she was always a staid and sober personage." "Well, she is changed, nevertheless, my good sir; she has got rid of any thing like steadiness; she has grown fanatic and fractious, and, in one word, sentimental. Whatever she does is sure to be tinged with sentimentality. She is the plague of my life, too! But if you want to know who really gets on well, it is Terpsichore; she composes operas as fast as she can, and dresses like a lady of fashion."

in a similar manner, and the conversation runs by turns on all the different sorts of literary composition of the sentimental school, which is severely and deservedly castigated. But we have reached or, perhaps, even exceeded, the limits of the space granted us this month; we leave the Dutch Muses in their graceless state till our next paper, when we shall endeavor to trace their revival under Feith and Bilderdijk, and their fortunes down

THAT the Duke of Orleans, for the time being, was always a pretender to the throne, and the enemy of its occupant, appears ever to have been considered an incontrovertible fact. It is one that can hardly be disputed; and the antagonism between Orleans and the sceptre commenced with the first little Prince on the roll of these royal Dukes.

The young gentleman in question was the second son of Philip VI. (de Valois). He was born at Vincennes, in 1336; and the good city whose name was borrowed, in order to furnish him with a ducal title, fell, or rose, into a state of delightful enthusiasm at the honor. It was to this Prince that Humbert, Dauphin of Vienne, made gift of his territory; but the father of Philip of Orleans compelled him to resign gift and title, which were transferred to his elder brother John. From that period the heir to the French throne was called "the Dauphin ;" and it is historically clear that the Dukes of Orleans not only desired to recover the title, but the inheritance. The career of the first Duke, Philip, was not very long, nor yet particularly brilliant. He was a good soldier and a sorry Christian. At Poictiers, when scarcely twenty years of

age, he led six-and-thirty banners and a couple of hundred pennons into the field. When he had brought his followers within sight of the English ranks, he remarked, "Now, Sirs, you talked right valiantly at your hearths of how you would eat these pestilent English knaves, if you could but get your hands upon their throats. There they are before you! Charge! and may St. Denis. give you power both to eat and to digest!" But the broad-cloth arrows and spears of England were too much for even the eager followers of Orleans. Few of them got back to the hearths around which they had so lately boasted.

Duke Philip led a gay life in England during the period he remained here as hostage for his brother the King, John, who had been allowed to return to France to raise a ransom. He had been married, when only in his ninth year, to Blanche, daughter of Charles the Fair; and his profligacy was of a quality to break the heart of sterner wives than gentle Blanche. He survived till the reign of Charles V., the son of John, who cut down his appanages, and had much to do in guarding against his uncle's designs in return. But the King had not to keep guard long; for Philip of Orleans, worn out with his excesses, died, in 1375, in the thirty-ninth year of his age, and was buried with as much pomp, in the church of the Celestines in Paris, him when living, or who mourned at his as though there were men who had honored departure.

Philip died childless, Charles V., his elder brother, had two sons; one named after himself; the second, Louis Count de Valois, who ultimately had conferred on him the title, by which he became the second Duke of Orleans. He was a marvellous boy; and the first words he uttered were, "Ave, Maria !" It is seriously averred that, at the age of eleven years, he bore himself as bravely on the bloody field of Rosbecque as any veteran soldier there. He was, indeed, precocious in most things, and began to whisper in ladies' ears, when preceptors should have been pulling his own. He was fair of face, graceful of figure, sweet of voice, seductive of speech, and easy of principle. He loved money and hated morality; a double fact which he illustrated by receiving under his protection Pierre de Craon, who came to him laden with the gold of which that unfaithful servant had plundered his master, Louis of Anjou. He was, in truth, a young monster of iniquity and avarice. He married the superb Valentine, daughter of Galeas Visconti, Duke of Milan; but he basely outraged this lady, as he did nature itself, when he seduced from her duty the wife of his own brother, Isabella of Bavaria. He could not gain the crown; but he could dishonor and destroy the Queen, nothing loth to encounter him half-way in guilt. The Duke and his royal brother held a passage-of-arms at St. Denis, at which the orgies would have made even the Babylonians of Quintus Curtius blush. Valor induced friends to hack at one another gallantly in the lists by day; and the general license of the night made of the banquet a scene, at sight of which not only might the angels have wept, but demons have shuddered. Louis was leader in the fray; for it was more of fray than feast, where drink maddened the vicious, and the vicious acknowledged no restraint. At banquet or in battle, however, the thoughts of Louis were with his sisterin-law, Isabella. He had neither respect nor love for his consort, Valentine, and their two sons. He was, on one occasion, in Languedoc with his brother Charles, when he proposed that they should try their skill in horsemanship by galloping back to Paris. The trial was accepted; but Louis arrived in the capital long before his King and brother; and Isabella too warmly welcomed him who first arrived. Valentine, perhaps, would not have learned her husband's guilt, but for that very Pierre de Craon whom Louis had encouraged in crime, by the commission of which he pecuniarily profited; and he was now betrayed by he criminal, whom he would not fur

| ther serve, because from that criminal there was nothing more to be gained.

