of the royal pair is one in which the spirit of religion and that of the world come directly to issue. The latter sees in their career a course of fatuous absurdity, carried on in spite of every warning, and ending in ignominy and misfortune. The former recognizes the reward of an act of supposed duty shown forth in the removal of that which hindered the best happiness, and the merciful infliction of that chastisement which was necessary to purge away the dross of an evil life, and to refine the good gold of high principle and undaunted honesty.

If ever royal house received from the genius of poets a hope of immortality, the house of Este is surely that one. Dante, Tasso, and Ariosto have combined to preserve them from oblivion, and as long as these shall survive, so long shall the glories of that small dynasty be known to the world. Genius can do what power cannot, and the history of the little states of Greece and of medieval Italy are familiar to us as our own, while the vast empires of the East have been forgotten, vate quia carent sacro. Of this illustrious house was Mary Beatrice born. Her mother was a severe disciplinarian to both her children, a course of education blessed by the formation of a beautiful character; nor, while the correction of her moral nature was attended to, was her religion forgotten; at the convent of the Carmelites she was brought into connection with the conventual state, which so recommended itself to her ingenuous disposition that she desired much to take the veil. Such however was not to be her destiny; for Ann Hyde having died, James sighed for a second wife, and there being no heir male to the crown after him, it was highly expedient that he should form a second matrimonial connexion. After proposing to one of his brother's subjects, an honour which the lady most nobly refused, his old fellow-sailor Lord Peterborough, was sent abroad to pick him up a wife among the princesses of Europe. Four ladies were recommended to this zealous envoy, and though he nearly settled with a fifth, yet in the end, captivated by a picture of Mary of Modena, then about fifteen, he determined that she was the most suitable in every way. Lord Peterborough's adventures, as told by himself are very amusing, showing a nice honest unscrupulous old fellow, not minding to tell a story if need there be, or to say that he had done so; shrewd and sagacious, having to please everybody, James, Louis, Charles' ladies, the British Court, and carrying his point, spite of the English nation, the Pope, his nephew, the confessor, and last, not least, the young lady herself. Her vocation for a religious life was very strong, the confessor was evidently in the Pope's interest, the Pope feared the loss of the state of Ferrara by the aggrandizement of the D'Este family, yet the stout earl prevailed: on the 30th of September, 1673, the marriage was performed by proxy by an English Priest. The royal lady was accompanied to England by her mother. They were nobly entertained in France, through which they passed, by

Louis XIV., and were received by James at Dover, where the marriage ceremony was again celebrated by Bishop Crewe of Durham, according to the rites of the English Church. They reached London amid the acclamations of the spectators; but a Protestant party (as now, so then, violent and vulgar,) were prepared to do every thing to disturb the relations of the newly married couple. Mary did not at first like her husband, but on the departure of her mother her affection for him began and steadily increased. Indeed James, though unfaithful, was a kind husband; he was vain of his wife's beauty and of her jealousy, and though he gave her many a sore heart, yet he secured her affections. For four years they lived at the wicked court of Charles II. In the guidance of her conduct she obeyed her husband, and was looked upon as a model of purity and goodness; at last the prejudices against the Duke's religion were so fanned by the intrigues of the unprincipled Shaftesbury and Portsmouth, that the Duke and Duchess of York were compelled to take refuge first in Flanders, and eventually in Scotland. During this period she had several children, none of whom arrived at the age of maturity. The Duke of York's banishment from court, with some slight interruptions, continued till nearly the time of the death of Charles II., when the Duchess, being again about to add to her family, was summoned to London. They appear to have been popular among the Scots, which would seem to be confirmed by the enthusiastic loyalty which that nation displayed in behalf of their son and grandson. Meanwhile Mary had her sorrows her children were taken from her; the husband of her love was nearly drowned, and the opposition from her enemies vexed her. The convent-girl however had not forgotten where her consolation lay. Amid all the Scotch hospitality Lady Sunderland wrote to Lord Halifax: "The Duchess of York ... prays all day almost." Indeed, her character is one of the spots upon which the mind can rest with satisfaction in the midst of the enormous scoundrelisms of that wretched time, in which it is difficult to say whether the open profligacy of the one party, or the secret venality of the other, is the more offensive.

