SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

Thooterint, Lives of the Queens of England, from the Norman Conquest; with Anecdotes of their Courts. Now first published from Official Records and other Authentic Documents,

private as well as public. By Agnes Strickland. Volume IX. Colburn.

ILISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE,

Short Sketches of the Wild Sports and Natural History of the Highlands. From the Journals of Charles St. John, Esq. [Home and Colonial Library.) Murray. VOYAGES AND TRAVELS, Shores of the Mediterranean ; with Sketches of Travel. By Francis Schroeder, Secretary to the Commodore Commanding the United States Squadron in that Sea.

1843-45. With Engravings. In two volumes. Murray.

MISS STRICKLAND'S LIFE or MART OF MODERA.

ALTHOUGH Mary of Modena, second wife of James the Second, bore as close a relation to the unfortunate Marie Antoinette as the fate of her

husband did to that of Louis the Sixteenth, yet little is known of her be- yond pictorial representations of the beauties of her person, poetical praises of her virtues and graces, the virulent assaults of party on her character, and the occasional but not altogether critical panegyrics of her admirers. Part of this is owing to her influence upon the fate of her husband having been rather notional than actual : the opinion of her

power grew out of the idea formed of her character rather than from any

portion of her conduct. An Italian and a Papist were characteristics quite sufficient to induce the Protestant mind of England in the

days of the Popish plots, and the more tangible tyranny of James, to give

credit to anything that might be said of her. But time has discredited the story of the warming-pan, in which the Pretender was conveyed to bed to be born heir to Great Britain, France, and Ireland—or the substituted child when the actual son had died in fits—or any of the other popular tales by which party appealed to prejudice; and as the obstinate bigotry of James, supposing that he was not doting, was sufficient to account for his ruin, history has not minutely examined the life and character of Mary of Modena, and only notices her during the epoch of the Revolution. Another cause of this obscurity may arise from the want of attraction in the subject; which, having no sustained interest like Mary Queen of Scots, and no single event of a romantic character like that of Mary of Modena's grand- son in 1745, had not strength enough to stand alone. Another reason may be owing to the want of materials of an authentic kind. In some degree Miss Strickland's biography overcomes these difficulties. The life, forming one of a series, is not only in place, but necessary; "the kindness and liberality of that accomplished statesman-historian" M. Guizot has thrown open to her use the archives of France; and she has had access to other single or rare authorities in this country. By this means she has procured a vast mass of new matter relating to the life and character of Mary of Modena. The most important of the novelties are these. 1. A manuscript diary, kept, apparently, by one of the nuns of Chaillot, of the sayings and doings of the exiled Queen during her occasional re- treats to that convent after the death of James the Second.

2. Upwards of two hundred original autograph letters, written during the last thirty years of the life of Mary of Modena to Franeoise Angelique Priolo, superior of the convent, and to other nuns of Chaillot. 3. A large portfolio of inedited state-papers and secret Jacobite cor- respondence, from the archives of St. Germains, (the residence of the exiled Stuarts,) relating to the regency of Mary of Modena after the death of her husband.

4. Some miscellaneous documents of various kinds, from collections in France and England. 5. " The Genealogies of the Mordaunt Family " ; a book written by Henry Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, who was sent to choose a wife and negotiate a marriage for James, and finally brought home Mary of Modena. In this volume he gives a full account of the troubles of a deputy wooer; and an account, undesignedly humorous, of his negotia- tions. Of the work itself only twenty-four copies were printed ; and Miss Strickland has only been able to trace one, which is in the Herald's College. She has of course consulted the various printed but not pub- lished books of societies, so rife of late years, that throw a strong light upon the personal history of the period she is treating of.

