will be full as entertaining forty years hence. I advise you, therefore, to put none of them to the use of waste-paper." Other more complete editions have since been published, under the auspices of Lady Mary's relatives. Her letters have taken their place in English literature as models of epistolary composition, and it would be difficult to decide in what branch of her delightful art the writer most excelled, whether in lively descriptions, in natural and familiar similes, in the happy employment of anecdotes, in the philosophy of her reflections, or in the idiomatic graces of her style.

Lady Wortley Montagu has received justice as a writer, not as a benefactress. At least she has been denied that sort of justice which consists in burial honors and in the tribute of a national monument. Westminster Abbey has opened its massive portals to less worthy occupants than she, and for her least merit she might have claimed a resting-place in the Poets' Corner. The cathedral at Lichfield contains the only cenotaph to her memory, and this does not stand over her remains. It was erected, thirty years after her death, by a woman, Henrietta Inge, who seems to have been alone in the desire to acknowledge a debt, due not only from England but from the human race. The monument represents Beauty, in female form, weeping over the ashes of her preserver, inurned beneath her. To appreciate the force of this conceit, the reader must transport himself, in imagination, to the period when beauty, health, life, were at the mercy of that virulent scourge, the small pox, when no prevention was known and when cure was a matter of chance, not of calculation; when a young and delicate woman of less than thirty years, struggling against the prejudices of centuries, the superstitions of a credulous age, and the resistance of the pulpit and the faculty, and finally triumphant over them, conferred upon Western Europe the greatest medical and social boon which it had then been given to man or woman to bestow upon their race.

MARIE ANTOINETTE.

MARIE-ANTOINETTE-JosephE-JEANNE, Archduchess of Austria, daughter of Francis I. and Maria Theresa, Emperor and Empress of Germany, was born at Vienna, on the second of November, 1755. She received a brilliant though superficial education under the eyes of her illustrious mother; every opportunity was taken to impress upon her infant mind an adequate idea of the superiority of herself and her sister archduchesses to the offspring of every other royal house. She was apt and zealous, and made rapid progress in the study of languages, of drawing and of music. At the early age of fourteen years, Marie Antoinette was an accomplished and majestic princess. She was slight and graceful, and of imposing bearing; her lofty manner of carrying her head at once attracted the observer. Her hair was light brown, long and silky; her forehead high and somewhat projecting; her nose aquiline, with nostrils dilating at the least emotion; her eyes were blue and penetrating; her teeth white, and her lips full and well-defined. Her expression was animated, though her smile was pensive. Her complexion was of dazzling purity, and her skin so white that, in her portraits still to be seen at Schoenbrunn, it seems to cast a shade on the satin of her royal vestments.

The relations of Austria and France had long been those either of open warfare or secret enmity. Since the time of Henry IV., every battle fought and every treaty signed between these two powers, had deprived Austria either of a contiguous province or a tributary kingdom, and by these successive losses either France, or some one of her allies, had profited. Maria Theresa, viewing with alarm this decline of Austrian influence, formed the astute plan of converting her dangerous neighbor into a complaisant ally; and the treaties of 1756 and '58, uniting the two powers in one scheme of operations, permitted Austria to commence, unopposed, a series of devastations in the north of Europe. Not long afterwards,

an alliance between the houses of Bourbon and of Austria, seeming to subserve the interests of both courts, was agreed upon, and Marie Antoinette was contracted to Louis, grandson of Louis XV., and dauphin, by the death of his father, the Duke de Berry.

A change at once took place in the occupations of the archduchess. She was placed under the immediate care of the Abbé de Vermond, a worldly-minded ecclesiastic, who instructed her in the usages of the French court and the colloquial idioms of the language. He is also believed to have fully acquainted her with the laxity of French morals, and with the liberty which had been and still might be enjoyed by queens residing in the French metropolis. Maria Theresa likewise gave her long lectures upon political and international topics, advising her in her choice of companions, and dictating to her the attitude she should assume in her double character of Archduchess of Austria and Queen of France. That she earnestly desired her daughter to become a bond of union between the two powers, it would be idle to doubt or deny; but that she hoped to make of an impressible girl of fifteen years, an instrument of treason fatal to France and to him who would so shortly ascend the throne,

is neither probable nor possible. It is certain, however, that Marie Antoinette manifested sufficient interest in the fortunes of her country to deserve, in a measure, the contemptuous epithet of Autrichienne which her French subjects soon bestowed upon her.

Marie Antoinette left her home early in April, 1770. The streets of Vienna, through which her route lay, were thronged with men and women anxious to extend to her their parting benediction. As she passed, her cheeks were seen to be bathed in tears, while she covered her eyes with her handkerchief or her hands. From time to time she leaned out of her carriage, to take one last look at the home which she could not expect soon to revisit, and which inexorable fate had decreed she should never more behold.

She arrived at Compiègne, in France, on the 14th of the month; she was there received by the whole royal family, and presented by Louis XV. himself to the dauphin, her betrothed on the 16th her marriage took place at Versailles. Twenty millions of francs were spent in festivities and public rejoicings. The bouquet, with which the pyrotechnic display concluded, was formed of thirty thousand rockets, and the colored lamps with which the gardens of the palace were illuminated, were counted by hundreds of thousands.

The city of Paris celebrated the nuptials of the prince a fortnight later, on the 30th of April. An exhibition of fireworks was given upon the Place Louis XV., and here, in the midst of disorders occasioned by the negligence of the police, and by the obstruction of one of the principal outlets by masses of building stone, an indiscriminate massacre of unoffending persons took place at the hands of assassins believed to have been paid by parties opposed to the alliance. Twelve hundred men, women and children were either slain or wounded. Marie Antoinette wept when she learned the extent of the calamity; the Parisians shrugged their shoulders, and contented themselves with saying

that a reign thus inauspiciously commenced could not be happily consummated.

The character of Marie Antoinette furnished a happy contrast, not to say a compensating balance to that of the dauphin; her character, so to speak, completed his. While he was grave,

retiring and contemplative, she was fond of gaiety, of the pleasures derived from intimacy and social intercourse, of music and dancing. She drew him gently from his solitude into the amusements and frivolities of the palace, and sought to render him more at home in the midst of a court so shortly to become his own. She succeeded in gaining the affection of the king, and adroitly avoided giving offence to Madame Dubarry, the favorite. She cherished a hearty detestation of the severe exactions of court formality, and never failed to throw them off when an opportunity occurred, to the indescribable horror of the Duchess of Noailles, the most rigid martinet of the kingdom, and to whom Marie Antoinette had given the name of "Madame Etiquette." She set the regulations of this functionary at defiance, and affected the manners of a private lady to a degree which, in a court so ceremonious, could not fail to excite remark. She would chase butterflies in the park in a manner anything but regal, and would drop in to dine with the younger sons of the king without having been invited. On one occasion, while enjoying the relaxation of a warm bath, she sent for a venerable priest, and questioned him with deep interest upon the situation and requirements of his parish. The alarmed ecclesiastic endeavored to break from the room upon beholding the lady's extraordinary plight, but the dauphiness compelled him to remain a sufficient length of time for the escapade to become public, and thus reach the ears of Madame Etiquette.

Marie Antoinette dressed with taste, danced with unusual grace, and was passionately fond of masked balls by moonlight. Her delight in this last amusement, and the extent to which she