dice against German performers, invited her to Potsdam, in 1770, and gave her an appointment immediately. In 1774, she married Mara, a violoncello player, a very extravagant man, and he involved her so much in debt, that, in 1786, Frederic withdrew her appointment from her, and she went to Vienna, Paris, and London, where she was received with great enthusiasm. In 1808 she went to Russia, and while at Moscow she married Florio, her companion since her separation from Mara. By the burning of Moscow she lost most of her property. She passed the latter part of her life, which was very long, at Reval, where she lied, in 1833. She possessed extraordinary compass of voice, extending with great ease over three octaves. MARATTI, ZAPPI FAUSTINA, OF Rome. Her poems appear to have contributed to the improvement of style which took place in the Italian poetry when she wrote. They are filled with the tender affection of a devoted wife and mother. She was the daughter of the famous painter Maratti. She died in 1740. MARGARET, DUCHESS OF PARMA, Was the natural daughter of Charles V. of Germany and Margaret of Gest. She was born in 1522, and married, first, Alexander de Medici, and afterwards Octavio Farnese, duke of Parma and Piacenza. Her half-brother, Philip II. of Spain, appointed her, in 1559, to the government of the Netherlands, where she endeavoured to restore tranquillity; and she might have succeeded, if the duke of Alva had not been sent with such great power that nothing was left to her but the title. Indignant at this, Margaret returned to her husband in Italy, and died at Ortona, 1586. She left one son, Alexander Farnese, duke of Parma. MARGARET OF FRANCE, QUEEN of Navarre, daughter of Henry II. of France and Catharine de Medicis, was born in 1552. Brantôme says, "If ever there was a perfect beauty born, it was the queen of Navarre, who eclipsed the women who were thought charming in her absence." She walked extremely well, and was considered the most graceful dancer in Europe. She gave early proofs of genius, and was a brilliant assemblage of talents and faults, of virtues and vices. This may, in a great measure, be attributed to her education in the most polished, yet most corrupt court in Europe. Margaret was demanded in marriage, both by the emperor of Germany and the king of Portugal; but, in 1572, she was married to Henry, prince of Bearn, afterwards Henry IV. of France. Nothing could equal the magnificence of this marriage; which was succeeded by the horrors of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Though Margaret was a strict Roman Catholic, she was not entrusted with the secrets of that horrible day. She was alarmed with suspicions, which her mother would not explain to her, and terrified by a gentleman, who, covered with wounds, and pursued by four archers, burst into her chamber before she had risen in the morning. She saved his life, and by her prayers and tears, obtained from her mother grace for two of her husband's suite. Henry himself escaped the fate prepared for him, and Margaret refused to suffer her marriage to be cancelled. In 1573, when the Polish ambassadors came to create her brother, the duke of Anjou, king of that country, Margaret, as a daughter of France, received them. The bishop of Cracow made his harangue in Latin, which she answered so eloquently, that they heard her with astonishment. She accompanied the duke d'Anjou as far as Blamont, and during this journey she discovered a plot of her husband and her next brother, who was become duke d'Anjou, to revenge the massacre, which she revealed to her mother, on condition that no one should be executed. The princes were imprisoned; but the death of Charles IX., in 1577, set them at liberty. The king of Navarre, continually occupied by new beauties, cared little for the reputation of his wife; yet, when he stole from the court, he commended his interests to her, in a letter he left for her. But Margaret was then confined to her apartments, and her confidants were treated with the greatest severity. Catharine, however, prevented her brother from pushing matters to extremity with her, and by her assistance she obtained a short peace. Margaret then demanded permission to retire to her husband in Guienne; but Henry III. refused to allow his sister to live with a heretic. At length open war was commenced against the Protestants, and Margaret withdrew into the Low Countries, to prepare the people in favour of her brother, the duke d'Alençon, who meditated the conquest of them by the Spaniards. There are curious details of this journey in her memoirs. On her return, she stopped at La Fere, in Picardy, which belonged to her, where she learned that, for the sixth time, peace was made in 1577. The duke d'Alençon came to Picardy, and was delighted with the pleasures that reigned in the little court of Margaret. She soon returned to France, and lived with her husband at Pau, in Bearn, where religious toleration was almost denied her by the Protestants; and Henry showed her little kindness; yet the tenderness with which she nursed him during an illness, re-established friendship between them, from 1577 to 1580, when the war again broke out. She wished to effect another reconciliation, but could only obtain the neutrality of Nerac, where she resided. After the war, Henry III., wishing to draw the king of Navarre, and Margaret's favourite brother, the duke d'Anjou, to court, wrote to Margaret to come to him. Discontented with the conduct of her husband, she gladly complied, and went in 1582; yet so much was her brother