In our next extract Miss Strickland meditates upon the important historical fact of which we presume she is the exclusive discoverer, that the Earl of Peterborough, by whom the marriage was negociated, presented Mary Beatrice with jewels to the amount of £20,000 sterling, as a bridal offering from her unknown consort.

"Charms like hers, however, required not the aid of elaborate decorations; and her own classical taste disposed her to prefer a general simplicity of attire, except on those occasions, when the etiquette of royal ceremonials compelled her to assume the glittering trappings of a state toilette.”—(p. 50.)

Our next extract is an important one, which we recommend to the especial attention of our readers. Miss Strickland makes some profound philosophical remarks upon the gullibility of the people of England, a question upon which we take her to be a very high authority.

"James honoured the ancient customs of the land over which he expected to rule, by admitting a portion of the honest, true-hearted classes, in whom the strength of a monarch depends, to witness the solemnization of his marriage with a princess whom he had taken to wife, in the hope of her becomiag the mother of a line of kings. It was sound policy in him, not to make that ceremonial an exclusive show for the courtiers who had attended him from London, and the foreigners, who, notwithstanding his prudent caution to the Earl of Peterborough, had accompanied his Italian consort to England. He knew the national jealousy, the national pride of his countrymen, and that their affections are easily won, but more easily lost, by those who occupy high places. That they are terrible in their anger, but just in their feelings: their crimes being always imputable to the hearts of those by whom their feelings are perverted to the purposes of faction or bigotry. The English are, moreover, a sight-loving people; and, for the most part, inclined to regard the principal actors in a royal pageant with feelings of romantic enthusiasm. It was, therefore, well calculated, to increase his popularity and counteract the malice of his enemies, for the sailor prince to take so excellent an opportunity for interesting their generous sympathies in favour of the innocent young creature against whom the republican faction was endeavouring to raise a general persecution."-(pp. 55, 56.)

Deep thinking like this necessarily produces a feeling of exhaustion, to relieve which we are not surprised to find Miss Strickland displaying her powers in the light and sportive style, in the passage which immediately follows.

"It is a little singular, that among the numerous spectators, gentle and simple, courtly and quaint, who witnessed the landing of Mary Beatrice that day, and, afterwards, the royal ceremonial of her marriage with the heir of the crown, not one should have left any little graphic record of the events of the day, with details of the dress and deportment of the bride, and her reception of the English ladies; the manner and order of the supper; with many other minor observances connected with the costume of those times, which his excellency of Peterborough has considered it beneath the dignity of an ambassador to chronicle, although few ambassadors have recorded so many pleasant adventures as he has done. Why was not that most minutely cirstantial of all diarists, Samuel Pepys, at the wedding of his royal master, the Duke of York, to count the pearls on the bride's stomacher, and to tell us

how rich and rare was the quality of her white and silver petticoat; and to marvel at the difference between her tall sylph-like figure and the obesity of her portly predecessor Anne Hyde?" (p. 56.)

The point of this passage will escape the reader, should he chance to have forgotten that the Lady Anne Hyde, James's first wife, was the daughter of Lord Clarendon, and the mother of the princesses Mary and Anne. The heartless profligate whom it was her heavy misfortune to call her husband, having gained her affections, attempted to deceive her by a feigned marriage, which proved, contrary to his intentions, to be a real one. After a few years of splendid misery, during which her worthless husband repaid her boundless devotedness to him (which she carried so far as even to turn Papist when he did), by constant unsuccessful endeavours to cast imputations upon her chastity, she died, the victim of his abominable profligacies, transmitting to her two daughters that taint of constitution which consigned them both childless to untimely graves. These are circumstances which one might have anticipated would have excited the sympathies of a woman in favour of this hapless princess. But no! she was not very pretty; she was in the latter years of her life very fat; and, worse than all, she was the mother of two Protestant queens! What wonder then, that the unhappy duchess is the constant butt of Miss Strickland's wittiest sallies and coarsest and most unfeeling sarcasms. Thus the reader will find that even in her merry moods our fair author always keeps a watchful eye upon the object of her writing.

We cannot refrain from one other extract, which may give our readers some idea of the extent of enthusiasm with which Queen Mary is regarded by her eulogist.