But Louis of Orleans had contrived to secure much of the ill-gotten wealth of De Craon; and with a portion thereof he erected an expiatory chapel, at the opening of which he walked barefooted to the altar, in testimony of his sorrow at the fatal issue of one of the roughest of his jokes. At a grand marriage-festival, given in honor of the nuptials of one of the ladies of Queen Isabella, Louis introduced an entrée masquée, consisting of six individuals chained together as satyrs. One of these was the King; and the whole half-dozen were attired in dresses of a highly inflammable nature. The deportment of these satyrs was "beastly;" nay, it is almost an injustice to "beasts" to say so. Heaven and human nature were alike outraged on this occasion. The debauchery and drunken revelry of the satyrs were at the highest, when Louis of Orleans, thoughtlessly-and yet some say, maliciously-thrusting a lighted torch at the King's dress, set it on fire; and, in an instant, the chained six were struggling in a mass of flames, howling, cursing, and helpless. The King was rescued; but two Knights died of their injuries: and it was that their souls might rest in peace, and that he himself might be reconciled with Heaven, that Louis built a chapel out of funds which he had forced from a man who had stolen them from his master. Louis laughed when all was done; but the angels must have wept. This consequence, however, would have little affected the unscrupulous Duke, who was as unjust as he was grasping. He banished his wife, Valentine, to Neufchatel, on an accusation of her being too familiar with the now half insane King; and from the royal semiidiot he obtained a grant of all property forfeited by criminals. Mezeray might well say of him, "Il profitait de tout." But he forced more from the King than this. He obtained the power of levying taxes, and the revenue arising therefrom he placed in his own coffers; thus robbing the people, and cheating the King. When murmurs arose at the impost, his answer was, that it was levied, not on his sole authority, but with the consent of the other administrators of the kingdom,his kinsmen, the Dukes of Burgundy and Berri. The wrathful denial of the two Dukes compelled Louis of Orleans to abolish the tax; and thereupon he unblushingly intimated to the people, that they were relieved of the impost solely in consequence of his own remonstrance with the King! That poor King! He never woke to transient reason

without beholding the precipice down which Louis was driving the chariot of the state; Isabella at his side; and fierce Burgundy loading the air with imprecations, not at the wickedness of Orleans, but that he himself could not share in the government and the profits. And these profits were enormous: that they were tempting to unscrupulous cupidity, may be seen in the fact that, on one occasion, when the royal officers deposited the taxes in the treasury, and defended the deposit, Louis beaded an armed force, attacked the treasury, defeated its faithful defenders, and triumphantly carried off the "resources of the kingdom.' He was, moreover, a remover of landmarks; acre to acre he added to his estates; and, like the nobleman in Hamlet, he was "spacious in the possession of dirt."

His name was a familiar one in England at the period of which we are treating; for it was by his especial aid that Henry of Lancaster dethroned the gentle Richard. Monstrelet cites the legal deed by which Henry of Lancaster and Louis of Orleans entered into bonds of sworn brotherhood; but this line of fraternity did not restrain the French Duke from summoning the usurper King to mortal combat, on the ground that the latter was the assassin of his liege lord. Henry denied the imputation, refused the challenge, and dismissed the bearer of it with the deed of brotherhood, which he contemptuously returned to his capricious quasi-kinsman.

Louis was the father of Dunois, the famous "Bâtard d'Orleans." The mother of Dunois was a married lady, Mariette d'Enghien; and history has no such horrible story, nor romance any such revolting legend, as that which tells of the fiendish brutality of the sire of Dunois. The very soul sickens at the thought of the revolting treatment to which the noble Mariette was subjected. But fiend as was the perpetrator, he could, like the devils spoken of by the apostle, " tremble." His courage was not perfect, even when he became Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, with the Pope to sanction all he did. The most truculent of Roman Emperors used to hide himself beneath his bed when thunder hurtled in the air; and Louis, once overtaken by a sudden storm on his way from chapel, where he had heard a comminatory sermon, was so alarmed that he called his creditors together, in order that he might satisfy their demands, and so, in one sense, obey the apostolic injunction, which says, "Owe no man any thing." But when the ecstatic creditors were assembled at the ducal palace, the storm had passed away, and the sermon

was forgotten; and therewith the creditors were violently driven from the mansion, with pouches and purses as ungarnished as when they had entered. Avarice was, perhaps, his besetting sin; and he even offered to resign his high office of Lieutenant-General, provided he might have, in its place, the irresponsible administration of the national finances. He negotiated the marriage subsequently concluded between his son Charles and Isabella, the widow of our own royal Richard, with a sharpness of view towards the settlements, which proves that the Orleans of the House of Valois were not of a less mercantile spirit, even in affairs of the heart, than the Orleans of Bourbon, who transacted the famous marriage which united the illegitimate and the legitimate branches of the house, in the persons of Mlle. de Penthièvre and the Duke de Chartres, (Philippe Egalité.)

