banks, and manufactories, and encouraged art and literature. She corresponded with learned men in all countries, and wrote, herself, "Instructions for a Code of Laws," besides several dramatic pieces and "Moral Tales," for her grandchildren. Her son Paul succeeded her.
She was very handsome and dignified in her person. Her eyes were blue and piercing, her hair auburn, and though not tall, her manner of carrying her head made her appear so. She seems to have obtained the love as well as reverence of her subjects, which, setting aside her mode of acquiring the throne, is not wonderful, seeing that her vices as a ruler were those deemed conventional among sovereigns, namely, ambition and a thirst for aggrandizement, unshackled by humanity or principle.
CATHARINE DE MEDICIS,
Queen of France, was the only daughter of Lorenzo de Medicis, Duke d'Urbino, by Magdalen de la Tour, and was born at Florence, in 1519. Being early left an orphan, she was brought up by her great-uncle Cardinal Giulio de Medici, afterwards Pope Clement the Sixth. In 1534, she was married to Henry, Duke d'Orleans, son of Francis the First of France. Catharine was one of the chief ornaments of the splendid court of her father-in-law, where the graces of her person and her mental accomplishments shone with inimitable lustre. At the same time, though so young, she practised all those arts of dissimulation and complaisance which were necessary to ingratiate her with so many persons of opposite characters and interests. She even lived upon terms of intimacy with Diana de Poictiers, her husband's mistress. In 1547, Henry became king, under the title of Henry the Second. Though childless the first ten years of her marriage, Catharine subsequently bore her husband ten children. Three of her sons became kings of France, and one, daughter, Margaret, married Henry of Navarre. During her husband's life, she possessed but little influence in public affairs, and was chiefly employed in instructing her children, and acquiring that ascendency over them, by which she so long preserved the supreme authority.
She was left a widow in 1559, and her son, Francis the Second, a weak youth of sixteen, succeeded to the crown. He had married Mary, Queen of Scotland, and her uncles, the Guises, had the chief management of affairs during this reign, which was rendered turbulent and bloody by the violent persecutions of the Huguenots. Catharine could only preserve a degree of authority by acting with the Guises; yet that their furious policy did not agree with her inclinations, may be inferred from her raising the virtuous Michael de l'Hospital to the chancellorship.
Francis the Second died in 1560, and was succeeded by his brother, Charles the Ninth, then eleven years of age. Catharine possessed the authority, though not the title, of regent; and, in order to counterbalance the power of the Guises, she inclined to the party of the King of Navarre, a Protestant, and the associated princes. A civil war ensued, which was excited by the Duke de Guise, who thereby became a favourite of the Catholics; but he being killed in 1562, a peace was made between the two parties. Catharine was now decidedly at the head of affairs, and began to display all the extent of her dark and dissembling politics. She paid her
