ness.

Alain had one other sight to encounter before reaching the home of his love, and the scene of his future years of happiIn compliance with the earnest request of his mother, he had diverged from the proper route to tho Hôtel de Montenay to show her the spot where the murder had been committed. Here they found the city officers, surrounded by an immense rabble, engaged in burning publicly the fragments of weapons and other rubbish which might, by possibility, have been implicated in the crime. Among the rest was the MAGIC WAND.

"Let it burn; said Mademoiselle de Vere, as her son suddenly withdrew his arm- "let it burn, as you hope for goodluck!"—and he did so. The leaf of vervain which it contained (according to oral tradition), when it became red hot, mounted into the air, and floated over the tops of the houses; while the wolf's eyes, the lapwing's stone, and the green lizards rolled and ran for some time through the flames, to the great amazement of the crowd-and then disappeared in smoke. It is due, however, to auctorial dignity to confess, that with regard to the truth or falsehood of these details of the narrative, history is silent.

been the natural son of a nobleman. His chronicles, which indeed bear some claim to the title of a history, although a very bad one, was written in Cambray, of which he was governor, holding this office at the same time with that of bailiff of Wallaincourt. The work is justly characterised by Mr. Dacier (Mem. Acad. Belles Lettres) as being heavy, monotonous, weak, and diffuse. He died in 1453.

HISTORICAL SUMMARY.

SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

LOUIS XII. ob. 1515. FRANCIS I. 1547. HENRY II. 1559. FRANCIS II. 1560. CHARLES IX. 1574. HENRY III. 1589. HENRY IV.

LOUIS XII. was the same Duke of Orleans who disputed the regency fourteen years before, as the first prince of the blood. He bears an excellent character in history; and, indeed, his love for the people seems to have borne no reference to the scale of their willingness or capacity to pay taxes. He had faults, however, or rather he was the agent and instrument of the faults of the time. The nation was agog for glory, and the patriots were determined to support with their "lives and fortunes" some cause or other. The countries of Europe, besides, were beginning to enter into closer relations with each other; the system of negotiations had entered into an alliance with the practice of war; and the cunning roguery of Louis XI. was already reduced to a science.

The king divorced his wife, in order to marry the widow of Henry VIII., and thus preserve her dowry, Brittany, to the crown of France. [A. D. 1501.] He conquered Milan and Naples almost at a blow, and lost them again as suddenly. [A. D. 1506.] He would then have signed a treaty, giving away his daughter in marriage, with a third of France for her dowry, if not prevented by the States.

His next battle was fought against the Venetians, whom he defeated; and he then declared war against Julius II., a famous fighting pope, who, as well as the King of Spain, had betrayed him. [A.D. 1512.] The battle of Ravenna was gained by the French, under the conduct of the celebrated Gaston de Foix, who died there at the proper age to be canonized as a hero of romance. They were obliged to retire, however, from the Milanais, in spite of the efforts of the no less celebrated Bayard, the knight without fear and without reproach. The English, in the mean time, beat the French in Picardy, and the Swiss made an incursion as far as Dijon. Louis entered into a treaty with Henry VIII., whose sister he had married; and at last died, after having reduced the taxes, protected the poor, reformed justice, and lost and won many unsuccessful battles. [A. D. 1515.]

Francis 1. would have made a glorious knight-errant. He would have loved, and fought, and danced, and sung in the most brilliant manner possible. After all, he was a very gentlemanly king; which was so far well, as France by this time had become an almost absolute monarchy.

Finances being low, he sold the judges their seats, to fit him out for the war in Italy. He defeated the Swiss in the emperor's pay (the Swiss were now the hired bravoes of Europe) at Marignan. "He concluded a treaty with Leo X., which destroyed the Pragmatic Sanction, the grand bulwark of the independence of the church. [A. D. 1516.] He raised up for himself a terrible enemy in the person of the Emperor Charles V., whose succession he ridiculously opposed.

Francis now entered into a treaty of alliance with Henry VIII. of England; and at a meeting with his new friend on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, spent a great deal more money in toys and gingerbread than the alliance was worth. By the intrigues of the emperor, this union was soon dissolved; and speedily all Europe, with the pope at its head, was in league against France. The royal knight-errant was. nothing daunted. At an encounter between the Germans, commanded by the Constable de Bourbon, who had left his service in dudgeon, and the French Admiral Bonnivet, Bayard was killed. Francis passed into Italy, and notwithstanding all remonstrances, fought the pitched battle of Pavia; where, after having conducted himself like a true hero of chivalry, and seen nearly his whole army perish, he was taken prisoner and carried to Madrid. [A. D. 1525.]