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There is, perhaps, no period in modern history in which so many stirring and remarkable events are crowded into the space of a few months, as the unfortunate reign of King James. The plots of years, the developement of those party feelings which the worldly wisdom of Charles had staved off, the precipitation of the foreign relations on the continent, the exhibition of principle which the varying circumstances of the times had hitherto kept in suspension, were all now brought to a crisis. Miss Strickland has done good service to the cause of popular history, in exposing more and more that guilty farce, the "glorious" revolution, of which, though the facts have been known for some time, yet they have existed in correspondence and state papers, and have not yet told upon the

mind of England. In a former paper ("Coniston Hall, or the Jacobites,") we spoke at some length on the subject, and we refer our readers for a corroboration of the view there taken to the work which we at present are reviewing. In the present instance it is not our intention to go into the political question, our object being not to justify the measures of King James, but to show forth the character of his saintly consort.

We pass briefly over the career of her royal life, and shall not pause at the details of her coronation. She seems, zealous though she was, to have been opposed to the king's wrong-headed plan of thrusting the Roman Catholic religion down the throats of his subjects: Father Petre she disliked. Owing to her influence the court became more decent than before: drunkenness, swearing, and duelling were discountenanced. But her household still was filled with those who destroyed the peace of mind of the queen and blanched her fair cheek. She had vexation too from the conduct of her brother, and sorrow from the death of her mother. At last it was announced that she was again likely to become a mother, and on Sunday, June 10th, the child was born. Miss Strickland very properly goes most minutely into the whole history, exposing completely the warming-pan lie, and showing that even before then it had been the abominable policy of the Protestant party to fix the stain of supposititious birth upon any child that should be born. The fact that it was a boy precipitated the matter, and in the midst of a thousand hypocrisies William set sail. We shall not follow Miss Strickland through her graphic account of the history of that stirring time; as a specimen of her style and writing we give the following interesting account of the queen's escape.

"The interest excited in France by the progress of this strange historic drama, inspired the celebrated count de Lauzun and his friend S. Victor, with the romantic determination of crossing the channel, to offer their services to the distressed king and queen of England, at this dark epoch of their fortunes, when they appeared abandoned by all the world. Lauzun was the husband of James's maternal cousin, mademoiselle de Montpensier, and had paid the penalty of ten years' imprisonment in the Bastile, for marrying a princess of the blood royal without the consent of Louis XIV. S. Victor was a gentleman of Avignon, perhaps the son of that brave lieutenant S. Victor, whose life king James had saved, when duke of York, by his personal valour, at the battle of Dunkirk, thirty years before. An idea, calculated to add no slight interest to the following pages.

"The services of these knights errant were accepted by James as frankly as they were offered. He determined to confide to them the perilous office of conveying his queen and infant son to France; and they engaged in the enterprize, in a spirit worthy of the age of chivalry. A contemporary narrative in the Archives au Royaume de France, evidently written by S. Victor, supplies many additional particulars con

nected with that eventful page of the personal history of Mary Beatrice and her son.

"On the 2nd of December,' says this gentleman, ‘a valet-de-chambre of the king, named Labadie, husband to the queen's nurse, called me by his majesty's order, and made me a sign that the king was in the cabinet of the queen's chamber. On entering, found him alone, and he did me the honour to say he had a secret to communicate to me. I asked, if any other persons had knowledge of it.' He replied, 'Yes, but I should be satisfied when I knew who they were.' He then named the queen, and monsieur the count de Lauzun. I bowed my head, in token of my entire submission to his orders. Then he said to me, 'I design to make the queen pass the sea next Tuesday, that day Turinie will be on guard; the prince of Wales will pass with her from Portsmouth. You must come here this evening, with count de Lauzun, to arrange the plan.' I obeyed implicitly, and at eleven o'clock returned with count Lauzun. I found the king alone. He proposed several expedients, and different modes of executing this design; but the plan I suggested alone coincided with the ideas of his majesty.' This plan was pretty nearly the same that was ultimately adopted. The king then told the queen that every thing was prepared, and she must hold herself in readiness. This important secret was communicated by Mary Beatrice to her confessor, and lady Strickland, and they only waited to receive an answer from lord Dartmouth to the king's repeated letters, touching the prince. It does not appear that James meant to trust his admiral with the secret, that the queen was to take shipping at the same time in the Mary yacht, which lay at Portsmouth, in readiness to receive the royal fugitives. The captain of the yacht was willing to undertake the service required; but, when lord Dover came to confer with Lord Dartmouth on the subject, they both agreed that it was a most improper, as well as impolitic step, to send the heir-apparent of the realm out of the kingdom, without the consent of parliament; and lord Dartmouth had the honesty to write an earnest remonstrance to the king, telling him how bad an effect it would have on his affairs:

