harmless. The Queen spoke to her, "Why do you moan, sister?” “Alas, madam,” said the maniac, "I deplore your ill fortune." Margaret turned to those who followed her, "You concealed the king's death," she said, "but the spirit of God hath revealed it to me through this woman." Passing to her chamber with no show of womanly weakness, she kneeled down and blessed God, “for his will accomplished whatsoever it might be." But the blow was given; her agony was the deeper for being at first restrained; and despite her seeming resignation, she never held up her head She passed the first forty days of her mourning in this same monastery; and during this time even composed some verses on her brother's death. They were her last: her adieus to life and poetry. more. She writes to Henry the Second, on his accession, a brief and melancholy letter, for her heart was breaking; and the collection offers us two or three more to the Constable de Montmorency, to whom she found herself obliged to apply, painful as the necessity must have been, since Henry had recalled him to favour in contradiction to his father's will expressed on his deathbed. She prays of Montmorency the payment of a pension of 24,000 livres, granted her by Francis. Margaret with her usual carelessness of her own interests, being on the death of Francis his creditor, had abandoned her rights to the relatives of her first husband: but deprived of this royal succour, she represents that to entertain her household must prove impossible, and prays Montmorency for his intervention. "I beg you so to continue till the end of your old mother; and be the staff of her age as she was the rod of your youth. For you have had many friends, but remember you have but one mother who never will part with the name nor its effects in all she may do or desire for you and yours." Throughout this correspondence she styles him by turns, cousin, son, and nephew; mere terms of affection, since no relationship existed. The last pang Margaret felt was occasioned by her daughter's marriage with Antoine de Bourbon; chosen by the King of Navarre, but without her participation. Henceforth weary of the world, she had abandoned her usual occupations, and no longer mingled in temporal affairs. Brantome says she was commonly retired in her convent of Pusson, where she sometimes performed the office of abbess, and chanted at vespers. Her presentiments returned, and this time they were personal. She dreamed that a beautiful female, robed in white, appeared before her, presenting a wreath of various flowers, and murmuring, "Soon." She said, that the crown was a symbol of eternal life, and that she was shortly to die. And though as yet in her usual health, she wrote to various persons, in order to ward off certain embarrassments which her death might cause. At last she fell ill at her chateau of Odos, in Bigorre. Her malady lasted twenty days, during which she suffered with patience and courage. She lost her speech three days ere she died, and recovered it only in her last moments, when she exclaimed, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!" and expired. Her obsequies were celebrated in the church of Lescar with solemn ceremonial. It was customary to expose the effigy of the royal person deceased in a chapelle ardente, laid on a couch and robed in sables as if chief mourner at his own funeral; and the waxen portrait was moulded immediately after the decease, that the effigy might be lively and natural. At the foot of Margaret's likeness stood three gentlemen bearing the crown, the sceptre, and the hand of justice, the insignia which accompanied her to the verge of the grave. "Margaret de Valois," says Charles of St. Martha, " only sister of king Francis, was the stay and support of letters; the defence, refuge, and comfort of the wretched.' 66 Monsieur Genin has included in his collection some letters of Francis himself: one of them a gay note after an unsuccessful hunt and supperless return on a frosty night, which shows the familiar footing on which king and courtiers stood; and another, a reply to Margaret, insignificant as ill spelled, for the wary writer intrusted a chosen messenger to communicate by word of mouth any important news or secret, and never noted it down. He has recovered also some Latin epistles of Erasmus and Melancthon: and the last imploring letter written from the Bastile to the king by poor Semblançay. To such as are curious to know the customs of the time Monsieur Genin's researches offer some interesting documents. The marriage articles, for example, drawn up between Margaret and the King of Navarre, with the worth of jewels he is bound to bestow upon her; and the order observed at her burial. We find also a detailed list of the " pensions, wages and other sums" paid on various pretexts to Montmorency, amounting to 56,000 livres ; an addition to his own immense fortune which yet placed no bridle on his rapacity. Monsieur Genin remarks that some have doubted the fact of the Count of Chateaubriant's having made a donation of his domains to the Constable of France, in order to put a stop to proceedings instituted against him after his wife's death; and quotes against them a passage of a letter existing in manuscript in the royal library, wherein Montmorency * *See note, ante, p. mentions the donation made, and adds, "Monsieur de Chateaubriant is inclined to