He was set at liberty on consenting to deliver up Burgundy; but when it came to the point, Burgundy would not allow itself to be delivered up, and the ransom was afterward paid in gold crowns to the amount of two millions. Francis, in the mean time, in league with Henry VIII., the Venetians, and a new pope, against the emperor, crossed the Alps once more, and besieged Naples. Here the plague got into his army, and he evacuated Italy anew. The Duke of Bourbon, about this time, being in want of money to pay his troops, pillaged Rome, and captured the pope; but Charles V., while pocketing the ransom, had the devotion to ask pardon of the holy father for the outrage.

This is the epoch of the reformation of the Protestants, who were so called, because they protested against the Diet of Spire, which condemned their heretical opinions. Francis I., knowing nothing of controversy, roasted a few of these persons at a slow fire.

New pretensions to Milan, on the part of Francis, and an invasion of France by the emperor; both without effect. [A. D. 1535.] The latter being accused of poisoning the dauphin, was cited before the parliament, and, in default of appearance, condemned to lose, as a fine, Artois and Flanders. Francis allied himself with the Sultan Soliman; and in a new war, his galleys were seen joined with those of Barbarossa. [A. D. 1542.] In Italy, the Count d'Enghien gained a fruitless battle; the emperor, leagued with Henry VIII., penetrated as far as Soissons; and a peace was signed at Cressy.

Two cantons of Provence embraced Lutheranism, which seemed to bear some resemblance to the Albigensian doctrines of their fathers; and the army, on its return from Italy, were enabled to wash out their stains of pillage and murder with the blood of three thousand of these heretics. Calvin, notwithstanding, found no difficulty in gaining proselytes to a still severer reform.

Francis at length died. [A. D. 1547.] He was one of the most absolute kings that ever reigned in France. He substituted for the States, assemblies of notables (or great men), whose business it was to approve; and he taxed the people without any other authority than his own royal will. He was, however, a patron of letters and the arts; and he founded the College of France, and introduced the use of the national language in public deeds.

Henry II. was a king of the same stamp. He continued the war against the Emperor Charles, and took Metz, Toul, and Verdun. [A. D. 1553.] Before Metz, the emperor, with an army of a hundred thousand men, was repulsed by the Duke de Guise, and soon after he had avenged this dishonour by the destruction of two towns, he retired to a convent. [A. D. 1555.] The Spaniards, under the Duke of Savoy,

gained a victory at Saint Quentin, which made Paris itself tremble; but nevertheless they judged it expedient to retire; and the Duke de Guise retrieved the national reputation by taking Calais from the English. [A. D. 1557.] A peace at length was signed at Chateau-Cambresis; and soon after Henry was killed in a tournament by one of his knights, whom he would force to play with him. [A. D. 1559.]

Francis II. was the husband of the celebrated Mary Stuart, who gave birth to a line of fools and tyrants, and many parodoxes. The king makes no figure in this brief reign. It was the epoch at which the Guises and Bourbons began to fight about religion, and when the Protestants died in bonfires no longer, but sword in hand.

The accession of Charles IX., when a boy, brought with it more than the usual horrors of a minority. [A. D. 1560.] Catherine de Medicis, the widow of Henry II., who protected and betrayed all parties by turns, proposed a mode of settling the question which has lately been revived by some worthy persons in England and Ireland-a public deputation. It took place at Poissy; and of course strengthened the conviction and embittered the feelings of the well-meaning mass of both sides. [A. D. 1561.] Then followed the massacre, almost accidental, of the Calvinist huguenots (confederates) at Vassy, in Champagne, and a civil war fairly broke out.

The two parties fought at Dreux, Saint Denis, Jarnac, and other places, with various success; and among the assassinations committed by both were those of the Duke de Guise and the Prince of Condé. [A. D. 1563.] At length a peace was concluded advantageous to the Protestants, who were guaranteed civil and religious liberty. Their leaders were invited to the court, and caressed by Catharine de Medicis, and men began to breathe freely and dream of quiet. Young Henry of Navarre, the nominal chief of the party, was married to the king's sister; and the joyous festivities incident on the occasion were about to melt into the tranquillity of happiness.