As the present volume only brings Mary's biography down to the death of James the Second in 1701, little use can be made of the French manuscript authorities beyond such information as the Queen's reminis- cences furnish respecting her childhood, and her feelings at particular periods of her life. The narrative of Lord Peterborough gives most ample accounts " of the whole course of wooing," and many indications of the character of the Queen in her girlhood : but the married life of Mary is somewhat jejune, or rather, it bears no proportion to the bulk of the volume ; which, to speak the truth, is a memorable example of the art of book-making. When Mary appears in conjunction with her husband, an account of his position or circumstances at the time is all well enough, even when it extends to a ceremonious reception or the bill of fare of an Edinburgh dinner. Large portions of the book, however, are as much a life of James as of his wife; and the double biography is mixed up with the court, courtiers, and, to some degree, the politics, of Charles the Second. Even the more appropriate matter is often tedious from its minuteness—tittle-tattle rather than gossip ; while the details have not the picturesque character of the Tudor or Plantagenet periods ; besides which, there are more popular expositions of the Court of " the merry Monarch" than of those of an earlier period. We have scarcely known a more extraordinary instance of flatness arising from a deter- mination to use up everything, not even sparing a reflection. It probably comes to the same thing, but the fact may be that the character of Mary would not bear this minuteness, even supposing the exhibition better done. Her Italian education was none of the

best, even for a princess of that age. When told at about fourteen that she might possibly be married to the Duke of York, she did not know who he was, or where York was situated,—nothing very extraordi- nary, perhaps, in an Italian girl; but when his connexion with England was explained, she was equally at a loss touching England. In person she was beautiful, and her domestic virtues were considerable. "The love- liest, chastest, best—but quite a fool" ; not a fool in cleverness, for she seems to have had a good deal of shrewdness, or in wit, for she had repartee; but she was totally deficient in that common sense which enables people to see the necessities of the occasion, and to adapt themselves to new circumstances as they arise, to avoid creating needless difficulties, and suc- cessfully encounter such as naturally come. Her character, too, was ill adapted to her position. Her womanly tenderness might probably prevent her from becoming a cruel bigot, but, trained among narrow-minded and ignorantly zealous priests and women, she became a weak and pertinacious one. She had all the little diplomatic artifices which show so sillily when opposed to larger views and greater power, and had much of the finesse of her sex and country. She wished to have her first-born child baptized into the Romish Church. James with more sense than he afterwards exhibited, explained to her the impossibility of such a proceeding, on account of the law and the temper of the nation. The self-willed girlish beauty, however, determined to have her way, and secretly procured the infant's baptism by her confessor. When King Charles came to bear a part in the ceremony, the Dutchess of York exultingly told him the babe was already baptized. If Charles was earnest in any one thing, it was not to travel any more upon the Continent : without vouchsafing to discuss the theology, or to attend to the terrified exclamations of the mother at the contemplated pro- fanation, he ordered the infant to be taken up and carried into the chapel, where it was duly rebaptized by a Protestant bishop. This was the act of a girl in her teens ; but the habit stuck to her ; and many years later, when an exile in France, she bored Louis the Fourteenth and Madame Maintenon for some trifling favours to her saintly friends the nuns of Chaillot, in despite of repulse and at the risk of disfavour : and when she at last obtained one, she omitted to thank Madame, in an interview of an hour and a half. In fact, Mary Beatrice seems to have been a singular combination of strong impulses, domestic affections, and womanly weak- ness of character.

With a more fitting and sensible husband, and in another country, her qualities would have secured her favour, though we opine that she never could have reached to historical strength. Amongst a nation so preju- diced as the English, her birth and religion were causes of suspicion • the peculiarities of her education and country, and even of her sex, were little adapted to conciliate a people so blunt and sternly practical as the British; and her fine-lady ruses or silly diplomacies were a source of offence to a people so hostile to foreign artifices, though so easily cajoled by humbugs of native produce. That she might form an innocent link in the chain of causes which finally ruined the Stuarts, is not unlikely ; but her direct agency seems to have amounted to nothing, unless in strengthening the religious feelings of James, if they could be strengthened. The most attractive parts of this volume are those which relate to the infancy, education, and marriage of Mary, and to some scenes during her exile. We have mentioned her ignorance of such a place as England. The Hyperborean ideas which Italian conceit had formed of Ultramontane countries, were not likely to be lessened by the forty years of the bride- groom, in the eyes of a girl of fifteen; besides that her natural vocation was for a nunnery. With a truer judgment for her own happiness than councils and _princes, she shrunk from the match; and after Peterborough, by the aid of the French Minister, had defeated confessors, and overcome the scruples of friends, he had the lady herself to contend with. This is the account of the first interview of the proxy-lover.

