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ever produced- we may say, one of the best romances to be found in any language-has given importance to the memory of an otherwise obscure gentlewoman. Those versed in Italian literature, need not be reminded of the interesting and strongly depicted account of the lady of Monza; but little is to be added to the episode of the "Promessi Sposi."

It must be stated, that the circumstances detailed in that work did not really happen at Monza, but in some obscure bourg, whose name cannot now be ascertained; the real name of the lady was Maria Virginia di Leiva. Her father, Antonio di Leiva, from an unjust ambition to endow his son with an excessive wealth, immured this unfortunate daughter in a convent, where she was forced to take the veil, without the smallest vocation or sentiment of religion. To recompense her for this sacrifice, uncommon privileges were extended to her; she was accountable to nobody for her time or actions, and this led to her ruin. A young nobleman, of dissolute habits and abandoned life, found means to attract her attention from a neighbouring house-to gain her affections, and to seduce her. Thus far Manzoni:-but the work called the Monaca di Monza, by Rossini, which affects to give a detailed and continued life of this lady, is entirely incorrect and without real foundation. The true end of her history is, that the scandalous life she led, was brought by report to the ears of the Cardinal Borromeo, who quietly withdrew her from the scene of her errors, placed her in another monastery, under strict overseeing, and in fine, by tenderness and spiritual exhortations, awakened her torpid conscience, instructed her in religious truths, and brought about a sincere repentance. She became as eminent for the saintly piety of her latter days, as she had been offensive from her early licentiousness. Her seducer, after a series of fearful crimes-among which murder was to be reckoned -came to an untimely and violent death.

LIOBA,

A RELATION of St Boniface, the intrepid apostle of Northern Europe, was placed by him at the head of a convent which he had founded for women, in the midst of the barbarous tribes of Germany, not far from the monastery of Fulda. She was a very learned woman for that age, and was thoroughly acquainted with the writings of the Fathers, ecclesiastical law, and theology. The Bible was almost always in her hands, and even during her sleep she had it read to her. All her life, Lioba was considered a saint. She was the only woman who was ever allowed to enter the monastery of Fulda. When St. Boniface was massacred at Friesland, he requested to be buried near Lioba; "I wish," said he, "to wait with her for the day of resurrection. Those who have laboured together for Christ, ought together to receive their reward."

LOIS and EUNICE, MOTHER and daughter, were Jewish women, and early believers in the Christian faith; they resided

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at Lystra, a city of Lycaonia. Eunice was the mother of Timothy, who was the first bishop of the Ephesians, and the favourite convert and friend of the apostle Paul. As the husband of Eunice was a Greek, the religious education of Timothy must have been entirely the work of his mother and grandmother. This is proved by what Paul says in his epistle to Timothy regarding the "unfeigned faith" of these two noble women. judged the piety of this gifted young man by the measure of excellence they possessed; and if Timothy came up to this standard of the female soul, Paul was satisfied. Thus was the piety of woman held up as the pattern for the best of men, by the sternest and most masculine mind among the apostles. See Acts, chap. xvi., and 2 Timothy, chap. i.

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OF Savoy, countess of Angoulême, wife of Charles, duke of Orleans, and mother of Francis I., who succeeded to the throne of France in 1515. Immediately on his accession, he raised Angoulême into a duchy from motives of filial affection. Louisa had been eminently beautiful, and even then, time had diminished her charms but little, while the gifts of nature were carefully improved and embellished by cultivation. Gifted with strong talents, and a mind active, vigorous, penetrating, and decisive, she aimed at the acquisition of power, but, unhappily for the nation, her virtues were overbalanced by her vices; her passions were strong and impetuous, and to their gratification she sacrificed all a woman should hold dear; vain, avaricious, intriguing, jealous, and implacable, she thwarted the best concerted plans of her son,

and occasioned the greatest distress to the na- | endangered, her abilities were exerted to save. tion.

