lection of Herr Weyer, in which the painter has represented the members of his own family; the other is the Crucifixion of St. Peter, forming the altar-piece of the church dedicated to that apostle. The latter celebrated picture was one of the last, if not the very last, executed by the renowned maestro. After his death it was purchased by an agent of Herr von Jabach, for the sum of 1200 Brabantine florins, and brought to Cologne. Of its merits there are several conflicting opinions; but this is not the place to enter into a discussion of them. It was carried off to Paris by the French at an early period of the Revolution, when at miserable copy supplied its place in Cologne. After remaining in Paris nearly twenty years, it was restored to its original position through the active patriotism (or the vandalism, according to M. Denon, then conservateur of the museum in Paris) of a distinguished citizen of Cologne, Herr von Groote, at that time an officer in the allied army. At present both copy and original are exposed to view-the former at all times, the latter only on great festivals, and then the purses of the curious are especially opened for the purpose. From the year 1635 Rubens suffered much from the gout, which, becoming gradually worse, compelled him to renounce the service of the state, and the execution of many artistical works he had projected, and which finally put an end to his brilliant and prosperous career. Let us now turn to the other celebrated and less fortunate inhabitant of Jabach House. Strange, indeed, is the contrast that the lives of these two personages form! The one going forth into the world from the house of his birth to gain riches, honors, and a renown more lasting and brilliant than all the regal pomp and pride of the days of her prosperity could gain for her with whose name he is here associated; the other an unwilling exile, both from the land of her birth and that of her adoption, separated from her friends, quitting regal power and the splendors of a court, to die in the same house, surrounded by strangers, amid the deprivations of an almost abject poverty! The decrees of an all-wise Providence appear hard sometimes to short-sighted mortals; and yet, if our sympathy with the present sufferings of the unfortunate did not lead us to cast a veil of oblivion over the errors of the past, we should but too often confess that the sufferers from adverse fortune are in reality but the victims of their own imprudence and misconduct. Our space does not allow us to follow the occurrences of Marie de Medicis' eventful and dramatic life, nor to trace the workings of an ambition too great for the strength of her mind, nor to enumerate her many imprudent and violent actions; we shall, therefore, confine ourselves to the little that is known of her last days as passed in Jabach House. Banished from France by the influence and intrigues of Richelieu, Marie de Medicis alternately took refuge in England, Belgium and Germany. In London, where she remained three years, she received from Charles I. the munificent sum of a hundred pounds a day, for the maintenance of her rank--a liberality but ill repaid by the French court some time afterwards. Henriette, daughter of Henri IV., and widow of Charles, was suffered to linger in poverty in an attic of the Louvre; and, while waiting for her miserable pittance, was compelled, in the winter, to lie in bed to supply the place of fuel which she was unable to purchase. It is a strange auomaly in the human character-but no less strange than true that men are always most vindictive towards those whom they have most deeply wronged. The vengeance of Richelieu, not satisfied with the banishment of its victim from France, followed her into exile; and Charles I., who resisted Cromwell with such tenacity, and Philip, King of Spain, found themselves too weak to oppose the demands of the allpowerful minister; accordingly they withdrew from the mother of their respective queens the pecuniary aid they had hitherto afforded her. In Antwerp, it was the house of Rubens that afforded a refuge to the persecuted queen; and his reception of her was such as might be expected from a man of so noble and generous a mind. Marie de Medicis arrived at Cologne on the 28th February, 1642; and though Rubens had been dead nearly two years, it was, doubtless, in consequence of his recommendation that she took up her abode in the house that had once afforded his own family a safe refuge. The passions which had led herself and others into misfortune had been subdued by time and adversity, and she lived at Cologne in the most retired seclusion, occupied only with the remembrance of her past glory, and with the contemplation of a future life. But, alas! these preparations were clouded and defiled with an unscriptural superstition. Her only intercourse with strangers was with the nuns of a neighboring convent, whom she visited with the express permission of the Pope, and with | cardinal, who ascended the papal throne whom she passed much of her time. To this convent of the "Holy Virgin Mary," in the Schnurgasse, she made during her life, and bequeathed in her testament, many expensive presents, among which was an image of the Virgin that she had had made in Brabant, and to which her erroneous devotions had constantly been paid in the chapel of Jabach House. This image was soon endowed by the superstitious with supernatural powers, and was supposed to be instrumental in bringing about the celebrated Peace