ter and court life of Charles II. in a fashion | could not walk till the age of ten, and then little short of marvellous; even the dis-only by leaning on the shoulders of his cases and the state of the King's body, as meninos, or pages of honour. He was found after death, typified the condition of brought up on the lap of women and in his country. He too in his last days swal- their company. His mother, who was Relowed voraciously and digested nothing, gent, was afraid to make him study, and he and not a drop of blood was found in his never showed any disposition to receive the heart. 'Sus entrañas se hallaron en parte elements of education and knowledge. canceradas, el corazon enjuto y seco, sin sangre alguna.' The unhappy King was little more than a walking corpse, the imbecile spectral semblance, both in mind and feature, of each of his progenitors, who all in degeneration present the most striking family likeness. His lank long fair hair tucked behind his ears, his high narrow forehead, his gaunt cheeks, his vacant gaze, his cadaverous complexion, his heavy underhanging lip, his lean tall form, his ignorance of affairs and of human nature, characterised the person and the mind of Philip II. in the last stage of imbecility, and his great solution of every political difficulty was given in the traditional reply of his house 'Veremos.'

During the early part of the regency the Queen-mother, aided by a council, directed the affairs of the kingdom; but her two validos-the first, Nithard, a Viennese Jesuit, and the second, Valenzuela, a handsome political Gil Blas, excited great discontent, and were successively obliged by a conspiracy of the nobles to fly from Spain. The most important as well as perhaps the most able statesman and general in the country, was Don Juan of Austria, a natural son of Philip IV., whose military successes in putting down revolts in Naples and Sicily had, however, been nearly effaced by his subsequent disasters in Portugal disasters which broke the spirit of Philip IV. As he was treated with great favour The letters of Madame de Villars, the by Philip, and as, owing probably to that French Ambassadress, and of Madame inoculation with Moorish customs and feeld'Aulnoy, portray the court life of Madrid ings which has permanently affected the during this reign with a reality which reads language, manners, taste in dress, and hablike romance, and with incidents so extra-its of thought in Spain, natural sons have ordinary that they would seem exaggerated without question always held a position in some tale of human folly by Swift or Voltaire. While the history of the marriage of the monarch with Marie Louise d'Orléans and the first two years of their married life, which may be gathered wholly from these pages, has an interest as pathetic as it is extraordinary.

there more favourable and more recognised than in any other part of Europe, it had been expected that Philip IV. might declare him heir in the place of his sickly infant Charles. A prince of such pretensions was necessarily an object of jealousy to the Queen-mother, and bitter enmity subsisted Charles II. came into the world in 1661, between them. The Queen-mother at first four years before the death of his father succeeded in banishing Don Juan to SaraPhilip IV., about the time that the long gossa. She exiled many of his friends, and hostility of Spain and France had ended in one of them was arrested and strangled in the humiliation of Spain in the face of prison by an order from her hand. When Europe, in consequence of the dispute for the discontent caused by the pretensions precedence of the Spanish and French am- and political meddling of her favourite bassadors in London, at the court of the Valenzuela was at its height, Don Juan, at Protector, and two years after the miserable the invitation of some leading nobles, defeat of the Spaniards at Villa Viciosa. emerged from Saragossa, took possession He was thus born in the hour of Philip IV.'s of the Regency, exiled the Queen-mother deepest humiliation, and when that cadaver- to Toledo, and delivered the young King ous, proud, but gentle-natured monarch from the subjection to women in which he was in an almost dying state. His mother had hitherto been brought up. But this was Marie Anne of Austria, daughter of early period of female domination had the Emperor Frederic III. The son of made such an impression on the spirit of these parents was the living embodiment of Charles that he felt a horror at the sight of the sorrow, humiliation, and diseased con- a petticoat. He always turned out of the stitution of his father. The infant seemed way when he met a lady. His former gov at first hardly to have life at all, and was erness, the Marquesa de los Velez, had to so perishable and delicate as to require to wait for six months to get a word from be placed in a cotton box. He was suckled him; and when he was obliged to receive a at the breast of his wet-nurse till he was petition from a woman he looked another three or four years old. The young prince way. With this disposition, it seemed un