" He was conducted to the palace at the hour appointed; introduced into the Dutchess's apartment as before; and found the young Princess with her mother. " The Princess Mary of Este,' says he, appeared to be at this time about fourteen years of age: she was tall and admirably shaped; her complexion was of the last degree of fairness, her hair black as jet; so were her eyebrows and her eyes, but the latter so fall of light and sweetness as they did dazzle and charm too. There seemed given unto them by nature sovereign power—power to kill and power to save; and in the whole turn of her face, which was of the most grace- ful oval, there were all the features, all the beauty, and all that could be great and charming in any human creature.'

" The Earl approached her with the respect be thought due to his future mis- tress; and, having made her the proper compliments, he asked her pardon if he were the means of disturbing her tranquillity, and in some sort crossing her in- clinations; but, first from the sight of her picture, and now still more so from the view of herself, he was convinced it was the only means of making happy a Prince whose love, when she came to know him, would make ample amends to her for anything that she might now regard as a grievance.' " She answered with a little fierceness, that she was obliged to the King of England and the Duke of York for their good opinion; but she could not but wonder why from so many princesses of more merit, who would esteem that honour and be ready to embrace it, they should persist in endeavouring to force the inclination of one who had vowed herself, as much as was in her power, to another sort of life, out of which she never could think she should be happy ; and she desired his Excellency,' even, as he fancied, with tears in her eyes, ‘if he had any influence with his master to oblige her by endeavouring to avert any further persecution of a maid who had an invincible aversion to marriage. Princesses there were enow,' she said in Italy, and even in that house, who would not be un- worthy of so great an honour, and who, from the esteem they might have thereof, would deserve it much better than she could do.'

"However piqued the Earl might be at the lofty disdain with which the youth- ful beauty received his compliments, and her earnest endeavours to defend herself from the unwelcome alliance to which he was wooing her, he was too able a diplo- matist to take any notice of her pointed hint that his master's addresses would be more agreeable and suitable to her aunt than to herself. In reply to all her passionate rhetoric on the propriety of his allowing her to fulfil that vocation to which it was her desire to devote herself, his Excellency told her, that he begged her pardon if lie could not obey her: he might have been induced to do so before he saw her, but now it was impossible, since he could not believe that she was made for other end than to give princes to the world, who should adorn it with characters of high virtue and merit; that his country had need of such, and he would now hazard the offending her by persisting in his demand; since if he did incur her displeasure by it, it would be the means of making her one of the hap- piest princesses in the world.' The Earl complains that for all he could say the Princess appeared dissatisfied at his persistence. Well she might, when the plain meaning of his flattering speech simply amounted tothis, that since she suited the object of his mission, it mattered little whether she shuddered at the thought of being torn from her own sunny clime, and the sweet familiar friends of her childhood, to

be transplanted to a land of strangers, and consigned to an unknown husband five- and-twenty years older than herself, whose name she had never heard till she was required to plight her vows of conjugal love and obedience to him; and that even the alternative of a convent and a veil were not to be allowed to her. Who can wonder that a young high-spirited girl, under fifteen, broke through the con- ventional restraints whereby princesses are taught from their cradles to control their feelings, and endeavoured to avert the dreaded doom that awaited her by telling the Ambassador her mind with the passionate and tearful vehemence of a child of nature? Having done this, she maintained an obstinate silence, and re- tired with the Datchess her mother.

" The next day, the Ambassador made a formal complaint of her Highness's be- haviour to Nardi; and expressed his dissatisfaction, that having been kept on tin- der pretence of Dangeau's negotiation for the dispensation, a mach greater diffi- culty appeared in the aversion so openly expressed by the Princess, of whose con- sent he now utterly despaired. " Nardi told him he need not he under the least concern on that account, since the ladies of Italy, when it came to be in earnest, were accustomed to have no will but that of their friends; and if her mother were satisfied, she would soon be brought to a much more difficult matter than that."