of Westphalia, and became in consequence so celebrated, that, from far and near, pilgrims came to pay their devotions to it! It was called the image of Mercy; but the lower classes, ever prone to connect the spiritual (if we may use such a term in speaking of a gross superstition) with some outward and visible quality, called it the Black Mother of God in the Schnurgasse, the wood of which it was made having become black from age. In the registers of the council at Cologne, we find several entries referring to the residence of Marie de Medicis in that town: "April 9th, 1642. At the request of the queen dowager, the honorable council grants that for a few days two or three soldiers may mount guard before her majesty's house. The commissioners of war are ordered to leave the chains across the street locked till ten o'clock in the forenoon." "April 21st. All the neighbors having complained of the inconvenience arising from the locking of the chains, Drs. Lennep and Cusemann are commissioned to communicate with the chamberlain of the queen dowager of France, to see what can be done for the removal of the cause of annoyance." "April 25th. The post for the chain placed before the house of Widow Kollini shall be taken away on the removal of the queen dowager: the neighbors to be exhorted to patience by Doctors Lennep and Cusemann." under the name of Alexander VII., but who was then resident nuncio at Cologne, and ambassador of the Pope to assist in bringing about the peace of Westphalia. He was also present, the day before her death, at the drawing up of her will and testament, which is still preserved in the Royal Library of Paris. During the short period of her residence in Cologne, she won the esteem and respect of the citizens, and died deeply lamented by them, not only on account of her singular and heavy misfortunes, but for her excellent personal qualities. Thus perished," says Miss Pardoe, in her history of this unhappy queen, "in a squalid chamber, between four bare walls— her utter destitution having, as we have already stated, driven her to the frightful alternative of denuding the very apartment which was destined to witness her death-agony of every inflammable article it contained, in order by such means to prepare the scanty meal that she could still commandand on a wretched bed which one of her own lacqueys would, in her period of power, have disdained to occupy childless, or worse than childless, homeless, hopeless, and heartwrung-the haughty daughter of the Medici, the brilliant regent of France, the patroness of art, the dispenser of honors, and the mother of a long line of princes." - We know not what authority the gifted historian may have for those eloquent words, nor whether they are to be taken in a literal sense, or if a portion of the truth has been sacrificed for dramatic effect; but we scarcely know how to reconcile such abject poverty with many circumstances attendant upon her residence in Jabach House. The presents she made to the above-mentioned convent alone, to say nothing of those she gave to the town and to her own attendants, were of such value as to have rendered unnecessary the resorting to her furniture for a supply of fuel; though it may be urged, that as these presents were mostly articles used in the service of the Roman Catholic Church, she was influenced by superstitious motives, and might consider it a meritorious action to give away, as she imagined, for the benefit of the soul, that which would have amply supplied the necessities of the body. Nor can we suppose that the authorities of the town, who paid her such marked attention, or the wealthy and influential nuncio, who had frequent intercourse with her, would suffer her to remain in such utter destitution; and surely a chamberlain was superfluous in a household so reduced as not to be able to supply fuel for the preparation of a simple meal. We do not undertake, however, to dispute the fact, and merely state that no mention is made of it in any of the documents to which we have had access in Cologne. Be it as it may, that she was reduced to comparative destitution is an indisputed fact; and this is quite sufficient to enlist our sympathies on behalf of the royal sufferer. Marie de Medicis was buried in the cathedral of Cologne, between the chapel of the three kings and the high altar; but, on the 9th of February following, her body was removed, and taken to France by an embassy that journeyed to Cologne for the express purpose. Her heart alone remained in its original burial place. A plate of copper covered the tomb, but it was torn up at the time of the French occupation of the town; and at present the copper nails which fastened it alone remain to point out the resting-place of a heart that was only free from suffering when it ceased to beat. Her remains, together with those of her husband, Henry IV., and the hearts of Louis XIII. and XIV., having been rescued from the revolutionary violation of the royal tombs, were again deposited, in 1824, in the vaults of the church at St. Denis, near Paris. Her persecutors soon followed the unfortunate queen to the grave. Richelieu died in the same year, and her son, Louis XIII., in the following year, after having thanked the honorable council of Cologne, and presented them with a curiously-wrought image of the Virgin as a token of his gratitude for their kind reception of a mother whom he himself had suffered to die in a foreign country, amidst all the horrors of penury and neglect. From