cant, and the King of France and the Duke | of Orleans were good friends,-when they were not antagonists. The Duke is said, indeed, to have become so mere a courtier in his advanced age, that, Louis, on one occasion, speaking to him in terms of strong reproach, he took it so to heart, that he crawled to Amboise, like a stricken deer to the covert, and there died despairingly, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. He has always had a reputation for piety; but as this is chiefly based upon the fact, that every Friday he entertained thirteen poor people at dinner, waiting on them himself, and that annually, on Ascension Thursday, he washed the feet (previously cleaned) of as many mendicants, Charles of Orleans has but few claims to occupy a chapter in Hagiobiography. He was thrice married; first, to Isabella, the widow of our Richard the Second; afterwards, to Bonne d'Armagnac; and thirdly, to Maria of Cleves, by whom he had that son Louis, who succeeded him as Duke of Orleans, and ultimately wore the French crown as Louis XII. The most remarkable of these wives was the first, Isabella, daughter of Charles VI. of France. This Princess was married to our Richard when the bride was scarcely nine years of age, and the bridegroom was about four times as much. Richard espoused her for the sake of the alliance with France; and he treated her paternally, petting her like a lamb, giving her sweetmeats, and telling her fairy tales. He was fond of the child, and she of him; and when he departed from Windsor, on the outbreak of the rebellion of Bolingbroke, he left a kiss upon her brow that was impressed with the deep melancholy of a father perhaps separating for ever from a favorite daughter. It was with the feverish partiality of a child that Isabella espoused his cause; and, after death descended upon him so terribly, and she was taken back to France, it was long before she would lay down the trappings of her woe, or allow her young heart to be consoled for the loss of her old protector. Questions of state again. made of her a wife; and in 1406, when she was but in her thirteenth year, her hand was given to Charles of Orleans, then only eleven years of age. Three years afterwards she gave birth to a daughter, and at the same time yielded up her own life,-that brief life, the happier for its brevity. The merits of Charles of Orleans, as a poet, were undoubtedly very great. He had little of the obscurity of the poets of his day, few of their conceits, and none of their overstrained compliments. His muse was gentle in her song,-tender, as became one who sang in a long captivity in Pontefract Castle. The lines devoted to descriptions of nature seem, if one may say so, to breathe freshly upon the cheeks like May breezes. They remind us chiefly of Surrey, particularly of that noble poet's exquisite sonnet on Spring. Charles's muse grew joyous as he grew in years, when he penned noisy roundelays, and those famous chansons à danser, which gained from him the name of "Caroles,"-a name common now, even in English, to all lyrics resonant of joy and glad tidings. Charles left the bulk of his manuscripts behind him in this country. Some of them found their way to France, and are now in the chief public library in Paris; but enough remain in this country to give life and excitement to the whole Society of Antiquaries, who will doubtless be obliged to us for reminding them of the fact. We add one sample of the royal troubadour's quality, translated by the practised pen of Mr. Carey. Of its original author, we will only add one more additional trait. After the battle of Agincourt, Henry took him and the other captive Princes, in his own ship, from Calais to Dover. The passage was one of the stormiest: and the warriors who had encountered the horrors of the battle-field without blenching, were as timid as sick girls at finding themselves the sport of the furious wind on the unstable main. Charles especially excited the mirth of the English King, by dolorously asserting that he had rather fight a dozen Agincourts over again, than endure for another hour such a passage by sea. But to our promised taste of his quality as a poet : She was, to speak without disguise, No more, no more! My heart doth faint, Of her who lived so free from taint, Who in herself was so complete, I think that she was ta'en, By God, to feed his paradise, And with his saints to reign. For well she doth become the skies, Whom, while on earth, each one did prize, The fairest thing to mortal eyes. We now come to the first Duke of Orleans who ascended the throne of France. Louis, son of Charles, was born