their undertaking, they sought to possess themselves of the person of the king. This enterprise, of which Catherine received intelligence, failed: ineffectual conferences followed: animosities were mutually inflamed. The huguenots, though few in number, attempted to block up the capital in which Charles had taken refuge. The constable was compelled to give them battle, while numbers secured his, victory. The field was obstinately disputed, and dearly gained by the royalists: their leader received in the conflict a mortal wound, of which he died on the ensuing day.

In him expired the last check to the authority of Catherine, who henceforth, freed from every rival, found herself uncontrolled mistress of the mind of her son. It was the constable only who could have inspired the young king with the emulation of reigning alone, of emancipating himself from the tutelage of his mother, and of feeling those powers which Catherine was solicitous to repress.

The huguenot armies, though repulsed, were not subdued: new proposals were tendered to them by the crown, by which a treaty was at length effected, on principles similar to that by which it had been preceded. A temporary suspension of hostilities, rather than a solid peace, once more took place. The perfidious system of policy pursued by Catherine, added to the sanguinary zeal which animated both parties, rendered a permanent accommodation impracticable and hopeless. The conditions of forbearance were but little observed; mutual rage, alternate insults, and acts of violence, still existed. The treacherous intentions of the court were but too apparent: a plot was laid to seize the person of the prince of Condé, the calvinist chief: the chancellor de l'Hôpital, a mild and virtuous minister, who had, by moderating counsels, opposed, in some degree, a check to Catherine, was deprived of the seals, disgraced, and confined to his house: preparations on all sides were made for fresh hostilities, which broke out in the ensuing spring. The huguenots were at length forced to a decisive action, when the fatal day of Jarnac, in which the royalists conquered, put an end to the life of the prince of Condé, the hero and the leader of the calvinist forces.

This news was received at Paris with universal joy; the king rose at midnight to sing Te Deum; the intelligence was announced in triumph to every court in Europe; and the standards, torn from the huguenots, a most acceptable offering, were presented to the sovereign pontiff.

The real advantages resulting to the royalists were however inconsiderable; the calvinists appeared again in the field more terrible from their defeat, and determined to carry the war to the gates of Paris. But this resolution was postponed; new enterprises were projected, followed by new battles and new defeats.

Henry, duke of Anjou, the second and darling son of Catherine, who headed the royal troops, enjoyed the honours of their success. Charles becoming jealous of the glory of his brother, to whom Catherine was attached with fond affection, would no longer be restrained from appearing in the field. He saw with discontent the partiality of his mother, of which he vehemently complained. Catherine, fearing his capacity for business would not always submit to tutelage, preferred the indolent submission of her youngest son, which, should any accident place him on the throne, would secure to her the power for which she sacrificed.

After many struggles between the contending parties, with alternate loss and advantage, peace, so long and so ardently desired, was re-established, on terms not unfavourable to the huguenots. Charles swore to preserve the treaty inviolate, and to protect the calvinists in every benefit it pro

mised to confer; but under these fair appearances lurked the most cruel and treacherous designs. Catherine, convinced from experience that the huguenots were not to be subdued by force, had already planned the tragic spectacle which two years afterwards astonished Europe. A project so horribly flagitious and unprecedented has stigmatised, with indelible and deserved infamy, the comprehensive, yet detestable, genius which gave it birth. " Like some minister of an angry deity," says an ingenious and entertaining writer *, " Catherine appears to have been occupied only in effecting the ruin of her people, and to have marked her course with carnage and devastation."

To strengthen the union of the parties, a marriage was proposed by the queen-mother, between the princess Margaret, sister to the king, and Henry prince of Navarre. During the preparation for these inauspicious nuptials, pleasure and dissipation appeared to engross the whole court. It becoming necessary also to marry the king, who had entered his twenty-first year, Catherine solicited for him the hand of Elizabeth of England: failing in her suit, she turned her attention to the archduchess Elizabeth, daughter of the emperor, Maximilian II. a princess whose slender capacity threatened no diminution of her influence over the mind of her son.

The marriage having been celebrated, the young queen was crowned at St. Denis. Catherine displayed on this occasion the magnificence of her spirit, and the elegance of her taste. The entertainments exhibited at court were heightened by the fictions of antiquity, and embellished by the allegories of Greece and Rome. The amusements of Catherine were characterised by a genius, a spirit, and a refinement, that emulated those of more advanced periods, and were scarcely surpassed under the splendid reign of Lewis XIV. the Augustan age of France. "Her extraordinary and universal genius," says the writer before quoted, "comprehended every thing in its embrace, and were equally distinguished in the cabinet or at a banquet, whether directed to the destruction or the delight of mankind: in her qualities the most opposite and discordant in their nature seem to have been blended. She was enabled, by the universality of her talents, to pass, with the easiest transition, from the horrors of war to the dissipations of indolence and peace; and we are forced to lament, that a capacity so exalted should, from the principles by which it