Let us pass over fifteen or sixteen years, and observe her in another scene. The crown of England has been worn and lost; James and his with are needy supplicants for the assistance of Louis the Fourteenth, who had behaved with a polished kindness towards the ill-fated pair; but a matter of great importance is to be discussed with his family— no less a subject than the etiquette of the seat !

"It was the desire of Louis XIV. that the Dauphiness and the other princesses and ladies of the Court of France should pay a ceremonial visit of welcome to the Queen of England the next day ; but this was an object that required more than his power to accomplish. The -Dauphiness, fearing that a fauteuil would not be accorded to her in the presence of her Britannic Majesty, feigned sickness as an excuse for not performing the courtesy prescribed by her august father-in-law to his royal guests. She kept her bed obstinately for several days. Madame, the -wife of the King's brother, said she bad a right to a fauteuil on her left hand, and that she would not go unless that were allowed'; neither would the Dutchesses without being permitted to have their tabourets, the same as in their own court. Monsieur was very sulky, withal, because the Queen had not kissed him. Mary Beatrice, though naturally lofty, behaved with much good sense on this occasion: she referred the matter entirely to the decision of the King of France, requesting him to decide whether the Princes and Dutchesses were to be received according to the custom of the court of France or of England. Tell me' said the Queen to Louis, how you wish it to be; I will salute whomsoever you think proper: but it is not custom in England for me to kiss any man.' The King decided that it should be arranged according. to the etiquette of France. Madame de Sevigne, a few days after, records the important fact that 'the Queen of England had kissed Monsieur; and that he was, in consideration of having received that honour, contented to dispense with a fauteuil in the presence of King James, and would make no further complaints to the King his brother.' " • • " At length it was settled that the Dauphin should only sit on a pliant or folding-chair in the presence of King James; but when in company with the Queen, he should be entitled to a fauteuil. The arrangement of this knotty point did not free the royal exiles from perplexing attacks on their patience in their new position. The Princes of the Blood had their pretensions also; and it was a much easier matter to satisfy them than to settle the point with their ladies. The Princesses of the Blood were three or four days Were they would attend the court of the Queen of England; and when they went there the Dutchesses would not follow them. They insisted on being treated, not only according to the cus- tom of the court of France, where they have the privilege of sitting in the presence of the Sovereign, but according to that of England also, where the Monarch kisses ladies of their rank on their presentation. In a word, the Dat- chesses of France demanded to be kissed by King James and to sit in the pre- sence of his Queen." * " The next day, at four o'clock precisely, Mary Beatrice was favoured with a solemn state visit from the Datchess of Orleans, her daughters, the Dutchess of Guise, and all the Princesses of the Blood. She kissed them all, gave a fauteuil to the Datchess of Orleans and less honourable chairs, called pliants, to the Princesses. As far as regarded their own claims, the demi-royalty of France were satisfied; but they took the liberty of requesting the Queen to explain why she permitted the Signora Anna Montecuculi to occupy a tabouret in her presence, as she had not the rank of a Dutchess. Her Majesty condescended to explain that she allowed her that privilege as the Lady in Waiting. These ladies who were so rigid in their notions of the importance attached to chairs and stools, made no exception against the appearance of the infamous Dutchess of Portsmouth; who also occupied a tabonret in that exclusive circle, having, with the persevering effronters, of her class and character, succeeded in obtaining an appointment as one of the Ladies of the Bedchamber in the household of James's consort at St. Germains."

Some of the impressions this volume has left of the character of Mary of Modena may possibly be modified on the completion of her life ; when we shall see her acting as Regent, and engaged in all the difficult and complicated intrigues of the Jacobite cause. But we doubt it. She seems to have been unfitted by nature for affairs, not only through the qualities she had, but the qualities she wanted. There appears to have been no mental stamina about her; she was deficient in that quality which in wines is called body—" a very very woman."