Eliza Cook's Journal. SCRAPS FROM THE PEERAGE. Ir is not uncommon to hear people speak of the House of Lords as a body of men almost wholly unconnected with the commercial and professional interests of the kingdom. But those who do so forget the very important fact that, with the exception of a few families of Norman extraction, who came over with the Conqueror, such as the Vernons, the Howards, the Talbots, Sackvilles, Cliffords, and Berkeleys, a very large proportion of the founders of existing peerages rose from the ranks of common every-day life, as merchants and respectable tradesmen. And so far from regarding this fact as a matter of disgrace, we are happy to state from our own expe rience, that many of the present possessors of the peerages are proud of the honorable achievements of their ancestors. To bring out this point, I mean to lay before my readers some "Scraps from the Peerage," which, doubtless, will be found interesting to many of them. For example, the Earl of Cornwallis is lineally descended from Thomas Cornwallis, formerly a merchant in Cheapside, and Sheriff of London in 1378. The Earl of Coventry is in direct descent from John Coventry, or de Coventry, mercer, and Lord Mayor of London in the year 1425, (and one of the executors of the celebrated Whittington.) The ancestor of the Earls of Essex was Sir William Capel, Lord Mayor of London in 1503; the first founder of the family of the Earls of Craven was a merchant tailor, and Lord Mayor of London in the reign of Elizabeth. The noble house of Wentworth, Marquis of Rockingham and Earl Fitz-William, was a certain Samuel Wentworth, (also called FitzWilliam as being a natural son,) who was an Alderman of London and Sheriff in 1506. He was one of the retainers of the unfortunate Cardinal Wolsey, and was knighted by Henry VIII. for his attachment to that prelate when he was in misfortune. He built the greater part of the Church of St. Andrew Undershaft in the City. Lawrence de Bouvines was a Flemish tradesman, who, having married the only daughter of a silk mercer at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, came to London in the reign of Elizabeth, and settling down as a merchant in Thames street, laid the foundations of the noble house of Radnor. The present Earl of Warwick is lineally descended, | Petre from Sir William Petre, in the reign of not from the great "kingmaker" of that name Queen Elizabeth. Lord Ward's ancestor was in the reign of Edward IV., but from a cer- one William Ward, who made a large fortune tain humble William Greville, a citizen of as a goldsmith in London, and was jeweller London, and "flower of the woolstaplers," to Henrietta, the Queen Consort of Charles I. in the time of James I., who was himself the Sir Rowland Hill, who was Lord Mayor in grandson of Richard Rich, of the city of Lon- the reign of Edward VI., was the ancestor of don, who executed the office of Sheriff of the families of Lord Berwick and Lord Hill, that city in 1441. The Earl of Dartmouth and of "all the Hills of Shropshire." And acknowledges as the founder of his family a perhaps still more wonderful than all, the certain Thomas Legge, who was Sheriff of family of Osborne, Duke of Leeds and MarLondon in the eighteenth, and Lord Mayor in quis of Carmarthen, trace up their pedigree the twenty-first and twenty-eighth years of to one Edward Osborne, who was apprenticed the reign of Edward III. The Earl of to Sir William Hewitt, an alderman and pinCraven, in a like manner, looks up to Sir Wil- maker, living on old London Bridge, in the liam Craven, Knight and Lord Mayor of Lon- days of Elizabeth, and whose only daughter don in 1611. The grandfather of the first he gained in marriage by a romantic advenLord Leigh, of Stoneleigh, was brought up as ture, having saved her life by jumping into an apprentice under the Rowland Hill whom the Thames after her. Thomas Osborne, the we mention below, and by marrying his niece, first Duke of Leeds, it is said, showed his came in for a great portion of his estate, and strong good sense, by being more proud of finally became Lord Mayor of London in the the circumstance of his ancestor having acfirst year of Elizabeth's reign. William quired wealth and station by his honesty and Paget, from whom the Marquis of Anglesey intrepid spirit than he was of any of the subderives his blood, was the son of a plain ser- sequent services of his family during the civil jeant-at-mace, in the city of London. Thomas wars; and on one occasion he related to Coventry, the grandson of the John Coventry King Charles II. the whole story of Sir Wilmentioned above, was a member of the Inner liam's daughter and the brave apprentice, Temple, and eventually rose in the law till with an air of conscious pride which did he became Keeper of the Great Seal under honor to his feelings. Two more recent inCharles I. One Thomas Bennett, a mercer, stances of the same kind have occurred in our who served the office of Sheriff of London own day, in the elevation of Mr. Alexander in 1594, and was Lord Mayor in 1603, laid Baring, formerly head of the great city house the foundations of the family of the Earls of Baring, Brothers, to the peerage, in 1835, of Tankerville, who are lineally descended by the title of Lord Ashburton; and again from him. The ancestor of the Earls of Pom- in the still more recent promotion of Mr. fret was Richard Fermor, or Fermour, who Samuel Jones Loyd, the wealthy banker of having amassed a splendid fortune as a citi Lothbury, to