Maria Louisa went to meet her father at Rambouillet, who would not allow her to follow her husband, but sent her, with her son, to Schönbrunn. When Napoleon returned from Elba, he wrote to his wife to join him, but his letters remained unanswered. In 1816 she entered upon the administration of the duchies of Parma, Piacienza, and Guastalla, secured to her by the treaty of Fontainebleau. While there she privately married her master of the horse, Colonel Neipperg, by whom she had several children. She was apparently amiable, but weak, self-indulgent, and surrounded by artful advisers, who kept her in the thraldom of sensuous pleasures till she lost the moral dignity of woman. What signified her royal blood and high station! She lived unhonoured, and died unwept.

MARINA, DONA,

CELEBRATED for her faithfulness to the Spaniards, and for the assistance which she afforded them in the conquest of Mexico, was born at Painalla, in the province of Coatzacualco, on the south-eastern borders of the Mexican empire. Her father, a rich and powerful Cacique, died when she was very young. Her mother married again; and, wishing to give her daughter's inheritance to her son by the second marriage, she cruelly sold | her to some travelling merchants, and announcing her death, performed a mock-funeral to deceive those around her. These merchants sold the Indian maiden to the Cacique of Tabasco; and when the Tabascans surrendered to Cortés, she was one of twenty female slaves who were sent to him as propitiatory offerings. Speaking two of the Mexican dialects, Marina was a valuable acquisition to Cortés as interpreter, which value increased tenfold, when with remarkable rapidity she acquired the Spanish language. Cortés knew how to value her services; he made her his secretary, and, finally won by her charms, his mistress. She had

a son by him, Don Martin Cortés, commendador of the military order of St. James, who afterwards rose to high consideration; but finally falling under suspicion of treasonable practices against the government, was, in 1568, shamefully subjected to the torture in the very capital which his father had acquired for the Castilian crown!

Prescott, to whose admirable work, "The Conquest of Mexico," we are chiefly indebted for this memoir, describes Marina as follows: "She is said to have possessed uncommon personal attractions; and her open, expressive features, indicated her generous temper. She always remained faithful to the countrymen of her adoption; and her knowledge of the language and customs of the Mexicans, and often of their designs, enabled her to extricate the Spaniards, more than once, from the most embarrassing and perilous situations. She had her errors, as we have seen; but they should be rather charged to the defects of her early education, and to the evil influence of him to whom, in the darkness of her spirit, she looked with simple confidence for the light to guide her. All agree that she was full of excellent qualities; and the important services which she rendered

the Spaniards have made her memory deservedly dear to them; while the name of Malinche - the name by which she is still known in Mexico-was pronounced with kindness by the conquered races, with whose misfortunes she showed an invariable sympathy."

Cortés finally gave Marina away in marriage to a Spanish knight, Don Juan Xamarillo. She had estates assigned her, where she probably passed the remainder of her life. Marina is represented as having met and recognised her mother after a long lapse of time, when passing through her native province. Her mother was greatly terrified, fearing that Cortés would severely punish her; but Marina embraced her, and allayed her fears, saying, "that she was sure she knew not what she did when she sold her to the traders, and that she forgave her." She gave her mother all the jewels and ornaments about her person, and assured her of her happiness since she had adopted the Christian faith.

MARINELLI, LUCREZIA,

OF Venice, was born in 1571. Her talents were surprisingly versatile. She was learned in church history, understood and practised the art of sculpture, was skilled in music, and besides left many literary productions, lives of several saints, a treatise entitled "The Excellence of Women and the Defects of Men;" an epic poem; several epistles to the duchess d'Este; and many other pieces of poetry, both sacred and profane. She died in 1653.

MARINELLA, LUCRETIA,

A VENETIAN lady, who lived in the seventeenth century, in 1601, published a book at Venice with this title "La nobilita é la eccellenza della donne, con difetti é marcamenti degli uomini ;" in which she attempted to prove the superiority of women to men. Marinella published some other works; among these, one called "La Colomba Saera;" and "The Life of the Holy Virgin, and that of St. Francis."

MARLBOROUGH, SARAH, DUCHESS OF,

WAS the daughter of Mr. Jennings, a country gentleman of respectable lineage and good estate. She was born on the 26th of May, 1660, at Holywell, a suburb of St. Albans. Her elder sister, Frances, afterwards duchess of Tyrconnel, was maid of honour to the duchess of York; and Sarah, when quite a child, was introduced at court, and became the playfellow of the princess Anne, who was several years younger than herself. Sarah succeeded her sister as maid of honour to the duchess of York; which, however, did not prevent her having constant intercourse with the princess, who lived under the same roof with her father, and who at that early age showed the greatest preference for her.