irritated by her affection for the duke d'Anjou, that he treated her very unkindly. Some time after, a courier, whom he had sent to Rome with important dispatches, being murdered and robbed by four cavaliers, he suspected his sister of being concerned in the plot, and publicly reproached her for her irregularities, saying everything that was bitter and taunting. Margaret kept a profound silence, but left Paris the next morning, saying, that there never had been two princesses as unfortunate as herself and Mary of Scotland. On the journey she was stopped by an insolent captain of the guards, who obliged her to unmask, and interrogated the ladies who were with her. Her husband received her at Nerac, and resented the cruel treatment she had experienced from her brother; but her conduct, and the new intrigues in which she was constantly engaged, widened the breach between them. When her husband was excommunicated, she left him, and went to Agen, and thence from place to place, experiencing many dangers and difficulties. Her charms made a conquest of the marquis de Carnillac, who had taken her prisoner; but though he insured her a place of refuge in the castle of Usson, she had the misery of seeing her friends cut to pieces in the plains below; and though the fortress was impregnable, it was assailed by famine, and she was forced to sell her jewels, and but for her sister-in-law, Eleanor of Austria, she must have perished. The duke d'Anjou, who would have protected her, was dead; and though, on the accession of her husband to the throne of France, in 1589, she might have returned to court, on condition of consenting to a divorce, she never would do so during the life of Gabrielle d'Estrées. After the death of the mistress, Margaret herself solicited Clement VIII. to forward the divorce, and, in 1600, Henry was married to Marie de Medicis. Margaret, in the mean time, did some acts of kindness for the king, and was permitted to return to court after an absence of twenty-two years. She even assisted at the coronation of Marie de Medicis, where etiquette obliged her to walk after Henry's sister. She consoled herself by pleasures for the loss of honours; and though Henry IV. begged her to be more prudent, and not to turn night into day and day into night, she paid but little attention to his advice. Margaret passed her last years in devotion, study, and pleasure. She gave the tenth of her revenues to the poor, but she did not pay her debts. The memoirs she has left, which finish at the time of her re-appearance at court, prove the elegant facility of her pen; and her poetry, some of which has been preserved, equals that of the best poets of her time. She was very fond of the society of learned men. "Margaret," said Catharine de Medicis, "is a living proof of the injustice of the Salic law; with her talents, she might have equalled the greatest kings." "The last of the house of Valois," says Mezeray, "she inherited their spirit; she never gave to any one, without apologising for the smallness of the gift. She was the refuge of men of letters, had always some of them at her table, and improved so much by their conversation, that she spoke and wrote better than any woman of her time." She appears to have been good-natured and benevolent; wanting in fidelity, not in complaisance to her husband; as, at his request, she rose early one morning, to attend to one of his mistresses who was ill. How could Henry reproach her for infidelities, while living himself a life of the most scandalous licentiousness! If Margaret had had a more affectionate and faithful husband, she would doubtless have been a true and affectionate wife. This does not justify her errors, but it accounts for them. She died in 1615, aged sixty-three. MARGARET, DAUGHTER of Francis I. of France, married Emmanuel Philibert, duke of Savoy, and died highly respected, September 14th, 1574, aged fifty-one. MARGARET LOUISA OF LORRAINE, DAUGHTER of Henry, duke of Guise, married, in 1605, at the instance of Henry IV., who was in love with her, and wished to fix her at court, Francis de Bourbon, prince of Conti. They however left the court immediately on marrying. The prince died in 1617, and Louisa devoted herself to the belles-lettres. She was one of Cardinal Richelieu's enemies, and he banished her to Eu, where she died in 1531. She was suspected of having married the marshal of Bassompierre for her second husband. She wrote the amours of Henry IV., under the title of "Les Amours du Gr. Alexandre." MARQUETS, ANNE DE, WAS born of noble and rich parents, and was carefully instructed in belles-lettres, and in her religious duties. She became a nun in a convent of the order of St. Dominic, at Poissy, where she devoted the poetic talents for which she was distinguished, to the service of religion. Her poems show great but enlightened zeal. Ronsard, and other celebrated contemporary poets, have spoken very highly of her. She reached an advanced age, but lost her sight some time before her death, which took place in 1558. She bequeathed to Sister Marie de Fortia, a nun in the same convent, three hundred and eighty sonnets of a religious nature. MARIA THERESA, ARCHDUCHESS of Austria, queen of Hungary and Bohemia, and empress of Germany, born in 1717, was the eldest daughter of Charles VI. of Austria, emperor of Germany. In 1724, Charles, by his will, known as the Pragmatic Sanction, regulated the order of succession in the house of Austria, declaring that in default of male issue, his eldest daughter should be heiress of all the Austrian dominions, and her