The fiercest adversary of Louis was that redoubtable Duke of Burgundy, who is known in history as "John the Fearless." These foes, however, were reconciled by mutual friends; and to show how earnest they were, they proceeded hand-in-hand to church, knelt at the altar, received the sacrament, and, with what they took for "very God" in their mouths, swore that thenceforward they would be only as loving brothers. In further token of their reconciliation, they for several nights shared the same couch,--a knightly ceremony much followed by men in their respective positions. Shortly after, Orleans conducted Burgundy into his gallery of portraits. It was a gallery like that which some of our readers may have seen at Munich, during the late King's reign, wherein hung the counterfeit presentments of all those ladies whose beauty had excited the admiration of the owner of the gallery. Jean Sans-Peur is said to have recognized among them a portrait which marvellously reminded him of his own consort; but he passed on and said nothing. He meditated so much the more deeply; and such terrible threatenings seemed to sit upon his brow, that the Duke de Berri, suspecting at whom they pointed, made both his kinsmen attend him to the altar, where they once more took the sacrament, and vowed eternal friendship. It was not many nights after, that Orleans was on his way, mounted on a mule, and accompanied by a feeble escort of his followers, returning from a guilty visit to the Queen Isabella, at her residence, the Hotel Barbette. He had suddenly arisen from supper with the Queen, on feigned intimation conveyed to him by a conspirator,-who assumed, for the nonce, the office of a King's messenger,

followed by a dramatic act of gayety, the assassin espoused a Princess of the family, the Church blessed the entire arrangements, and all was thenceforth to go as merrily as a marriage bell.

The third Duke of Orleans was Charles, son of the second Duke. He was of so poor merit that even the party which cared for his interests (and its own) took its name, not from their leader, but from the Count d'Armagnac, father of Bona, the second wife of Duke Charles. Between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, France was reduces to the most fearful condition of misery. The object of the former was, to avenge and make pecuniary profit of the murder of the late Duke:-and that one murder led to a thousand others; and no one profited thereby, save Satan, who appears to have been the chief adviser of both parties.

At length, however, the arms of each were turned against one common foe-the English. The great collision took place at Agincourt, and resulted in a triumph, the shouts of which still echo in the hearts of the descendants of the victors. The young Duke of Orleans was made captive on that terrible day, and was so overwhelmed at the dreadful calamity, that for two whole days he refused all nourishment. Appetite, however, then got the better of his grief, and his stomach proved stronger than his sorrow. Henry brought him prisoner to England, where he resided during more than a quarter of a century. During this long time, he was occupied in writing poetry, bewailing his detention from La Belle France, kissing with expansive demonstration of affection the French Ambassador from the Duke of Burgundy in England, and tempting Henry to set him at liberty without ransom, in return for certain treachery, which he offered to commit against his own Sovereign, Charles VII., whom he engaged to renounce,-acknowledging Henry in his place. At length his release was effected, and that by Burgundian aid. Philip, son of John the Fearless, slain on the bridge at Montereau, paid down 300,000 crowns; the city of Orleans contributed some 9,000 gold francs, and therewith the captive Duke had permission to return to France, where he married a niece of his ransomer, Philip; thus once more, by gold and a wedding, patching up a peace between houses to whom it was second nature to be at war.

There were few things illustrative of character or scene that escaped the observation or memory of Shakspeare. The echo at the foot of Macbeth's Castle still does justice to

the remark of the usurping King to the Doctor,

I would applaud them to the very echo,
That should applaud again.

In Shakspeare's "Henry V.," the Duke of Orleans has little to do, and less to say; but the latter is perfectly characteristic of the Prince in question. The poetical knowledge of the royal poet is illustrated in the remark made by him when the Dauphin states that he had written a sonnet in praise of his palfrey, which began thus, "Wonder of nature.” "I have heard," says Orleans, "a sonnet begin so to one's mistress." Of all the French lords, he is the only one who is made to deliver a common truth in fancy phrase, "The sun doth gild our armor; up, my Lords!" And when others despair, he alone, as was the case, entertains hope, and cheerfully exclaims:

We are enough yet living in the field,
To smother up the English in our throngs,
If any order might be thought upon.

When Charles of Orleans returned to France, the last visit he paid was one to the King. He resided for some time in retirement at Orleans and Blois. The French monarch, however, behaved with noble generosity towards him, received him cordially, when the Duke experienced an attack of loyalty, and gave him 160,000 franes, wherewith to purchase the freedom of his brother, the Count of Angoulême, then detained as a hostage in England. Various opinions have been given with respect to the conduct of Dul Charles in this country during his captivity; but the pages of Rymer show, that, much as he was given to poetry, he could dabble a little in treason; and that, in his estimation, it was perfectly right, that self should take precedence of country, and the general good yield to that of the individual,-in other words, of himself. In France, as he grew in years, he became more and more devoted to agricultural pursuits; but, like Philippe Egalité at Villers-Cotterets, while he watched the growth of cabbages, he was vigilant as to what he thought his rights. Thence his expedition against Milan, to the ducal crown of which he laid claim, an immediate male heir to the late Duke being wanting, through his mother. But the lance of Orleans was shivered by the sword of Sforza; and when the former heard of the utter failure of his expeditionary force, he left the quarrel to be bloodily contested, as it was, by more than one succeeding heir. In the mean time, Louis XI. had ascended the throne which his father Charles had left va