"It was highly to the credit of so young a creature as Mary Beatrice, that her mind was too well regulated to be alloyed with the vanity which the flattering incense offered up at the shrine of her beauty by the greatest wits of the age, was calculated to excite in a female heart. The purity of her manners and conduct entitled her to universal respect. It was observed in that wanton licentious court, where voluptuousness stalked unmasked, and gloried in its shame, that the youthful Duchess of York afforded a bright example of feminine propriety and conjugal virtue. She appeared like a wedded Dian, walking through Paphian bowers, in her calm purity.”—(p. 67.)

A WEDDED DIAN! Is not this fine? But we are absolutely so overpowered with Miss Strickland's eloquence, that we feel quite unequal to a word of comment. We prefer assuaging our

1 Burnet's History of his own Times, vol. i. pp. 241, 333, &c. The doubt which has always hung, and yet hangs, upon the asserted offspring of Mary Beatrice, arises from the great vigour of their constitutions, which the physicians of the day asserted to be impossible of any child of James the Second's, or of the child of any wife with whom he had lived long. Id. 335, &c.

2 A not infrequent symptom of the disease of which she died.

excited sympathies by a return to the plain matter-of-fact history of this unparalleled princess. She was, as we have already seen, the daughter of the Duke of Modena. Her father dying in her infancy, her education was entirely conducted by her mother and her uncle the Cardinal d'Este, than whom the length and breadth of Italy could not furnish two more noted specimens of tramontane bigotry. Devoted thoroughly to the gigantic designs of the Jesuits, to subdue the world to the Papacy by dint of political intrigue, the education of Mary Beatrice was carried on with the express and sole view of her subserviency to those designs afterwards. She sucked in intrigue with her mother's milk. No one understood the use of words as the means of concealing thoughts better than Mary Beatrice. Her whole deportment was artificial, and contrived to suit the purpose in hand: but it was no clumsy deception. She was made up with exquisite skill, and artifice far too highly refined to be in any danger of detection and exposure, especially in that lofty circle of a sovereign princess in which she always moved, and where the chances of detection were so small. This is the voice of history regarding the character of this most accomplished, but by no means most successful, of intriguantes, which the facts recorded by history abundantly verify. Having premised this, we proceed to the following quo

tation :

"How generally blameless the conduct of Mary Beatrice was at the tender age when she was torn from her peaceful convent, to become the wife of a careless husband, whose years nearly trebled her own, and the stepmother of princesses old enough to be her sisters, may be perceived even from the unfriendly evidence of Bishop Burnet himself: She was,' says he, a very graceful person, with a good measure of beauty, and so much wit and cunning, that during all this reign she behaved herself in so obliging a manner, and seemed so innocent and good, that she gained upon all that came near her, and possessed them with such impressions of her, that it was long before her behaviour after she was a queen could make them change their thoughts of her. So artificially did this young Italian behave herself, that she deceived even the eldest and most jealous persons both in court and country. Only sometimes a satirical temper broke out too much, which was imputed to youth and wit not enough practised to the world. She avoided the appearance of a zealot or a meddler in business, and gave herself up to innocent cheerfulness, and was universally esteemed and beloved as long as she was duchess.'

"Upwards of twelve years! Rather a trying period for the most practised of hypocrites to have supported the part which this candid divine attributes to an inexperienced girl, who commenced her career in public life at fifteen. If Mary Beatrice had, at that tender age, acquired not only the arts of simulation and dissimulation in such perfection, but the absolute control over every bad passion which Burnet imputes to her, so as to deceive the most watchful of her foes, and to conciliate the love and esteem of all who came near her, she might assuredly have governed the whole world. Unfortunately for herself, this princess was singularly deficient in the useful power of concealing her feelings; it is impossible to refrain from smiling at the idea of any one attributing policy so profound to the unsophisticated child of nature,

who, preferring the veil of a cloistered votaress to the prospect of the crown matrimonial of England, had interrupted the diplomatic courtship of a grave ambassador with passionate reproaches for his cruelty in endeavouring to marry her to his master against her inclination, and with tearful earnestness intimated how much more suitable and welcome the alliance would be to her maiden aunt than to herself, and was too little practised in deception to be able to conceal either her disinclination to her consort, in the first instance, or her too ardent affection for him after he had succeeded in winning her virgin love. If, then, so young a creature, whose greatest fault was her proneness to yield to the impulse of her feelings, conducted herself for twelve years so perfectly as not to give cause for complaint to any one, not even to her step-daughters, the natural inference is, that she acted under the influence of more conscientious motives than those which guided the pen of her calumniator."--(pp. 65—66.)