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Francis, on his Italian expedition, left his mother regent of the kingdom, and, after his return from it, when his duchy of Milan was threatened by the Pope, and Lautrec was appointed its governor, Louisa, partly from avarice, and partly from an inveterate dislike she had conceived for Lautrec, who had spoken too freely of some of her intrigues, seized and appropriated the three hundred thousand crowns which had been raised for the pay of the Milanese troops. Lautrec performed prodigies of valour, but the Swiss mercenaries, who formed the greater part of the army, enraged at not receiving their pay, left him, and Lautrec was obliged to return to France. king was so enraged at the loss of the Milanese, that he at first refused to see him; but, having at length obtained an audience, he justified himself by imputing the disasters of the campaign to the want of the promised money. Francis flew into a violent passion with Semblancy, superintendant of the finances, insisting on knowing what had become of the money he had ordered to be sent to Italy; the minister, a man of virtue and integrity, who had grown grey in the service of his country, confessed he had been obliged to pay it to the duchess d'Angoulême, who had taken the consequences on herself; but that infamous woman had the presumption to deny the fact, though Semblancy produced her receipt for the amount. When Semblancy had thus justified himself in the eyes of Francis, and continued to enjoy his place, the vindictive Louisa soon suborned one of his clerks to accuse him of peculation; he was tried by partial judges, condemned, and executed. Louisa's affections had long been fixed on the duke of Bourbon, but finding her love rejected by a prince sincerely attached to his wife, in revenge she prejudiced the king against him. The death of the duchess of Bourbon revived her former tenderness, and she offered her hand to the duke. This being rejected with contempt, she doomed Bourbon to destruction. A law-suit was commenced against him, to recover some possessions he held in right of his wife; and the judges, overawed by Louisa, pronounced a sentence by which his estate was sequestered. Bourbon, driven to desperation by this injustice, entered into a treaty with Henry VIII., of England, and Charles V., of Germany, against the king of France.

At first, Francis was successful in repelling the confederate princes, which encouraged him to attempt, in person, the recovery of the Milanese; in vain did his mother and his wisest ministers dissuade him from it; he departed, leaving the duchess regent of the kingdom. After the battle of Pavia, at which he had lost his army and his liberty, he addressed the following note to his mother, "Madame, all is lost except our honour." The captivity of the king, and the loss of a flourishing army, added to a discontent prevailing throughout the kingdom, seemed to threaten a general insurrection. In this trying emergency, the magnanimity of Louisa was eminently displayed, and the kingdom, which her passions had

She assembled, at Lyons, the princes of the blood, the governors of the provinces, and the notables of the realm, who generously resolved to ransom immediately the officers and soldiers taken at Pavia. The army and garrisons were recruited, and enabled to repel the Imperialists, while Louisa conciliated the favour of the king of England, whom she disengaged from the confederacy; and to her mediation Francis acknowledged himself indebted for his liberty, which he recovered in March, 1526. The terms of his liberation by the emperor were so exorbitant that he never intended to fulfil them, and the Pope absolved him from his oath.

Consequently, hostilities continued, till Margaret of Austria and the duchess of Angoulême met at Cambray, and settled the terms of pacification, whence the peace was called the "Ladies' Peace." Louisa died, 1571. In obedience to her counsels, Francis completed, after her death, her favourite project of annexing the duchy of Brittany to the

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LUCILLA,

A DAUGHTER of M. Aurelius, celebrated for her youthful virtues and her beauty; and also notorious, at a later period, for her debaucheries and misfortunes. At the age of sixteen, her father sent her to Syria, to marry the emperor Verus, who was then at war with the Parthians and Ar

menians. Lucilla loved her husband passionately, and, at first, conducted herself with great modesty and discretion; but, seeing Verus plunge into dissipations of every kind, while he neglected her, she yielded to the fashion of the times, and became very profligate. After the death of Verus, she married, by order of her father, an old but virtuous senator. She was accused of incest with her brother Commodus; and when he treated her with coldness, she, with many of the senators, conspired against him. The plot was discovered, and Lucilla was banished, in 185. Soon after, she was put to death by her brother, in the thirtyeighth year of her age.

LUCY, ST.,

A VIRGIN martyr, born at Syracuse. She refused to marry a young man who addressed her, because she had determined to devote herself to religion, and, to prevent his importunities, she gave her whole fortune to the poor. Enraged at this, the young man accused her, before Paschasius the heathen judge, of professing Christianity, and Lucy was put to death by him, in 305.

M. MALATESTI,

BATTISTA, of Urbino. This very erudite lady was the daughter of Guido di Montefeltro, lord of Urbino. She was a pupil of Leonardo Bruni. She understood Latin, and was so expert in philosophy that she was able to hold public theses.