In the midst of all this, on the evening of Sunday, the 24th of August, the festival of St. Bartholomew, the Duke of Guise went in the twilight to the Provost of Paris, with a message from the king. The provost was directed, on the tolling of the great bell of St. Germain de l'Auxerrois, to illuminate the city. In the interval, king Charles was seized with a fit of royal ague; his frame trembled, and cold sweats broke over his forehead. Catherine de Medicis demanded from him an order of state, which was slowly granted; and dreading the fickleness of one whom she knew well to be a slave, coward, and traitor, the butcheress caused the signal to be given at once, although it was an hour before the concerted time. The great bell of St. Germain de l'Auxerrois tolled. The work of hell began; and so zealous were the labourers, that in two days it was accomplished in the greater part, and they were able to take the rest of the week to finish leisurely. The echoes of the great bell of St. Germain were heard that night in many of the provinces, and everywhere the effects were the same. In Paris, the king assisted personally, and bravely shot from his palace windows the huguenots who had fled at the steps of the murderer. The parliament applauded this truly surprising effort of Catholic devotion, and observed an annual procession of triumph and thanksgiving in honour of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. [A. D. 1572.]

The Protestants were not exterminated. The war rekindled; and the Duke of Anjou lost eighty thousand men at the siege of La Rochelle. [A. D. 1573.] Even the women fought: they turned the tears of their sex into blood, and their shrieks of terror into war-cries: In the mean time the king died. [A. D. 1574.] He was not only an assassin, but a perpetrator of miserable verses; and he patronized authors and critics.

Henry III. was a devout debauché. He at first patronized a federation of the ultra Catholics under the Duke of Guise, calling itself the League; but this party did not manage tenderly enough his royal dignity. [A. D. 1576.] The war of the three Henry's-viz., the king, the Duke of Guise, and the King of Navarre, was followed by an insurrection at Paris, known by the name of the Sixteen, from the sixteen quarters of the communes. The Sorbonne decided that it was lawful to deprive princes incapable of governing, of the right of government; the leaguers dictated measures to the king; the king called in the aid of his Swiss; the citizens of Paris flew to arms, barricaded the streets, and surrounded the troops; and the king fled.

Unable otherwise to rid himself of the Guises, Henry assassinated them; united his forces-then very small indeed-with Henry of Navarre; and fell himself under the knife of an assassin, who was regarded as a saint. [A. D. 1589.]

Henry of Bourbon-Navarre, or Henri Quatre is to this day the most popular of the French kings. Brought up in the midst of hardships, he wanted at one time almost the necessaries of life, and was about to pass into England. Beating Mayenne, however, at Arques with a handful of men, and in the following year at Ivri, he thought his fortune worth trying in his own country. [A. D. 1590.] He blockaded Paris, but the siege was raised by the Duke of Parma; and afterward Rouen, with the same bad luck. [A. D. 1591.] At last, the moderate Catholics, weary of bloodshed, offered to recognise him as king, on condition of his abjuring his heresy; and Henry, thinking, as he said himself, that Paris was well worth a mass, consented, and entered the city on the 22d of March. [A. D. 1594.]

Henry re-established the parliament; banished the Jesuits; conquered Mayenne at Fontaine-Française; repulsed the Spaniards; subdued the Governor of Brittany, who held still for the League; signed a treaty with Philip of Spain; [A. D. 1597,] and, more important than all, promulgated the Edict of Nantes in favour of his Protestant subjects, to whom it permitted the exercise of their religion under restrictions scarcely more onerous than those that were maintained against Catholics, in the most civilized country of Europe, till a year or two. ago. [A. D. 1600.]

In this century, the influence of women, always dangerous in affairs of state, began to be felt on the fortunes of France. The dissoluteness of court manners about the reign of Henry II. is painted by Brantome with a minuteness which might be useful, were only historians and philosophers admitted to the exhibition.

In the mean time, this is the epoch of Copernicus, Galileo, and Torricelli-of the English Bacon-of Montaigne-of Morus, Bodin, and Grotius: it is therefore the most glorious we have yet arrived at for truth and civilization.