Now we cannot refrain from the expression of our surprise at the grievous ignorance of human nature which is betrayed in this passage; and when we consider that Miss Strickland is no young creature," like her heroine, we feel bound to express our apprehensions that it is feigned ignorance, and that the passage is written to deceive. Surely Miss Strickland has not lived so many years in the world, and seen so much of human nature, without discovering that there are even now "young creatures of sixteen (if she pleases to call them so), who are quite competent to carry out intrigues of which the victims shall be " young creatures" of fiveand forty, as some ladies of that respectable age are affected enough to call themselves. If this then be the case in Protestant society, where (however light and delicate the complexion of the religion which is now an invariable part of education) lying and deceit are always denounced as sins; what wonder, we ask, that poor Mary Beatrice, whom her Jesuit teachers and confessors had trained from her infancy to regard deception as the grand purpose of life, and lying and dissimulation, for the purpose of advancing the Papacy, as sacred religious duties, should be an adept in these arts at

sixteen?

That Miss Strickland quotes Bishop Burnet unfairly here, will excite no surprise after this. We merely complete the quotation, in order to show wherein the unfairness consists. Immediately where Miss Strickland breaks off from Burnet, to pour forth her vituperations upon him, he proceeds: -" She (Mary Beatrice) had one put about her to be her secretary, Coleman, who became so active in the affairs of the party, and ended his life so unfortunately, that, since I had much conversation with him, his circumstances may deserve that his character should be given, though his person did not. I was told, he was a clergyman's son: but he was early catched by the Jesuits, and bred many years among them. He understood the art of managing controversies, chiefly that great one of the authority of the Church, better than any of

their priests. He was a bold man, resolved to raise himself, which he did by dedicating himself wholly to the Jesuits: and so he was raised by them. He had a great easiness in writing in several languages; and writ many long letters, and was the chief correspondent the party had in England. He lived at a vast expense; and talked in so positive a manner, that it looked like one who knew he was well supported. I soon saw into his temper; and I warned the Duke of it: for I looked on him as a man more like to spoil business than to carry it on dexterously. He got into the confidence of P. Ferrier the King of France's confessor; and tried to get into the same pitch of confidence with P. de la Chaise, who succeeded in that post. He went about everywhere, even to the jails among the criminals, to make proselytes. He dealt much both in the giving and taking of bribes.” 1 This we submit is a somewhat ominous appendage to Miss Strickland's account of "the fair young creature" who had been "torn from her convent," and no very pregnant proof of the guileless innocence and girlish sincerity of which she would have her readers to believe her a perfect model; that is, if the axiom noscitur a sociis have any truth in it. Nor can the plea that Coleman was forced upon Mary Beatrice as her Secretary, be allowed for one moment. Three years after this (1676) we find the Bishop of London (Compton) "making many complaints to the king, and often in council, of the insolence of the Papists, and of Coleman's in particular. So the king (Charles II) ordered the Duke to dismiss Coleman out of his service; yet he continued still in his confidence," And accordingly, in the course of the same year, we find this busy intriguer (Coleman) drawing declarations to justify the king's proceedings in favour of Popery, and over head and ears in correspondence with the confessors of all the Romanist potentates of Europe, and especially with Father Ferrier, the confessor of the King of France, with whom England was then at war. "He was in all his dispatches setting forth the good state of the Duke's affairs, and the great strength he was daily gaining."3 On the death of Ferrier, which took place about this time, Coleman found another and far more valuable correspondent in St. Germain, a Jesuit, who had originally come over to England with Mary Beatrice in the capacity of her confessor, but was compelled to fly the country in consequence of the detection of his intrigues in favour of Popery. Thus then in the course of the three first years of "the fair d'Este's" residence in England, her confessor and her secretary, the two most confidential officers in her court, 1 Burnet's History of his own Times, vol. ii. p. 106, seq. 2 Id. p. 145. 3 Id. p. 147.

2

4 Id. p. 148.