As a widow, she maintained a fair and wise government of her dominions, until having reached a very advanced age, she retired into the convent of St. Clara, where she finished her life in pious tranquillity. She died in 1460.

MARGARET OF ANJOU,

QUEEN-CONSORT of England, was daughter of Regnier, or René, titular king of Sicily, Naples, and Jerusalem, descended from the counts of Anjou, and brother of Charles V. of France. Brought up in the petty court of Anjou, her natural strength of mind was not enfeebled by indulgence, and she was considered the most accomplished princess of her time, when she was selected by cardinal Beaufort for the wife of Henry VI. of England. She was married in 1445, when only sixteen, to share with a weak prince a throne disturbed by rancorous and contending factions. She naturally threw herself into that party which had favoured her marriage, of which the earl of Suffolk was the chief; and when the destruction of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, was effected by their machinations, she was generally suspected of being privy to his murder. The surrender of the province of Maine, in France, to the king of that country, who was Margaret's uncle, in consequence of a secret article in the marriage treaty, aggravated the odium under which Margaret and Suffolk laboured; and the sacrifice of that nobleman, which followed, is said to have cost her more tears than are usually shed on the loss of a political ally.

Her son was born in 1453, while the national discontents were rising to a crisis. She was soon after called upon to exert all the vigour of her character in resisting the Yorkists, who had defeated the royal army at St. Albans. Though Henry VI. was taken prisoner, she raised troops, and defended the royal cause with so much spirit, that she effected a favourable compromise, and restored her husband to the sovereignty, The war, however, was renewed, and at the battle of Northampton, the Lancasterians were totally routed, and Henry again taken prisoner. Margaret, with her son, fled to Durham, and thence to Scotland. Returning into the north of England, she interested the nobles there in her cause, and collected a powerful army. With this she met the duke of York at Wakefield, and totally defeated him. The duke was killed in this battle, and, by the order of Margaret, his head was struck off, and, crowned with a paper diadem, was placed on the gates of York. His youngest son, Rutland, was killed in cold blood by the furious Clifford; several prisoners of distinction were put to death, | and an example given of the cruelties which marked the progress of this unnatural war.

In 1461, the queen defeated the earl of Warwick, partizan of Edward, son of the duke of York, at the second battle of St. Albans, in which she recovered the person of the king, now a passive agent in the hands of friends and foes. She displayed her fierce and cruel disposition, by ordering lord Bonville to be executed, to whose

care Henry had been entrusted by the Yorkists, and to whom the powerless king had promised pardon. The approach of Edward with a superior force, obliged her again to retreat to the north, and that prince was elevated to the throne by the Londoners, and the lords of the Yorkists.

Margaret's influence, and the licentiousness in which her troops were indulged, increased the Lancasterian party to sixty thousand men. It was met at Towton, in Yorkshire, by Edward and Warwick, at the head of forty thousand men, and a battle was fought, March 1461, which was the bloodiest of these destructive wars. The Lancasterians were defeated, and Margaret and Henry, who had remained at York, hastily retreated to Scotland. After soliciting aid in vain from that country, she went over to France for the same purpose: and by offering to deliver Calais to the French, should Henry be restored to the crown, she obtained the succour of two thousand men, with which she landed in Scotland. Joined by some of her partizans, and a band of freebooters, she made an incursion into the north of England, and proceeded to Hexham. She was there met and defeated by a force under lord Montacute.

The unfortunate queen fled with her son into a forest, where she was seized by a band of robbers, who took her jewels, and treated her with great indignity. While they were quarrelling about the booty, Margaret escaped, and fled wearied and terrified into the depths of the forest. Seeing a man coming towards her with a drawn sword, she summoned up all her courage, and going to meet him, "Here, friend," said she, "I commit to your protection the son of your king." Struck by the nobleness and dignity of her manner, and charmed with the confidence reposed in him, the man, though a robber, devoted himself to her service. He concealed the queen and her son for some time in the woods, and then led them to the coast, whence they escaped to Flanders.