at Blois, in 1462. He will doubtless be familiar to most of our readers, figuring so graphically as he does in the " Quentin Durward" of Sir Walter Scott. Louis XI. compelled him to marry his deformed and sterile daughter Joan, threatening him with death by drowning, if he refused. Anne de Beaujeu, the other daughter of the King, loved the graceful Orleans, who, in his turn, wooed a great many fair ladies generally, and Anne of Bretagne in particular. When Anne de Beaujeu became Regent for the youthful Charles VIII., the Duke of Orleans plunged into an active armed opposition, which ultimately made of him the prisoner of that Princess, who, stung by the spretæ injuria formæ, treated him with an atrocious severity, and kept him, during a portion of his captivity, chained in an iron cage, like a wild beast. Her desire was to compel him to solicit her compassion, and to make offer of his love; but Orleans bore his dreadful fate courageously during five years, and then owed his liberation to the spontaneous act of the young King Charles. He had, in the mean time, made wise use of the hours of his adversity; and he stepped into freedom one of the most accomplished men of his day. The death of Charles VIII. left the throne open to him, its lawful possessor. He stood by the deceased monarch with salt rheum upon his eye-lashes, and resolution at his heart. Whither this latter tended, may be seen in the fact, that Louis, now the twelfth of the name, not only buried the late monarch at his own expense, but married that monarch's widow. The relict of the departed sovereign was that Anne of Bretagne of whom we have already spoken. She and Louis had been lovers in their younger days; but they made but a very discordant pair in the maturer years of less passion, and more discretion. Their letters, indeed, have been cited to prove the contrary; and these do betray a most orthodox warmth of conjugal affection. But then these epistles are known to be from the hands of the court poets, who, in their office of secretary, took all their phraseology from an Italian vocabulary, and had a supreme contempt for veracity and common sense. To marry Anne, he repudiated the innocent Joan; and, on the death of his second wife, he looked towards the court of our Henry VIII., and solicited from that monarch the hand of his gentle sister, the peerless Mary Tudor. Now, if Louis of Orleans was the husband of three wives, Mary of England was the lady of many lovers,-herself loving but one. She had been wooed by Albert of Austria, and Charles of Spain, and now by Louis of France; but her heart was with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, who was the most successful of the lovers after all. Suffolk is said to have formed part of the escort which accompanied Mary across the Channel. Among her ladies was a Mistress Anne Boleyne, a vivacious girl, who lost her felicity in achieving greatness. St. Wulphran, to whom the last prayers of the weddingparty were addressed before going on board, ill repaid their pious zeal. After rolling about for many hours in the most tub-like of ships, knights and ladies were flung ashore on a desolate part of the French coast, on which they pitched their tents, beneath whose sheltering canvas they smoothed their ruffled plumes, shook out their silks, and calmed their grievously tormented stomachs. The "Pearl of England," as Mary was styled by her fond brother Henry VIII., set up her hasty but splendid "state" in a rude hut, which was turned, for the nonce, into a palace, whither the Boulognese flocked in crowds to admire the gorgeousness of her trousseau and general appointments. She was exquisite in her grace and accomplishments. "Madame Marie d'Angleterre" won golden opinions from all who looked upon her. They were dazzled with the gems she wore, set by the artistic hands of "Master William Verner;" and if our readers are desirous to peruse the detailed inventory of all. the wealth which accompanied the "Flower of England," a young blossom to be grafted on an old and withered stem,-they will find it in the business-like book of accounts of Andrew of Worcester. Marie moved slowly on to Abbeville, where Louis impatiently waited the arrival of his young bride. His impatience got the better of his gout; and, swallowing some stimulating drugs to steady his nerves and strengthen his sinews, and under pretence of a hunting match, he gallopped through the gates of Abbeville, for the purpose of sooner beholding his bride. He was attended by a most glorious company:-a more brilliant had not passed beneath the archways of the ramparts since the morning on which