpofition was not ungenerous, yet have all historians configned him willingly to his purchaser for having at twenty-one years old deliberately confented to the maffacre of St. Bartelemi, for having added to his confent a charge that not one should escape to reproach him; and for having fired at the fugitives for fport out of his palace windows, enjoying their deaths as country gentlemen do killing partridges. Sixty thousand fouls were on that dreadful day dismissed to their account, caufing the diverfion of the court at Paris, the illumination of Madrid for joy, and the emigration of countlefs Chriftians from a kingdom where innocence and age were no fecurity, and where the knife was held firm even to the infant's throat. Our retrospective eye turns not unwillingly to view the fingular and dreadful judgment awaiting this unhappy prince's end, when tortured by a new and incurable difeafe, blood oozed continually from every pore, staining his limbs, his linen, all he touched, perpetually enfanguined to his fight. Remorfe and penitent affliction now feized on his noble heart; and he would be attended only by a Huguenot nurse, in whose loyal arms he laid himself down to die, foothed by her forrows and her prayers alone, washed with her tears of pitying forgiveness. If thou can'ft pardon me, were his laft words, Jefus wil not condemn. Such Such may his fentence be, as then he hoped it! his brother and fucceffor Henry the third, reigned but a fhort time: voluptuous at the beginning of his life he grew fillily superftitious at the end of it, wore a hair fhirt, and flagellated his own back. That fellow, faid Sextus V. hearing of his follies, tries as hard to get a monk's hood on, as ever I did to throw mine off. That his mother should betray him to the Guises however, and force him upon figning the ignominious re-union, he never could forgive, and by Lognac's advice, the duke and cardinal were both affaffinated. Madame de Montpen fier, their fifter, remembered this event, when the king threw himself among the Proteftants for refuge, and Clement, a Jacobin friar, by her direction, ended the male heirs of the houfe of Valois, in this fovereign's affaffination, 1589, when Henri IV. de Navarre afcended the Gallick throne. His mother, Jeanne d'Albret, was a Calvinist, and diligently imbued the prince with her own notions, but Gaultier, his first preceptor, being of the Romish perfuafion, their young man poffibly grew up without a ftrong conviction on either fide; perhaps indeed, his real bias was to popery, from which the lady held him while She could. Henry was never able strongly to refift female influence, and Jeanne d'Albret had a predominating fpirit, endued befide with more than Spartan fortitude. The popes had given away all her hereditary realms to Spain, and the indignant helped the Huguenots with her pen, purse and sword. This hardy dame had wedded Antoine duc de Vendôme, lineal defcendant of Robert de Clermont, fifth fon of great St. Louis, and first lord de Bourbon; and when she was about to bring her famous fon into the world, her father, Albert II. king of Navarre, (who never left the room) infifted on her finging some stanzas of a Bernoise ballad between the paroxyfms of parturition. This family had been closely pursued and carefully watched by Tuscan Catherine and her cruel Guifes, especially when Charles IX. died without issue; yet after all Henry the third, leaving no heirs by beautiful but neglected Louife de Vaudemont, that lady caught his fpirit of devotion, and turned nun; while the ambitious Florentine, forced to endure the fight of the young Bourbon fet on the throne of France, recurred to all her artifices, and fuccceded in making him divide it with her daughter Marguerite de Valois, hoping no doubt that when four of her children had fucceffively reigned in Paris, the fucceffion must be fixed in her own progeny for ever. In vain!--Fair Margaret's gallantries were fo early notorious, her husband was obliged to fhut her up; and though, having obtained a divorce from her, he married a cousin of T2 A per of the fame Medicean houfe, old Catherine broke her heart. She had adorned France with many beautiful buildings, and enriched it with valuable MSS. from Italy; but was juftly detefted by a people whose blood she spared not. Mary, though of the fame family, was no literary character: when the Swifs envoys came to compliment her, she who understood them not, afked Melfon what they faid? The courtier replied boldly ::-" Madam, they fay your Majesty is more lovely " and more excellent than any princefs ever feen on earth." fon prefent fmiled:-" Well!" fays the Queen, "Melfon tells what "they ought to have faid."* After her marriage with the King, Margaret was no more forbid the court, which the filled with her intrigues, her verses, her talents, her amours, and lastly, like her brothers, with her penances. Brantôme celebrates her wit and elegance, and her memoirs are deeply interefting. The Queen of Navarre's tales however, were compofed for Henri the fourth's grandmother, fifter to Francis the first. The book was named Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princeffes, très illuftre Reine de Navarre. Marguerite means a pearl, and likewise a daify. I fuppofe the compiler, who at first called it heptameron, meant that his readers fhould confider thefe as picked pearls or flowers-choice tales. It was this lady's daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, who gave to the admiring world one of its gayeft, bravest, greatest chieftains, the gallant Henri IV. who loved his fubjects, protected their interefts, extended their commerce, and confirmed their happiness. 