Margaret went to her father's court, where she remained several years, while her husband was imprisoned in the Tower of London. In 1470, the rebellion of the earl of Warwick against Edward, and his subsequent arrival in France, produced an alliance between him and the exiled queen. It was agreed that Warwick should endeavour to restore the house of Lancaster, and that Edward, the son of Margaret and Henry, should marry his daughter Anne, which alliance took place in France. Warwick landed in England, and Edward was forced to escape to Flanders. Margaret was preparing to second his efforts; but on the very day on which she landed at Weymouth, the battle of Barnet, April 14th, 1471, terminated the life of Warwick, and the hopes of the confederacy. Margaret, with her son, took refuge in the sanctuary of Beaulieu, in Hampshire, intending to return to France; but being encouraged by the increase of her party, she advanced to Tewksbury, where she was met by Edward, who totally defeated her, and took her and her son prisoners, the latter of whom was cruelly put to death. Margaret was confined in the Tower, where her husband died about the

same time. Louis XI. ransomed her, and she returned again to her father's protection.

The home to which the loving René welcomed his forlorn daughter, was a castle on the river Mayence; the scenery was beautiful, and the king had a gallery of paintings and sculpture, which he took delight in adorning with his own paintings; he had also ornamented the walls of his garden with heraldic designs carved in marble. It was in such pursuits that René, a true Provençal sovereign, found alleviations for his afflictions. But Margaret's temperament was of too stormy a nature to admit of the slightest alleviation of her griefs. She passed her whole time in bitter regrets, or unavailing sorrows. This intensity of suffering affected her constitution. The agonies and agitations she had undergone seemed to turn her blood into gall: her eyes were sunken and hollow, her skin was disfigured by a dry, scaly leprosy, until this princess, who had been a miracle of beauty, such as the world seldom beholds, became a spectacle of horror.

Her errors and her misfortunes were the result of the circumstances by which she was surrounded; her talents and virtues were of a lofty stamp; had she been married to a stronger-minded man, she would no doubt have been a better and a happier woman.

MARGARET,

COUNTESS of the Tyrol and duchess of Carinthia. Her father Henry succeeded to the throne of Bohemia, at the death of Winzeslaus III., but was expelled from it by John of Luxemburg. Henry preserved the title of king and retired to the castle of the Tyrol, where, in 1318, was born the princess Margaret. This sole heiress of the Tyrol and of Carinthia soon became the aim of the houses of Austria, Bavaria, and Luxemburg. King John of Bohemia, with finesse superior to the others, ingratiated himself with the count of Tyrol, who agreed to betroth the countess Margaret, then seven years old, to his son John, yet an infant. The union did not take place till the year 1338, when Margaret had reached the age of twenty.

This princess, who was of a light and frivolous

disposition, open to flattery, and easily swayed by the designing, had an invincible repugnance to her husband, who, to the petulance of a beardless boy, joined the haughtiness of a sovereign. The ambition of the house of Bavaria took advantage of these circumstances, and secret negotiations were opened with Margaret. Her marriage with John was cancelled, and the emperor proposed one of his sons as his successor. Some suspicions entering the mind of John, he proceeded to harsh measures with his wife, causing her to be guarded in a tower of the castle of the Tyrol. This was a very imprudent step; for it excited her subjects to such indignation, that the emissaries of Bavaria found it an easy matter to excite a revolt. John was himself driven from the country, and Margaret fell into the hands of the emperor.

Ludovic, margrave of Brandenburg, was selected to become the new spouse of Margaret. His handsome person, pleasing manners, and military reputation, easily reconciled her to the decree. But he manifested extreme repugnance to wed a princess who was without intrinsic merit, who was lawfully married to another, and who was related to him within the permitted degrees of consanguinity. His father silenced all these scruples; the dower of Margaret, in his eyes, neutralized every objection. He used his imperial power to annul her first marriage, and proceeded to unite her with Ludovic.

In the year 1361, Ludovic died suddenly, and many attributed his death to poison; some even hinted that Margaret was implicated; but there exist no proofs of such an atrocity. The death of their only son, Mainard, in the flower of his age, has also been by some ascribed to his mother's malice. But the most authentic historians are far from attributing to her such revolting wickedness. What can really be proved is her want of capacity, which was shown in the mistakes she made when, for a short time, the powers of government were concentrated in her hands. Rodolph, who, by many manoeuvres and intrigues, had captivated the favours of Margaret, had, in the life-time of Ludovic, obtained from her a settlement investing him with the inheritance of the Tyrol in case of her husband and son dying without heirs. He, taking advantage of her weakness, induced her to abdicate her sovereignty in his favour; painting the troubles that invest a throne, and the life of pleasure and ease she would lead in a court that was then the first in Europe. had an appointed revenue of 6000 gold marks, and four princely residences. When all was concluded, she proceeded with the widow of Mainard to the court of Vienna, where she was received with most distinguished attention. She passed six years of tranquillity, if insignificant pleasures deserve that term, and died in 1369. She was buried in the convent of St. Croce, near Baden.