In 1677, Sarah Jennings married, clandestinely, the handsome colonel Churchill, favourite gentleman of the duke of York. Both parties being poor, it was an imprudent match; but the duchess of York, whom they made the confidant of their

attachment, stood their friend, and offered her | powerful assistance. She gave her attendant a handsome donation, and appointed her to a place of trust about her person. The young couple followed the fortunes of the duke of York for some years, while he was a sort of honourable exile from the court; but when the establishment of the princess Anne was formed, she being now

married, Mrs. Churchill, secretly mistrusting the durability of the fortunes of her early benefactress, expressed an ardent wish to become one of the ladies of the princess Anne, who requested her father's permission to that effect, and received his consent. The early regard evinced by the princess Anne for Mrs. Churchill, soon ripened into a romantic attachment; she lost sight of the difference in their rank, and treated her as an equal, desiring a like return. When apart, they corresponded constantly under the names, chosen by the princess, of Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman.

No two persons could be less alike than the princess and Sarah Churchill; the former was quiet, somewhat phlegmatic, easy and gentle, extremely well bred, fond of ceremony, and averse to mental exertion; the latter, resolute, bold, inclined to violence, prompt, unwearied and haughty. Swift, who was, however, her bitter enemy, describes her as the victim of "three furies which reigned in her breast, sordid avarice, disdainful pride, and ungovernable rage." The duchess of Marlborough's strongest characteristic appears to have been a most powerful will. Much is said of the ascendancy which a strong mind acquires over a weak one; but in many instances where this is thought to be the case, the influence arises from strength of will, and not from mental superiority. In the present instance, this was not altogether so; for the duchess of Marlborough was undoubtedly greatly superior to queen Anne in mind, but if her sense and discretion had been properly exercised, in controlling that indomitable will, which foamed and raged at everything which obstructed her path or interfered with her opinions, her influence might have been as lasting as it was once powerful.

On the accession of James II., Churchill was created a baron; but, attaching himself to the Protestant cause, when the prince of Orange landed, he deserted his old master and joined the prince; lady Churchill, meanwhile, aiding the princess Anne in her flight and abandonment of the king her father. On the accession of William and Mary, in 1692, to the English throne, Churchill was rewarded for his zeal by the earldom of Marlborough, and the appointment of commander-inchief of the English army in the Low Country. Afterwards, falling into disgrace with the king and queen, lord and lady Marlborough were dismissed the court. Princess Anne espoused the cause of her favourite, and retired also; but, upon the death of queen Mary, they were restored to favour. The accession of Anne to the throne on the death of William, placed lady Marlborough in the position which her ambitious spirit coveted; she knew her own value and that of her gallant husband. She knew that Anne not only loved but feared her; that she would require her aid, and have recourse to her on all occasions of difficulty; and she felt equal to every emergency. A perusal of the letters of the queen to lady Marlborough at this period, is sufficient evidence of the subjection in which she (the queen) was held by her imperious favourite; the humility which they express are unworthy of her as a sovereign and as a woman. That Anne was already beginning to writhe under this intolerable yoke, there can be no doubt. From the commencement of her reign, a difference in politics between herself and her favourite was manifested. Lady Marlborough had a strong leaning to the whig side, while the queen was always attached to the tory party; and dissensions soon arose as to the ministers who were to surround the throne. Since the advancement of lord Marlborough, his lady had lost much of the caressing devotion which she had hitherto manifested for the queen; and exhibited to her some of that overbearing arrogance with which she treated the rest of her contemporaries. It is not astonishing that the queen, under these circumstances, should have sought for sympathy in one near her person who had suffered from the same overbearing temper. Abigail Hill, a poor relation of lady Marlborough's, whom, she had placed about the queen as bed-chamber woman, was the prudent and careful recipient of her mistress's vexations, and gradually acquired such influence with her as eventually to supersede her powerful relative as favourite. Much has been said of the ingratitude of Mrs. Masham to her early benefactress. As there is no evidence that she had recourse to improper or dishonourable means to ingratiate herself with the queen, this charge cannot be substantiated. The queen's favour was a voluntary gift. Lady Marlborough alienated her mistress by her own arbitrary temper; and the queen only exercised the privilege which every gentlewoman should possess, of selecting her own friends and servants. Meanwhile, the brilliant successes of lord Marlborough obliged the queen to suppress her estranged feelings towards his wife, and bound her more closely to the

No person in Yarmouth took thought for these poor, miserable prisoners; no human eye looked with pity on their dreadful condition; and had their reformation been proposed, it would, no doubt, have been scouted as an impossibility.