children after her. The Pragmatic Sanction was guaranteed by the diet of the empire, and by all the German princes, and by several powers of Europe, but not by the Bourbons. In 1736, Maria Theresa married Francis of Lorraine, who, in 1737, became grand-duke of Tuscany; and in 1739, Francis, with his consort, repaired to Florence. Upon the death of Charles VI. in 1740, the ruling powers of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, France, Spain, and Sardinia, agreed to dismember the Aus trian monarchy, to portions of which each laid claim. Maria Theresa, however, went immediately to Vienna, and took possession of Austria, Bohemia, and her other German states; she then repaired to Presburg, took the oaths to the constitution of Hungary, and was solemnly proclaimed queen of that kingdom in 1741. Frederic of Prussia offered the young queen his friendship on condition of her giving up to him Silesia, which the resolutely refused, and he then invaded that province. The Elector of Bavaria, assisted by the French, also invaded Austria, and pushed his troops as far as Vienna. Maria Theresa took refuge in Presburg, where she convoked the Hungarian diet; and appearing in the midst of them with her infant son in her arms, she made a heartstirring appeal to their loyalty. The Hungarian nobles, drawing their swords, unanimously exclaimed, "Moriamur pro Rege nostro, Maria Theresa!" "We will die for our queen, Maria Theresa." And they raised an army and drove the French and Bavarians out of the hereditary states. What would have been their reflections could those brave loyal Hungarians have foreseen that, in a little over a century, a descendant of this idolized queen would trample on their rights, overthrow their constitution, massacre the nobles and patriots, and ravage and lay waste their beautiful land! Well would it be for men to keep always in mind the warning of the royal psalmist, "Put not your trust in princes." In the mean time, Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria, was chosen Emperor of Germany, by the diet assembled at Frankfort, under the name of Charles VII. Frederic of Prussia soon made peace with Maria Theresa, who was obliged to surrender Silesia to him. In 1745, Charles VII. died, and Francis, Maria Theresa's husband, was elected emperor. In 1748, the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle terminated the war of the Austrian succession, and Maria Theresa was left in possession of all her hereditary dominions, except Silesia. In 1756 began the Seven Years' war between France, Austria, and Russia, on one side, and Prussia on the other. It ended in 1763, leaving Austria and Prussia with the same boundaries as before. In 1765, Maria Theresa lost her husband, for whom she wore mourning till her death. Her son Joseph was elected emperor. She however retained the administration of the government. The only act of her political life with which she can be reproached is her participation in the first partition of Poland; and this she did very unwillingly, only when she was told that Russia and Prussia would not regard her disapproval, and that her refusal would endanger her own dominions. The improvements Maria Theresa made in her dominions were many and important. She abolished torture, also the rural and personal services the peasants of Bohemia owed to their feudal superiors. She founded or enlarged in different parts of her extensive dominions several academies for the improvement of the arts and sciences; instituted numerous seminaries for the education of all ranks of people; reformed the public schools, and ordered prizes to be distributed among the students who made the greatest progress in learning, or were distinguished for propriety of behaviour, or purity of morals. She established prizes for those who excelled in different branches of manufacture, in geometry, mining, smelting metals, and even spinning. She particularly turned her attention to agriculture, which, on a medal struck by her order, was entitled the "Art which nourishes all other arts;" and founded a society of agriculture at Milan, with bounties to the peasants who obtained the best crops. She took away the pernicious rights which the convents and churches enjoyed of affording sanctuary to all criminals without distinction, and in many other ways evinced her regard for the welfare of the people. She was a pious and sincere Roman Catholic, but not a blind devotee, and could discriminate between the temporal and spiritual jurisdiction. She put a check on the power of the Inquisition, which was finally abolished during the reign of her sons. She possessed the strong affections of her Belgian subjects; and never was Lombardy so prosperous or tranquil as under her reign. The population increased from 900,000 to 1,130,000. During her forty years' reign she showed an undeviating love of justice, truth, and clemency; and her whole conduct was characterized by a regard for propriety and self-respect. Maria Theresa was, in her youth, exceedingly beautiful; and she retained the majesty, grace, and elegance of queenly attractiveness to the close of her life. She was strictly religious, sincere in her affection for her husband, and never marred the power of her loveliness by artifice or coquetry. She used her gifts and graces not for the gratification of her own vanity, to win lovers, but as a wise sovereign to gain over refractory subjects; and she succeeded, thus showing how potent is the moral strength with which woman is endowed. This queen has been censured for what was styled "neglect of