likely that he would regard with any favour the idea of marriage. Nevertheless, as his constitution strengthened in an unexpected way when he arrived at the age of seventeen, the Queen-mother, before her exile to Toledo, had entered into negotiations for marrying the young King to a daughter of the Emperor, and so knitting stronger the relations of Spain with her family. Don Juan, on his assumption of power, necessarily sought a different alliance, and at the arrangement of the treaty of Nimeguen with France, he instructed the Marques de los Balbases, then at Paris, to enter into negotiations for a marriage between Charles II. and Marie Louise d'Orléans, the daughter of Monsieur, the King's brother, and of Henriette d'Angleterre, daughter of our Charles I., whose youth and beauty and sweetness of nature, cut off by a sudden and tragic end, form the subject of the finest of the Oraisons funèbres of Bossuet. During the negotiations for the marriage, the aversion which the young King had shown to women suddenly changed. The grandees who had seen the young Princess at Fontainebleau, spoke rapturously of her beauty, elegance, and charm of wit and manner. Her miniature was sent to Charles, and inspired him with a sudden passion; he wore the picture on his heart, addressed fine speeches to it; and after the arrangements for the marriage, sent presents and letters, and expected replies with the utmost impatience. As soon as it was known that the Princess was en route for Spain, it was impossible to restrain him, and he set forth to meet her.

gracefully arched, her lips remarkably rosy, her hair profuse and of a dark chesnut colour.

But, like all the unhappy Princesses of France doomed to marry Spanish Kings, she regarded her destiny with dread and aversion. Transferred from the gay Court and brilliant intellectual life of France, these young creatures were killed off fast by the sombre dulness, monotony, and iron etiquette of the palaces of Spain. None of the Queens of Spain were long-lived. Philip II. used up four in his lifetime; one of whom, the beautiful Elizabeth de Valois, left behind her the reputation of a saint and a martyr among the Spanish people, and was adored in her lifetime as the gentlehearted Isabella de la Paz. Some letters written by one of her French maids of honour, and lately published, give a pitiable notion of the dreary monotony of existence which drove her to an early grave; and the routine of her daily life was precisely that of Marie Louise d'Orléans. Of another Spanish Queen, Elizabeth de France, the first wife of Philip IV., the memory was still fresh in the minds of the people of Spain, and inspired a hopeful augury of the marriage of Charles II. with another French bride. As for Marie Louise, she looked upon herself as a victim to State policy from the first, and prepared herself for her fate with the meekness of an Iphigenia. She made two pathetic appeals to Louis XIV. to escape from her destiny, but without avail. It was supposed at one time that an attachment existed between herself and the Dauphin, and it was believed also that Louis XIV. was not averse to their union; so when her royal uncle abruptly announced to her the fact of the arrangement of the Spanish marriage, she threw herself at his feet with sobs; the Great Monarch said in a surprised way, Que pourrais-je faire de Sire,' she replied plus pour ma fille?' appealingly, 'vous pourriez faire quelque chose de plus pour votre nièce.' The unhappy girl still thought she could touch the nature of the man who said, 'L'Etat, c'est moi;' she waited for her opportunity and threw herself on her knees before him mutely with supplicating hands as he was going to chapel; but he pushed her aside rudely, saying with killing irony, Ce serait une belle chose que la Reine Catholique empêchât le Roi trés-Chrétien d'aller à la Her aspect is described as mild, her mein messe.' The heartless coldness of this graceful. Madame de Sévigné writes of speech precluded all hope, and Marie Louise her jolis pieds qui la faisaient si bien dan- resigned herself to obedience and despair; she was an excellent horsewoman; for leaving out of account the desolate exshe was a good musician and composed istence she looked for in Spain, she had operas; her eyes were black, her eyebrows seen the portrait of her future husband,

'Le roi,' wrote Madame de Villars, va chercher la reine d'une telle impétuosité qu'on ne peut le suivre ; et si elle n'est pas encore arrivée à Burgos, il est résolu d'amener avec lui l'archevêque de cette ville-là, et d'aller jusqu'à Vittoria ou sur la frontière pour épouser cette princesse. Il n'a voulu écouter aucun conseil con

traire à cette diligence. Il est transporté d'amour et d'impatience.'

The letters of Madame de Villars and Madame d'Aulnoy, enable us to follow day by day the story of the martyrdom of this young Princess, who as a grand-daughter of Charles I. has a claim to the sympathy of English readers, beyond the melancholy interest of her brief life, the gentleness of her nature, and the beauty of her person.