'Twas after the peace his change of religion procured for France, that her artificers learned to work in glass, a manufacture till then confined to Venice, but Lyons in this reign begun to flourish, and tapestry work gave hope of that perfection we have witnessed fince in the fine Gobelin's loom. Silk too was cultivated in Pro * Mary de Medici loved gallantries well enough; and fo encouraged Ottavio Rinuccini, called by fome authors inventor of Italian operas, that he followed her to France, and loft his wits for love. Recovering, he hid his fhame and difappointment in a monaftery. vence, vence, and the kind king expreffed his friendly wifh that every peafant from Picardy to Perpignan should have a pot and fowl ready to boil in it, each Sunday through the year. His good intentions were well feconded by wife and faithful Sully, of whofe fervices Henry appeared moft fenfible: for when his rival miftreffes tormented him with their jealoufies and jars, his anfwer was a dozen pretty girls were of not half the value in his eyes as that one honest man. How rightly he had judged, the great event declares; for Sully, though himself a Lutheran, urged his master to accept the terms, and take the kingdom and catholicifm together. vereign. 66 Change then yourfelf," replied the fo"That could do only mischief," said the minifter. I may "be a Proteftant, and no harm done. Your Majefty muft abfolutely profefs the Romish tenets." The sweetness and focial temper of this prince made him after that event little less than adored at home, while his heroick courage in the field, by proving him refpectable for well-tried valour, filled even selfish Spain with admiration, rendered him a powerful mediator for Holland, and helped to heal every breach between the then prefent Pope and the Venetians. The clofing century found and left Henry well employed, and Clement VIII. made Rome rejoice in fo ufeful a converfion, A. D. 1600. While these things went forward in the fouthern parts of Europe, the north failed not to feel the quick'ning power. Alexander of Poland and Lithuania expelled all Tartars from his wide domain, which, now engaged in endless wars with Ruffia, thinned the exceffive population. Guftavus Ericfon introduced Lutheranifm into Stockholm, and made that crown hereditary in his own family. Freedom follows upon the heels of reformation, and many privileges were granted to the commons in all countries, where they were found a bar useful to kings, who by their means fhut out the old nobility, no longer now confidered as equals to the prince. Sigifmund and Maximilian difputed violently for that realm where ariftocracy lived longeft-Poland. The duc d'Alençon, fon to Catherine de Medici, had tried for it, but hard was Elizabeth was arbitrefs was called home to reign in France; and our between that kingdom and the Turks at last. thefe days, far the most important to mankind of those approaching to the arctic circle, was the aufpicious birth of great Guftavus, hero of the north, fon to Charles of Finland and Chriftiana of Holftein. RetroSpection fees them with pleasure to the old name of Athaulphus, worn by many a jomberfgher, add the anagram of Auguftus Cæfar or Ctzar; and while his father attempted the junction of Livonia to his poffeffions in the year 1599 and 1600, when the free commerce of the Baltic Sea was become a prize worth contending, that arbitration was committed to our queen Elizabeth, who fent Dr. Rogers, a man of more good fenfe than dignity, her envoy to Copenhagen. But England has been out of fight too long: we left her trembling under the rough grasp of tyrannick and uxorious Henry, whofe gentler fon, Edward the sixth, lived not to bestow on her the confolations reasonably expected from a prince of fuch premature difpofition towards piety and learning, whofe only fault feems to have been the preference of virtue to hereditary right, in endeavouring to fettle the fucceffion upon Jane Gray, whofe grandmother, wife to Charles Brandon, feems to have conferred upon her offspring no part of that contempt for queenship which the herself expreffed. The Betynges, Nippes, and Bobbes, fo pathetically lamented by Jane Gray, were bestowed on her by the duchefs of Suffolk, to make her accept a crown she had no claim to, and her philofophy only ferved to make her endure punishment, poor foul! for committing a fin to which fhe had no temptation.* Mary, true heirefs of England's crown, and eldest daughter to Henry VIII. by Catherine of Arragon, took away this hapless princefs's life with far more provocation than that of any other fubject during her dreadful fanguinary reign, marked by the death of two hundred * I have heard that the three fentences found on her tablets, written in Greek, Latin, and English, are yet preserved in my Lord Gage's family: his ancestor begged the pocket-book, which Jane gave him when he went to execution and |