Philip of Valois passed by the same outlet to meet the English army and an overthrow upon the bloody field of Cressy. When the procession of the bride, and that peerless lady on her palfrey, came in view, the shattered King felt something like young blood within his veins. He put spurs to his steed, charged close up to the side of the Princess, gazed into her face and radiant eyes, and then, clapping his feeble hands, he uttered his ordinary oath, invoking all the fiends in Tophet to seize him, if "Madame Marie" were not twice as beautiful as report had pronounced her to be. The royal pair rode on, side by side, in advance of the double escort; and if Suffolk looked upon them, he might have sung, Ah, qu'il soit Roi! Mais qu'il me porte envie; J'ai votre cœur,—je suis plus Roi que lui. The marriage, after a world of tedious ceremony, took place in the church of St. Wulphran, at Abbeville. An old "custom of the country" had well-nigh determined Louis to have his wedding solemnized in another city; but he was gained over by a speech of the mayor, who said, "Sire, you may wed here without breaking our old ecclesiastical law, which no longer exists, and which used to forbid husbands to dwell in company with their wives during three whole days and nights after the celebration of their nuptials." The matrimonial crown was only worn by Mary for only three brief months. The way of life of Louis during that period would have killed a stronger man. In January, 1515, his excesses shook him off from the tree of life,-fruit withered and rotten, -into the grave beneath. To follow the fortunes of our English Mary for a moment further, we may state that, in another three months, she was the happy wife of the Duke of Suffolk. Of this union there survived but two daughters,-Eleanor and Frances. Frances espoused Grey, Marquis of Dorset, on whom was conferred the title of Duke of Suffolk; and the most celebrated and unhappy of whose children was that Lady Jane Grey, whose descent from Mary Tudor brought her to a momentary enjoyment of a throne, and, finally, to the block. The dust of Mary lies beneath the altar of the old abbey church at Bury St. Edmund's; and summer tourists could not possibly make a more agreeable or a cheaper trip, than by steaming from the Thames to Ipswich, up the beautiful river Orwell, and thence proceeding to the picturesque city of the royal martyr of England's early days. In the person of that King, who was once noble-minded enough to say that Louis XII. had no recollection of the enemies of the Duke of Orleans, was extinguished the first lineal branch of the Orleans of the Valois race. The new monarch was Francis I. (of Angoulême,) cousin of the late King, who conferred the ducal title, whose descent we are tracing, upon his second son, Henry,⚫ born in 1518. Henry was that precocious Prince who, at fifteen, kissed the slipper, and made himself the amorous slave, of Diana de Poictiers, for whom he built the regal bower of Fontainebleau. Henry, as King, would have been more inclined to grant toleration to the Huguenots, but for the persuasion of his orthodox concubine. We now arrive at a period, of which we have fully treated in a previous number,-the period of the greatness of the Guises. We may, therefore, pass lightly over it in this place. Confining ourselves simply to the line of Orleans, it must suffice to state, that when Henry became the successor of his elder brother Francis, the title of Duke of Orleans fell to his younger brother Charles. The latter was famed for his fiery courage and girl-like beauty, his gay spirit and reckless career, which was cut short, at Boulogne, by a fever. The title was then conferred on Louis, the second son of Henry II. This little Duke departed from that and all other worldly greatness, at the early age of one year and nine months. Henry then conferred it upon his brother Charles, who was afterwards "damned to everlasting fame" as Charles IX., the murderer of his Protestant subjects. When this sovereign came to the throne, he added the title of Orleans to that of Anjou, already worn by his brother Henry, some time King of Poland, and subsequently King of France, under the style and title of King Henry III.,-the slayer of the great Guise, and the slain of the Dominican Jacques Clement. Henry III., when King, conferred the duchy on his mother, Catherine de Medicis. That exemplary lady enjoyed the usufruct thereof during life; and the duchy then (1589) reverted to the crown,—but without possessing a Duke, until after the wars of the League, and the period of the peaceful days of Henri Quatre," the successor of Henry