resided, till the triumph of Mary was assured beyond doubt or question. She then forthwith hastened, with loyal alacrity, at the head of two thousand followers, to meet the victorious sovereign, by whose side she re-entered the citypresenting a gallant, youthful contrast to her comparatively aged and ailing sister, and displaying with especial care the beauty of her hand and arm, of which she was extremely proud.

A few more chequered years of patient wariness, and the great prize was gained-Elizabeth was in her true place on the throne, the visible embodiment and illustration of national independence, of the nation's right to choose its own faith, its own sovereign, irrespective and in defiance of both secular and spiritual divine right, and hereditary claims, and therefore clothed with a personal lustre in her people's eyes which the disenchanting breath of Time has indeed dissipated, but not happily till the crown of these realms had descended upon the brow of a royal lady whose virtues shed a higher, purer lustre upon the imperial diadem than it confers. Mr. Macaulay, in one of his public addresses, eulogized Queen Victoria as "a milder, better Elizabeth;" a compliment which, at all events, will not render the celebrated historian obnoxious to the charge of flattery or servilism.

92

Τ

MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ.

"IT is to-day many years, my child," wrote this tenderest

of mothers and most spirituelle of letter-writers to her daughter, Madame de Grignan, on the 5th of February, 1674, "that there came into the world a being destined to love you beyond all things else;"-an incidental allusion which supplies the only proof now extant that Madame de Sévigné was born on the 5th of February-and, it is conjectured from by no means decisive passages in other letters, in 1627, and probably in Burgundy. Be this really as it may, the accepted belief now is that Marie de RabutinChantal was born on the precited day and year, at the chateau of Bourbilly, in the parish of Vice-Chessanay, between the towns of Epoisses and Sémur, the capital of Auxois. The future Madame de Sévigné was born Lady of Bourbilly, not of Chantal, as often stated, that property, although the name was retained by the Rabutins, having passed from the family by marriage-gift, when Marie's aunt, Françoise de Rabutin-Chantal. espoused Count Antony de Toulongeon. The young lady's ancestry comprised some distinguished celebrities: her grandfather, Christophe de Rabutin-Chantal, one of Henry the Fourth's "verts galants," whose recognised vocation was "de boire et de battre," achieved no less than eighteen duels during a not very long life, which abruptly terminating in 1600, his widow, née Jeanne-Françoise Frémiot, retired from the world, and, as the best sacrifice she could offer for the repose of his soul, founded the Conventual Order of the Visitation, of which