do better still." Montmorency was never difficult of access, at least by this road. A subsequent note tells us that the Duke of Guise bribed him with a hound, and that Delabarre, Provost of Paris, wrote from Madrid, "I sent my Lord a pair of boots quite new (tout neufs) that he may the better remember me." We read also on another page a letter from his aunt, Louise de Bourbon, a poor nun of Fontevrault, who implores the payment of a legacy which he has received and detained, as humbly as she would crave a charity. Monsieur Genin completes this characteristic portrait of Montmorency by a quotation from the Abbé of Longuerue. "He was a Cacique and Captain of Savages, hard and barbarous; so ignorant, that he scarce could sign his name; hated by every one; believing himself a great captain and being none; always beaten and often prisoner; whose catholicity did not prevent his joining the Coligny's when he found his interest in so doing." Margaret's letters do not once touch on her occupations as an author: but we find an epistle in verse to Henry the Second when dauphin, hitherto unpublished; mere doggrel for the most part, though possessing some redeeming lines and two or three short poems, more simple and touching, composed on her brother's death. : We have thus attempted to sketch the contents of Monsieur Genin's volume, and to illustrate by this means the chief events of Margaret's life. Doing justice to her, he has done more than a piece of dry justice to history. Her correspondence proves her kind heart, her disinterestedness through life, her devotion to her brother, her care of the poor, her protection of the persecuted. Let us hope that the 134 letters addressed to the king, vainly sought by Genin, but even more lately found in a corner of the royal library, will not be withheld from us. It is difficult not to feel interest in all which concerns Margaret of Navarre: fair but not frivolous, gentle but not weak, warm and enthusiastic yet virtuous; using her influence to soften injustice and curb fanatacism ; withholding the hand when it was raised to strike, guiding it when it bestowed reward: a star of her times. A gentleness spread over a fair face A chaste eye in whose light there lies no stain; A lively wit; a learning which makes marvel; Clement Marot's Praise. And such sweet gracefulness diffused o'er all, And all these precious gifts, and thousand more, And tall, and straight; and formed in its fair stature By men and gods. Oh! would I were a prince! Do not low olive-tree and humble rose I launch no fleets whose prize might be a Helen's. I would have died or else have conquered thee. Yet do my will and spirit make me one. If they have treasure, I have treasure also, So sang Clement Marot of Margaret of Navarre. 149 ART. VIII-Neapel und die Neapolitaner. (Naples and the Neapolitans; or Letters from Naples Home.) By DR. KARL AUGUST MAYER. 2 vols. Oldenburg. 1842. WE noticed the first volume of these amusing letters on its appearance two years ago, but in its complete form the work is deserving of more attention than it received from our hands at that time. The pictures of popular manners in the capital of southern Italy are more varied and striking in the second than in the first volume; and the far-famed scenes in the environs are sketched with a masterly hand. Nor let it be supposed that the doctor confines his remarks within narrow limits. The "most opposite" topics are discussed in quick succession. Priests and religion are disposed of in the same breath, as though they were things connected by nature or sympathy; schools and convents are handled together, plays and poets dragged into the same letter; while holiday feasts and funerals, fiddlers and physicians, lawyers and opera singers, are rapidly and closely passed in review before the reader. Several excellent letters are devoted to the priests and monks of Naples, of whom the doctor tells strange tales, but for whom, with all their little offences, he cherishes a friendly recollection. The Roman Catholic of Spain, he says, is a fanatic, but the Roman Catholic of Italy is not so. He anathematizes protestantism, indeed, to his heart's content, but he does the same of Islamism and Judaism, and has as little real knowledge of one as of the other two. To the individual protestant, meanwhile, "he bears no ill-will; but on the contrary is full of gentilezza_towards him, and indefatigable in showing him little marks of attention. Here as in every other relation the kindly and almost infantine disposition of the Italian shows itself, and neutralizes the intolerance so industriously instilled into him." Among the mendicant friars or street preachers of Naples, are to be found men who exercise an astonishing influence over the lazzeroni. Of one of them, Rocco, a Dominican, a posthumous fame is preserved for witty sayings and happy allusions, which if collected would fill volumes. He was reckless whom he attacked, and often said things which upon any one less popular would have drawn down the vengeance of the public authorities: but Rocco was a man of whom even the police stood in awe. One day he was preaching to a crowd in the public market-place: "This day," he said, "I will see whether you truly repent you of your sins." Thereupon he commenced a penitential discourse that "made the hair of the hardhearted multitude stand upright:" and when they |