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mean staircase, and entered the miserable Villars. After her solemn entry into Madroom in which he found his bride. She at-rid, the young Queen only exchanged one tempted several times to fall at his feet, but prison for another, and then she began the he prevented her, embracing the Princess as life she was destined to lead to the end of much as etiquette permitted kings of Spain her brief existence; a life combining the to embrace, by clasping her arms with his jealous seclusion of the harem, the lugubrihands; he looked fondly in her face, and ous monotony of the cloister, and the iron ejaculated, Mi reyna! mi reyna!' On tyranny of Spanish etiquette personified in their arrival at Madrid the Queen, accord- the Terranueva, relieved only by occasional ing to etiquette, was to be kept in the strict- drives in a carriage with closed windows acest seclusion at the Palace of Buen Retiro, cording to the fashion of Spain, stupid plays, outside the city, till the arrangements for hunting parties, and visits to Aranjuez and her public entry into the capital were com- the Escurial at fixed times. For everything plete. An attempt was made by the cama- in the Court of Spain was regulated like a rera mayor to keep even the French ambas- clock; the only disarrangement was when sadress from seeing the Queen at this time, money was wanting to carry out the probut her resistance was overcome by the me-gramme. From time to time the King diation of the Queen-mother, who, during the early days of the Queen's new life, did all she could to mitigate the severity of her fate. But nevertheless, when a few days later the Marquesa de los Balbases, whose husband had been the negotiator of the marriage at the Court of France, came to see the bride, and entered into the apartment of the camarera mayor, which was next to that of the Queen, and the Queen heard of her arrival and came out to meet her, the Terranueva, with a severe face, took Marie Louise by the arm, and led her back in silence to her apartment.

would take her round to visit the convents; and as this kind of occupation was not very entertaining, she invited Madame de Villars to accompany her. Comme je n'y connois personne,' says the wily ambassadress, je m'y suis beaucoup ennuyée.' She takes care not to say that the Queen was anything but amused; but the picture she draws of the King and Queen, each in their chairs, in the convent parlour, surrounded by kneeling nuns reduced to a state of imbecility by early seclusion from the world, with two long-haired Court dwarfs, such as we see in the pictures of Velasquez, doing all the talking for the party, and the Queen invariably endeavouring to kill time by eatingalas! she had come already to that ― having luncheon on a roast fowl, with the King looking on and thinking she had a good appetite for Spain, where nobody eats as a rule, does not suggest anything very entertaining. The Queen, in desperation, seems to have taken to eating as a way of killing time; like a lady of a Moorish harem, she got fat on her seclusion. She sleeps,' says the Marquise, 'ten or twelve hours a day, and she eats meat three or four times a day.' Indeed, what was a poor young creature, shut up with her attendants, to do after the gay open life of the French Court, where she could move as free as air, where the staircases and antechambers thronged with brilliant gentlemen and ladies, and where wit and gaiety were ever effervescent in some form or other? In the gloomy desolate palace of Madrid, she was allowed hardly to see a man's face, and MaVous avez apparemment vu de ses por- dame de Villars and Madame d'Aulnoy were traits. The power of reticence can hardly almost her only visitors. No balls, no pubbe carried further than in this latter pas- lic levers and couchers and toilettes; no soisage, in which infinite pity for this bright rées, no plays, no hunting parties but those unfortunate French girl is so neatly ex- of the gloomiest character; no diversion pressed. It is too evident that the only but promenades in carriages with closed consolations in life which the immured lady windows, and these in summer on the dusty had were her interviews with Madame de bed of the Manzanares. Madame de Vil

The letters of Madame de Villars, in which she gives an account of her visits to the Queen, are most delicately touched. The last words of Louis XIV. to his niece were, that the best thing he could wish her was not to see her again; consequently the Ambassadress is most carefully on her guard not to say one word which might, if brought to the notice of the monarch whom her husband represented, give offence and induce a belief that she was encouraging the regrets of the unhappy Queen. But the truth breaks out sometimes in a manner which makes it the more touching from its very reserve. When the Queen begins to talk of Fontainebleau and St. Cloud,' says Madame de Villars, I change the subject.' Of the Queen, she says, Elle a le teint admirable, de beaux yeux, la bouche très-agréable quand elle rit. Que c'est une belle chose que de rire en Espagne.' As for the King, she says, ‘On dit qu'il l'aime fort: chacun a sa manière d'aimer; je le vois assez souvent.

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