her children." Maria Theresa was the mother of sixteen children, all born within twenty years. There is every 66 reason to suppose that her naturally warm affec- | Joseph, her eldest son. My son," said she, "as tion, and her strong sense, would have rendered you are the heir to all my worldly possessions, I her, in a private station, an admirable, an exem- cannot dispose of them; but my children are still, plary parent; and it was not her fault, but rather as they have ever been, my own. I bequeath them her misfortune, that she was placed in a situation to you; be to them a father. I shall die contented where the most sacred duties and feelings of her if you promise to take that office upon you." She sex became merely secondary. While her numer- then turned to her son Maximilian and her daughous family were in their infancy, the empress was ters, blessed them individually, in the tenderest constantly and exclusively occupied in the public terms, and exhorted them to obey and honour their duties and cares of her high station; the affairs elder brother as their father and sovereign. After of government demanded almost every moment repeated fits of agony and suffocation, endured, to of her time. The court physician, Von Swietar, the last, with the same invariable serenity and waited on her each morning at her levée, and patience, death, at length, released her, and she brought her a minute report of the health of the expired on the 29th of November, 1780, in her princes and princesses. If one of them was in- sixty-fourth year. She was undoubtedly the greatdisposed, the mother, laying aside all other cares, est and best ruler who ever swayed the imperial immediately hastened to their apartment. They sceptre of Austria; while, as a woman, she was all spoke and wrote Italian with elegance and one of the most amiable and exemplary who lived facility. Her children were brought up with ex- in the eighteenth century. treme simplicity. They were not allowed to indulge in personal pride or caprice; their benevolent feelings were cultivated both by precept and example. They were sedulously instructed in the "Lives of the Saints," and all the tedious forms of unmeaning devotion, in which, according to the sincere conviction of their mother, all true piety consisted. A high sense of family pride, an unbounded devotion to the house of Austria, and to their mother, the empress, as the head of that house, was early impressed upon their minds, and became a ruling passion, as well as a principle of conduct with all of them. We have only to glance back upon the history of the last fifty years to see the result of this mode of education. We find that the children of Maria Theresa, transplanted into different countries of Europe, carried with them their national and family prejudices; that some of them, in later years, supplied the defects of their early education, and became remarkable for talent and for virtue. That all of them, even those who were least distinguished and estimable, displayed occasionally both goodness of heart and elevation of character; and that their filial devotion to their mother and what they considered her interests, was carried to an excess, which in one or two instances proved fatal to themselves. Thus it is apparent that her maternal duties were not neglected; had this been the case she could never have acquired such unbounded influence over her children. Maria Theresa had long been accustomed to look death in the face; and when the hour of trial came, her resignation, her fortitude, and her humble trust in heaven, never failed her. Her agonies during the last ten days of her life, were terrible, but never drew from her a single expression of complaint or impatience. She was only apprehensive that her reason and her physical strength might fail her together. She was once heard to say, "God grant that these sufferings may soon terminate, for otherwise, I know not if I can much longer endure them." After receiving the last sacraments, she summoned all her family to her presence, and solemnly recommended them to the care of the emperor MARIA ANTOINETTA AMELIA, DUCHESS of Saxe Gotha, daughter of Ulric of Saxe Meinungen, was born in 1572. Her talents as a performer on the piano, and as a composer, would have been creditable to a professed artist. Several of her canzoni, and also variations for the piano, have been published; but her most important work is a symphony in ten parts. She died towards the beginning of this century. MARIE ANTOINETTE JOSEPHE JEANNE DE LORRAINE, ARCHDUCHESS of Austria and queen of France, daughter of the emperor Francis I. and Maria Therese, was born at Vienna, November 2d, 1755. She was carefully educated, and possessed an uncommon share of grace and beauty. Her hand was demanded by Louis XV. for his grandson, the dauphin, afterwards Louis XVI., to whom she was married in 1770, before she had attained her fifteenth year. A lamentable accident, which occurred during the festivities given by the city of Paris to celebrate the marriage, was looked upon as a sinister omen, which subsequent events having confirmed, has acquired undue importance. On the 21st of January, 1793, the king perished on the scaffold; the dauphin was forcibly torn from her, and given in charge to a miserable wretch, a cobbler called Simon, who designedly did everything in his power to degrade and brutalize the innocent child. On the 2d of August, Marie Antoinette was removed to the Conciergerie, to await her trial in a damp and squalid cell. On the 14th of October, she appeared before the