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MARGARET, ST.,

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A VIRGIN, who is said to have suffered martyrdom at Antioch, in 275. She is not mentioned by the ancient martyrologists, and she did not become famous till the eleventh century. A festival is

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DAUGHTER of Robert, duke of Burgundy, married Louis Hutin, king of France, in 1305. She was a beautiful but very licentious woman. Her lover was flayed alive, and she herself was strangled to death, in 1315.

MARGARET OF SCOTLAND,

THE first wife of Louis XI. of France, died in 1445, at the age of twenty-six, before her husband had ascended the throne. Margaret was devoted to literature, and, while she lived, patronised men of learning and genius. Her admiration for the poet Alain Chartier is said to have induced her to kiss his lips, as he sat asleep one day in a chair. Her attendants being astonished at this act of condescension, the princess replied that "she did not kiss the man, but the lips which had given utterance to so many exquisite thoughts." She excited in the gloomy and ferocious Louis XI. a taste for science and literature, which lasted long after her death. She left no children. Her death is said to have been caused by the calumnies circulated against her; of which, however, she was proved innocent.

MARGARET,

DAUGHTER of Raymond Berenger, count of Provence, married St. Louis, king of France, in 1254, and attended him during his wars in the Holy Land with the Saracens; when, on his captivity, she behaved with heroic intrepidity in the defence of Damietta. She died at Paris in 1285, aged seventy-six.

MARGARET,

THE Semiramis of the North, third daughter of Waldemar, king of Denmark, was born in 1353. At the age of six she was contracted to Haguin, king of Norway; but the Swedes, of whom his father Magnus was king, insisted on his renouncing the alliance; and to oblige them, he consented to demand Elizabeth of Holstein in marriage, whom he espoused by proxy. But, on her voyage to Norway, a storm drove her off the coast of Denmark, where she was detained by Waldemar until his daughter was married to Haguin in 1366.

Waldemar died in 1375, leaving only two daughters, of whom Margaret was the younger. Olaus, the son of Margaret, was at that time king of

Norway; and as the grandson of Magnus, who had however been deposed, he had some claims on the crown of Sweden. The eldest daughter, Ingeburga, wife of Henry, duke of Mecklenburg, had also a son; but the right of succession was then confused and uncertain, and Margaret contrived that the election should be decided in favour of her son, then eleven years old, who was placed on the throne, under her guidance as regent. Haguin died soon after; and Olaus died in 1387, at the age of twenty-two; with him the male line was extinct, and custom had not yet authorized the election of a woman. Henry of Mecklenburg omitted nothing that could advance his pretensions; but Margaret's genius, and well-placed liberality, won over the bishops and clergy, which was in effect gaining the greater part of the people, and she was unanimously elected queen of Denmark.

But her ambition grasped at the crown of Norway also; she sent deputies to solicit the states, gained over the chief people by money, and found means to render herself mistress of the army and garrisons; so that, had the nation been otherwise disposed, she would in the end have succeeded; but they readily yielded to her wishes. The Norwegians, perceiving that the succession was in danger of being extinct, entreated her to secure it by an advantageous marriage; but she received the proposal coldly. To satisfy, however, their desire, she consented to appoint a successor; but fixed on one so young that she would have full time to satisfy her ambition before he could be of age to take any share in the government; yet he was the true heir, and grandson of her sister.

She recommended herself so strongly to the Swedes, who were oppressed by their king Albert, who had gone to war with her, that they renounced their allegiance to that prince, and made her a solemn offer of their crown, thinking that her good sense would set bounds to her ambition, and prevent any encroachment on their rights. She accepted the offer, marched to their assistance, defeated Albert, who was deposed, in 1388, after a war of seven years. She then imprisoned him another seven years, till he made a solemn renunciation

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