"I most humbly hope,' says he, 'you will not exact it from me, nor longer entertain so much as a thought of doing that which will give your enemies an advantage, though never so falsely grounded, to distrust your son's just right, which you have asserted and manifested to the world, in the matter of his being your real son, and born of the queen, by the testimonies of so many apparent witnesses. Pardon, therefore, sir, if on my bended knees I beg of you to apply yourself to other counsels, for the doing this looks like nothing less than despair, to the degree of not only giving your enemies encouragement, but distrust of your friends and people, who, I do not despair, will yet stand by you in the defence and right of your lawful successor.'

"Dartmouth goes on, after using other weighty reasons to dissuade the king from this ill-judged step, to assure him that nothing less than the loss of his crown, and the hazard of his majesty's personal safety, and that of the queen, could result from it, and begs him to give orders for the prince's immediate return, lest the troops of the prince of Orange should be interposed between London and Portsmouth. This was touching the right chord; James, though unconvinced by the sound sense of

lord Dartmouth's reasoning, became tremblingly anxious for the safety of his boy. Lord Dartmouth's letter, dated December 3, was received on Monday the 4th. James then changed his arrangements, but not his plans. He despatched couriers to Portsmouth on the Wednesday, with orders for lord and lady Powis to bring the little prince back to Whitehall. They started with their precious charge, at five o'clock on a dark wintry morning; missed the two Catholic regiments, under the command of colonel Clifford, that were appointed to meet and escort his royal highness on the road, and narrowly escaped an ambush of one hundred horse, sent by the prince of Orange to intercept them as they passed through a part of the New Forest, by taking another road, and reached Guildford safely on the Friday night.

"The historian of the queen's escape was sent by the king, with three coaches, and a detachment of the guards and dragoons, to meet the prince at Guildford; he brought him to London by Kingston, and arrived at Whitehall at three o'clock on the Saturday morning. It was S. Victor,' says Madame de Sevigné, who took the little prince in his cloak, when it was said he was at Portsmouth.' He had previously completed all the arrangements for the queen's passage to France, and hired two yachts at Gravesend-one in the name of an Italian lady, who was about to return to her own country, the other in that of count Lauzun. The following day, December 9th, was appointed for the departure of the queen and the prince; it was a Sunday, but no Sabbath stillness hallowed it in the turbulent metropolis. The morning was ushered in with tumults-burning of catholic chapels and houses; tidings of evil import arrived from all parts of the kingdom. When the evening approached, the queen implored her husband to permit her to remain and share his perils; he replied, that it was his intention to follow her in four and twenty hours, and that it was necessary, for the sake of their child, that she should precede him.' To avoid suspicion, their majesties retired to bed as usual, at ten o'clock. About an hour after, they rose, and the queen commenced her preparations for her sorrowful journey. About midnight, S. Victor, dressed in the coarse habit of a seaman, and armed, ascended by a secret staircase to the apartment of the king, bringing with him some part of the disguise which he had caused to be prepared for the queen, and told the king all was ready for their majesty's departure. I then,' pursues he, retired into another room, where the count de Lauzun and I waited till the queen was ready. Her majesty had, meantime, confided her secret to lady Strickland, the lady of the bed-chamber, who was in waiting that night. As soon as the queen was attired we entered the chamber. The count de Lauzun and I had secured some of the jewels on our persons, in case of accidents, although their majesties were at first opposed to it; but their generous hearts were only occupied in cares for the safety and comfort of their royal infant. At two o'clock, we descended by another stair, answering to that from the king's cabinet, leading to the apartment of madame Labadie, where the prince had been carried secretly some time before. There all the persons assembled who were to attend on the queen and the prince, namely, the count de Lauzun, the two nurses, and myself.'

"The king, turning to Lauzun, said, with deep emotion, I confide my queen and son to your care; all must be hazarded to

convey

them