the dignity of Lord Overzen in business at Calais, came to England, stone. suffered attaint under Henry VIII., and did not recover his property till the fourth year of Edward VI.'s reign. The Earl of Darnley owes the first elevation of his family to John Bligh, a London citizen, who was employed as agent to the speculations in the Irish estates forfeited in the rebellion of 1641. "Plain John" Cowper, an alderman of Bridge Ward, and Sheriff in 1551, was the ancestor of the Earls Cowper, of Panshanger. The Earl of Romney, too, is descended from another alderman of London, one Thomas Marsham, a jeweller in Threadneedle street, who died in 1624. Lord Dacres' ancestor, Sir Robert Dacres, was banker to Charles I., and although he lost £80,000 through the misfortunes of that monarch, he left a princely fortune to his descendants. Lord Dormer, too, is descended from Sir Michael Dormer, Lord Mayor of London in 1541, and Lord As to the legal profession, it is wonderful to observe how many peerages it has been rewarded with. To this beginning the Earldoms of Aylesford, Mansfield, Ellenborough, Guildford, Hardwicke, Shaftesbury, Cardigan, Clarendon, Bridgewater, (now extinct,) Ellesmere, Rosslyn, besides other inferior peerages, such as those of Lords Tenterden, Abinger, Wynford, Thurlow, Eldon, Cottenham, and Cowper, owe their ennoblement. The first Lord Somers was the son of a plain attorney of the city of Worcester, and gained his title from William III. by defending the nonjuring bishops under James II., and by expounding the measures of that unfortunate monarch as virtually amounting to an abdication, at a conference between the two Houses of Parliament. The Earl of Winchelsea and Nottingham confesses that he owes the latter title partly to the abilities of Christopher Hatton, who began life as a humble student of law, at one of the Inns of Court, and was eventually made Lord Chancellor, and created Viscount Hatton by Queen Elizabeth, and partly to Heneage Finch, Recorder of London, who married Elizabeth, daughter of a London merchant, named Daniel Harvey. And to come to our days, some of the brightest ornaments of the peerage are men who, like Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Brougham, Lord Denman, Lord Langdale, Lord Truro, Lord Cranworth, Lord Campbell, and Lord St. Leonard's, have started life among the middle ranks of society, but have risen to the highest honors in the land by abilities and industry of which not only they themselves but the nation at large may well be proud. The father of Lord Lyndhurst was a portrait painter, who came and settled in this country from America. The father of Lord Brougham was a plain country gentleman in Cumberland. The late Lord Langdale began life as a surgeon, and went to the bar when he was of middle age. Lord Truro started as an attorney. "Plain John Campbell," in spite of having won the peerage for his wife, and another for himself, was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman at Cupar, in Fifeshire; and so poor was he as a young man, that some time after he was called to the bar, he used to walk from county town to county town when on circuit, because he could not afford the luxury of posting. The father of the present Lord St. Leonard's (better known as Sir Edward Sugden) is well remembered as a tradesman in Oxford street or Holborn, (we forget which,) and saddlemaker to his Majesty George III. From the Leisure Hour. THREE VISITS TO THE HOTEL DES INVALIDES, 1705, 1806, 1840. FROM THE FRENCH. On the 9th of May, 1705, the soldiers of the Hôtel des Invalides were ranged in line in the great Court of Honor. It was touching to see two thousand brave fellows, all more or less mutilated in war, pressing round the banners which they had won in many a bloody fight. Amongst these victims of war might be seen soldiers of all ages. Some had fought at Fribourg or Rocroy; others at the passage of the Rhine, or the taking of Mäestricht; a few of the oldest had assisted in the capture of La Rochelle, under Cardinal Richelieu, while one or two could even remember the battle of Mariendal under Turenne. But all alike appeared happy and pleased, waiting for the coming of Louis XIV., who had announced his intention of visiting for the first time these, as he called them, "glorious relics of his battalions." At length, surrounded by a magnificent cortège of guards and nobles, the royal carriage approached; and, with that delicate courtesy so well understood by the king, the troops in attendance were ordered to sheathe their swords and fall back, as he entered the gateway. "M. de Breteuil," said the monarch to the captain of his guard, "the king of France has no need of an escort when he finds himself in the midst of his brave veterans." Followed by the Dauphin, the Marquis de Louvais, and other distinguished personages, Louis carefully inspected the invalids, pausing now and then to address a few kind words to those whom he recognized. One very young lad chanced to attract the king's attention. His face was very pale, and he seemed to have received a severe wound in the neck. "What is your name?" asked Louis. Maurice, Sire." "In what battle were you wounded?" "At Blenheim, Sire." At that word the brow of Louis darkened. "Under what marshal did you serve?" "Sire, under Monseigneur de Tallard." "Messieurs de Tallard and de 'Marsein," said the monarch, turning to Louvais, reckon a sufficient number of glorious days to efface the memory of that one. Even the sun 66 can |