III. With the latter closed the line of Dukes of the second branch, that of Angoulême-Valois. We now come to the third and last race, the Dukes of Orleans of the House of Bourbon. In the year 1697, a second son was born to Henri Quatre and Marie de Medicis. At the mature age of sixteen days old, he was created Duke of Orleans, and decorated with the chief military honors which the royal father had to bestow. Deans and subdeans rushed into pedantic poetry; and, in very crippled Latin verse, foretold the future greatness and happiness of the little Duke; whose destiny they had thus no sooner set⚫tled, than he straightway died, to shame the prophets; and on the coffin of the child, in his fourth year, was coined the lie, that therein reposed "the most high and puissant Prince," with a long line of sounding titles, to give dignity to the mendacity. useful lesson which he ever received from any of his preceptors. So. At an early age he was married, sorely against his will, to Mademoiselle de Montpensier, of the turbulent house of Guise. The vast fortune of the lady alone reconciled the recalcitrant bridegroom, whose own immense fortune, bestowed on him with the title of Duke of Orleans, was not sufficient for his great appetite for filthy lucre. His whole life was engaged in conspiring, and in be traying his confederates. He really seemed to delight in conducting them into danger, and in refusing to help them out of it, even when he had but to extend his hand to do He was as unstable as water, and so infirm of purpose, as to be always of the advice of the last comer. He maintained a most regal state in his splendid palace, the chief saloons in which, however, were devoted to the purpose of a common gamblinghouse. He himself played deeply: nor was play his only vice. He was faithless, both as husband and subject,-untrue alike to consort and to king; and as to the sacred truth, he had no more scruple in violating it, when it suited his purpose, than has that exemplary personage, Nicholaï, Czar of all the Russias! The "parole de gentilhomme" of the latter prince is about of as much value as that of Mascarille. The only trace of intellectuality in Gaston was in the debating club which he kept at his house, where questions of interest were discussed, but where, as in the conversational circles of Tiberius, every guest was required to be of the same opinion as the master of the house. Gaston, too, was famous for the Haroun Alraschid sort of propensity which he had for running about the streets in disguise, and in search of adventures. He often found more than he sought: and returned to his residence, at dawn, with tattered cloak, cudgelled sides, and very unedified brains. Henri bestowed the lapsed ducal title of Orleans upon his third son, Gaston, a Prince who was so named after the famous warrior, Gaston de Foix; whom he further resembled by wearing a sword on his thigh, a sash across his breast, and a plumed cap upon his head; but, unlike the noble De Foix, he had neither courage to wield his sword, nor a heart true to any cause, nor a head furnished with brains enough to hint to him the consequences of his own folly. "MONSIEUR," as he was called, did not succeed to the title of Orleans until he had advanced to manhood. In the mean time, his youth was passed amid a perplexing multiplicity of teachers. By some he was taught to be a bigot; by others, a hypocrite; by a third, a pedant; while the ex-soldier, D'Ornano, was so wroth with the innate obstinacy of his pupil, that he used to walk abroad with a couple of rods tied to his waist. These he Gaston of Orleans was of that timidity of was constantly holding up, in terrorem, above spirit, and weakness of principle, which may the royal pupil's person; but their descent drive men into mean crimes, but which will was ever deprecated by Madame d'Ornano; never lead them to the commission of even and this farce was so constantly played, that small virtues. He was essentially stupid, Gaston came, at last, to look upon the rods and yet not uninformed; for, in middle age, with no more respect than what he threw he was a great and a good reader. But so away upon the wearer. He was naturally was the Emperor Claudius, without being uncourteous and rude; so much so, that on for it a bit the better man. In 1627, his one occasi 1, having treated with coarse in- wife died in giving birth to a daughter; and civility tha gentlemen of his chamber, his Gaston, who looked to the throne as his own, tutor cal een up the scullions from the kit--for his brother, Louis XIII., was childless, chen, to wde upon a prince who knew not how to accept the