revolutionary tribunal. During the trial, which lasted seventy-three hours, she preserved all her dignity and composure. Her replies to the infamous charges which were preferred against her were simple, noble, and laconic. When all the accusations had been heard, she was asked if she had anything to say. She replied, "I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long." At four o'clock, on the morning of the 16th, she was condemned to death by an unanimous vote. She heard her sentence with admirable dignity and self-possession. At half-past twelve, on the same day, she ascended the scaffold. Scarcely any traces remained of the dazzling loveliness which had once charmed all hearts; her hair had long since become blanched by grief, and her eyes were almost sightless from continued weeping. She knelt and prayed for a few minutes in a low tone, then rose and calmly delivered herself to the executioner. Thus perished, in her thirty-seventh year, the wife of the greatest monarch in Europe, the daughter of the heroic Maria Theresa, a victim to the circumstances of birth and position. No fouler crime ever stained the annals of savage life, than the murder of this unfortunate queen, by a people calling themselves the most civilized nation in the world. Owing to the injudicious arrangements for the | mily, every variety of privation and indignity. exhibition of fireworks, a great number of people were thrown down and trodden to death, more than three hundred persons having been killed or wounded. In 1774 Louis XVI. ascended the throne; in 1778 the queen became, for the first time, a mother. During the first years of her residence in France, Marie Antoinette was the idol of the people. After the birth of her second son, when, according to usage, she went to church to return thanks, the populace wished to remove the horses from her carriage, and draw her through the streets; and when she alighted and walked, to gratify them, they flung themselves upon their knees, and rent the air with acclamations. Four years from this period, all was changed. The acts of kindness and benevolence which the queen had exhibited; her grace, beauty, and claims upon the nation as a woman and a foreigner, were all forgotten. Circumstances remote in their origin had brought about, in France, a state of feeling fast ripening to a fearful issue. The queen could no longer do with impunity what had been done by her predecessors. The extravagance and thoughtlessness of youth, and a neglect of the strict formality of court etiquette, injured her reputation. She became a mark for censure, and finally an object of hatred to the people, who accused her of the most improbable crimes. An extraordinary occurrence added fuel to the flame of calumny. The countess de la Motte, a clever but corrupt woman, by a vile intrigue in which she made the cardinal de Rohan her tool, purchased, in the queen's name, a magnificent diamond necklace, valued at an enormous sum. She imposed upon the cardinal by a feigned correspondence with the queen, and forged her signature to certain bills; obtained possession of the necklace, and sold it in England. The plot exploded. The queen, indignant at the cardinal, demanded a public investigation. The affair produced the greatest scandal throughout France, connecting as it did the name of the queen with such disgraceful proceedings; and though obviously the victim of an intrigue, she received as much censure as if she had been guilty. Accused of being an Austrian at heart, and an enemy to France, every evil in the state was now attributed to her, and the Parisians soon exhibited their hatred in acts of open violence. In May, 1789, the States-General met. In October the populace proceeded with violence to Versailles, broke into the castle, murdered several of the body-guard, and forced themselves into the queen's apartments. When questioned by the officers of justice as to what she had seen on that memorable day, she replied, "I have seen all, I have heard all, I have forgotten all." Marie Antoinette had four children. Marie Therese Charlotte, the companion of her parents in captivity, born 1778. In 1795 she was exchanged for the deputies whom Dumouriez had surrendered to Austria, and resided in Vienna till 1799, when she was married by Louis XVIII. to his nephew, oldest son of Charles X. Napoleon said of her that "she was the only man of her family." The dauphin, Louis, born in 1781, and died in 1789. Charles Louis, born in 1785; the unfortunate prince who shared his parents' imprisonment for a time, and died in 1795, a victim to the ill-treatment of the ferocious Simon; and a daughter who died in infancy. MARIA LOUISA LEOPOLDINE CAROLINE, ARCHDUCHESS of Austria, duchess of Parma, was the eldest daughter of Francis I., emperor of Austria, by his second marriage, with Maria Theresa, daughter of the king of Naples. She was born in 1791, and April 1st, 1810, married Napoleon. Her son was born March 20, 1811. When Napoleon left Paris to meet the allied army, he made her regent of the empire. On the 29th of March, 1814, she was obliged to leave Paris; Na She accompanied the king in his flight to Varennes, in 1791, and endured with him with unexampled fortitude and magnanimity the insults which now followed in quick succession. In April, 1792, she accompanied the king from the Tuilleries, where they had been for some time detained close prisoners, to the Legislative Assembly, where he was arraigned. Transferred to the Temple, she endured, with the members of the royal fa-poleon abdicated his authority April 11th, and |