In August, 1819, a woman was committed to the jail for a most unnatural crime. She was a mother who had "forgotten her sucking child." She had not had compassion upon the son of her womb," but had cruelly beaten and ill-used it. The consideration of her offence was calculated to produce a great effect upon a female mind; and there was one person in the neighbourhood of Yarmouth who was deeply moved by it. Sarah Martin was a little woman of gentle, quiet manners, possessing no beauty of person, nor, as it seemed, any peculiar endowment of mind. She was then just eight-and-twenty years of age, and had, for thirteen years past, earned her livelihood by going out to the houses of various families in the town as a day-labourer in her business of dress-making. Her residence was at Caister, a village three miles from Yarmouth, where she lived with an aged grandmother, and whence she walked to Yarmouth and back again in the prosecution of her daily toil. This poor girl had long mourned over the condition of the inmates of the jail. Even as long back as in 1810, "whilst frequently passing the jail," she says, "I felt a strong desire to obtain admission to the prisoners to read the Scriptures to them; for I thought much of their condition, and of their sin before God; how they were shut out from society, whose rights they had violated, and how destitute they were of the scriptural instruction which alone could meet their unhappy circumstances." The case of the unnatural mother stimulated her to make the attempt, but "I did not," she says, "make known my purpose of seeking admission to the jail until the object was attained, even to my beloved grandmother; so sensitive was my fear lest any obstacle should thereby arise in my way, and the project seem a visionary one. God led me, and I consulted none but Him." She ascertained the culprit's name, and went to the jail. She passed into the dark porch which overhung the entrance, fit emblem of the state of things within; and no doubt with bounding heart, and in a timid modest form of application, uttered with that clear and gentle voice, the sweet tones of which are yet well remembered, solicited permission to see the cruel parent. There was some difficulty-there is always "a lion in the way" of doing good-and she was not at first permitted to

The manner of her reception in the jail is told by herself with admirable simplicity. The unnatural mother stood before her. She was surprised at the sight of a stranger." "When I told her," says Sarah Martin, "the motive of my visit, her guilt, her need of God's mercy, she burst into tears, and thanked me!"

Her reception at once proved the necessity for such a missionary, and her own personal fitness for the task; and her visit was repeated again and again, during such short intervals of leisure as she could spare from her daily labours. At first she contented herself with merely reading to the prisoners; but familiarity with their wants and with her own powers soon enlarged the sphere of her tuition, and she began to instruct them in reading and writing. This extension of her labour interfered with her ordinary occupations. It became necessary to sacrifice a portion of her time, and consequently of her means, to these new duties. She did not hesitate. "I thought it right," she says, "to give up a day in the week from dress-making, to serve the prisoners. This regularly given, with many an additional one, was not felt as a pecuniary loss, but was ever followed with abundant satisfaction, for the blessing of God was upon me."

In the year 1826, Sarah Martin's grandmother died, and she came into possession of an annual income of ten or twelve pounds, derived from the investment of "between two and three hundred pounds." She then removed from Caister to Yarmouth, where she occupied two rooms in a house situated in a row in an obscure part of the town; and, from that time, devoted herself with increased energy to her philanthropic labours. A benevolent lady, resident in Yarmouth, had for some years, with a view to securing her a little rest for her health's sake,' given her one day in a week, by compensating her for that day in the same way as if she had been engaged in dressmaking. With that assistance, and with a few quarterly subscriptions, "chiefly 2s. 6d. each, for bibles, testaments, tracts, and other books for distribution," she went on devoting every available moment of her life to her great purpose. But dressmaking, like other professions, is a jealous mistress; customers fell off, and, eventually, almost entirely disappeared. A question of anxious moment now presented itself, the determination of which is one of the most characteristic and memorable incidents of her life. Was she to pursue her benevolent labours, even although they led to utter poverty? Her little income was not more than enough to pay her lodging, and the expenses consequent upon the exercise of her charitable functions: and was actual destitution of ordinary necessaries to be submitted to? She never doubted; but her reasoning upon the subject presents so clear an illustration of the exalted character of her thoughts and purposes, and ex