attendance of men of higher rank. This was the most practically two days after the death of his consort, was laughingly canvassing the names of highborn ladies, worthy to succeed to her place, and help to found a dynasty. He aimed at achieving what his brother, and his brother's minister, Richelieu, aimed to extinguish,popular liberty; and all three had the same selfish end in view,-individual profit. The ochlocracy of the fauxbourgs, however, recognized in Gaston their coming man; and when he appeared in the streets, his passage was hailed with shouts of "Vive la liberté du peuple!" at which Gaston encouragingly smiled, as Egalité, in similar circumstances, did after him. He privately married Mary of Lorraine; but his union with that lady did not prevent him from being the very meanest and most heartless of seducers; and he wore a gay air amid it all, until his brother Louis XIII., after twenty-three years of sterile union with Anne of Austria, became the father of a Dauphin, whose birth flung down Orleans from the height of his greatness and expectations. The King, we know not wherefore, insisted upon the Duke going through the form of a second and public marriage with Mary of Lorraine. The Church was reluctant to sanction a ceremony which appeared to throw invalidity on the privately celebrated rite; but the Archbishop of Paris cleverly surmounted the difficulty; and when he had pronounced the words, "Ego vos conjungo," he added "In quantum opus est;" and so saved the honor of the Church, and the inviolability of her ordi nances. The new Duchess of Orleans was a lady of many charms, but without the energy to make them available. She was said to be pretty, without even looking so; and witty, without ever letting it be known. Like the lady in the satire, who "was not born to carry her own weight," who could not move across a room without foreign aid, and who ever Spoke with such a dying fall, That Betty rather saw than heard the call, she was subject, or thought herself subject, to fainting fits; and her husband used to witness their recurrence with undisguised laughter. He probably looked upon them as counterfeits; for, commonly, he did not lack courtesy towards his lady. She however, undoubtedly, the type of the "lack adaisical" fine lady whom Dr. Young so graphically painted : The motion of her lips and meaning eye Piece out the idea her faint words deny. O listen with attention most profound! Her voice is but the shadow of a sound. was, has And help, O help! her spirits are so dead, It is astonishing how long the languid lady ruled the realms of ton. Laziness was as strong in them as in Lawrence's dog, which was too lazy to bark unless it could lean its head against a wall. We cannot trace the career of the Duke through the half-farce, half-tragedy of the Fronde,-that sanguinary comedy, in which the actors struggled for power, and slew one another, now with sharp-pointed epigrams, and anon with as sharp-pointed swords: Gaston behaved throughout like a man coveting a prize which he had not the courage boldly to strike for. No so his masculine daughter, the great MADEMOISelle, whose memoirs are full of far more extraordinary incidents than were ever invented by the hot and perplexity-stricken brains of fiction. Her sire used the daughter throughout the entire plot, only to betray her when it was failing, and to abuse her when it had exploded. Their quarrels were of the most ignoble quality; but, with all her faults, the daughter was of a far more heroic mould. than her sire. The latter, when profit was no longer to be made by plotting, gave up the vocation; and, on being reconciled to Louis XIV., celebrated the peace between himself and his royal nephew, by giving to the latter a dinner; but the banquet was of such detestable quality, that the young monarch rose from it disgusted, and retired with a sense of insult which he never forgave. Gaston, thereupon, withdrew into private life, where, so strangely constituted were princes then, he took a mistress, with whom he indulged in religious pursuits. Thrice a day did this worthy couple afford the congregation assembled at the church which they frequented, the edifying exhibition of a prince and his concubine seriously "transacting their worship." When he died, exhausted in body and reputation, was it wonderful that France exclaimed, like "For this relief Shakspeare's sentinel much thanks!" Louis XIII., the feeble heir of a mighty sire, was the father of two sons born late in wedlock. The first of these boys was Louis, afterwards the Fourteenth of that name; and the other, Philip, who, in his cradle, bore the |