31 MARCH 1866, Page 3

The ex-Queen of the French, Marie Amdlie de Bourbon, died

-on Sunday, the 25th inst. Her best epitaph would be her history in brief :—" She was a Neapolitan Bourbon, daughter of Ferdinand. I.,. sister of Ferdinand IL ; but nothing save good was ever reported of her in life, and she died like a child in sleep." She 'vas a really beautiful character of the old type—a bigoted Catho- lic, a bigoted Legitimist, but faithful, brave, and benevolent She Accepted her husband when a landless-exile, besought him not to mount the throne which in her view " belonged" to Charles Xi,. but when he bad mounted it besought. him still more strongly not to abdicate. The " duty of kings," she told, him, " is to die reigning,"—and she would have done it. The type to which. she belonged is passing away, even in the Royal caste,. and if she. is the last it will disappear amid the universal honour even of those who regret that it ever existed.