universally allowed to be among the very best of that sort of writing in the French language. Some of her maxims are still frequently cited.
Madame Deshouliferes was made a member of the Academy of Aries, and of that of the Ricoveratl in Padua. She numbered among her friends many of the most distinguished persons of the day The two Corneilles, Flechier, Quinault, the Duke of Nevers, and La Rochefoucault, professed for her the highest esteem as a woman and as an authoress. The great Condé appears to have entertained for her a more tender sentiment—his rank, power, and many dazzling qualities, might have proved dangerous to a lighter mind; but her firm principles of virtue, and love for her husband, preserved her from the shadow of reproach. She had several children—a daughter, Antoinette, who inherited some of her mother's poetical talent; she took a prize at the French Academy, though Fontenelle was her competitor.
Madame Deshouliferes achieved her literary reputation, not by isolating herself from the duties of society, which poets have deemed necessary to the development of the poetic temperament. A tender mother, an active friend, as we have seen above, she did not hesitate to plunge into the difficulties of diplomacy, when called upon to aid her husband,—proving that the cultivation of the mind is by no means incompatible with attention to the minute and daily duties of the mother of a family. And those ladies who affect to despise feminine pursuits, or who complain of the cramping effect of woman's household cares, may learn from the example of this successful authoress, that neither are obstacles in the path of real genius, but rather an incentive to call forth talents, by developing the character in conformity with nature. Madame Deshoulières had studied with success geometry and philosophy, and was well versed in the Latin, Italian, and Spanish languages. She died in 1694.
DESMOND, COUNTESS OF, CATHARINE FITZGERALD,
Who attained the age of one hundred and forty-five years, was a daughter of the house of Drumana, in the county of Waterford, Ireland, and second wife of James, twelfth Earl of Desmond, to whom she was married in the reign of Edward the Fourth, (1461,) and being on that occasion presented at court, she danced with the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard the Third. The beauty and vivacity of Lady Desmond rendered her an object of attraction to a very advanced age, and she had passed her hundredth year before she could refrain from dancing, or mingling in gay assemblies. She resided at Inchiquin, in Munster, and held her jointure as dowager from many successive Earls of Desmond, till the family being by an attainder deprived of their estate, she was reduced to poverty. Although then one hundred and forty, she went to London, laid her case before James the First, and obtained relief. Sir Walter Raleigh was well acquainted with this lady, and mentions her as a prodigy. Lord Bacon informs us that she had three new sets of natural teeth. It is uncertain in what year she died, but she was not living in 1617, when Sir Walter Raleigh published his history.
