beauty, at the time when she commenced her manifestly preconcerted attack on the heart of Charles, is said to have been but little impaired.

It was not long before she became a formidable rival to the Duchess of Portsmouth, then the reigning sultana. Charles, enslaved by her wit and beauty, allowed her apartments in St. James's palace, and settled on her a pension of four thousand a year. Waller, although in his seventy-fourth year, in his poem on the "Triple Combat " celebrates her arrival in England with all the gallantry and spirit of his youth. The poem commences,

"When through the world fair Mazarine had run,
Bright as her fellow traveller, the sun;

Hither at length the Roman eagle flies,

As the last triumph of her conquering eyes."

Her triumph, however, was of short duration. It was her misfortune to fall in love with the Prince de Monaco, then on a visit in England, and, as usual, reckless of consequences, she made not the slightest attempt to conceal her partiality. Charles, naturally piqued, withheld her pension, which, however, was afterwards goodnaturedly restored.

It is impossible to mention the name of the Duchess of Mazarin without coupling it with that of St. Evremond. That witty and accomplished person, who was then an exile in England, naturally hailed with delight the union with a spirit so congenial to his own. Neither can we mistake the admiration with which he evidently regarded her person. Her wit and beauty are the theme of all his writings; so much so, that he seems to have questioned whether charms so dazzling, and accomplishments so brilliant, could possibly be obscured by a single blemish. With the gallantry of his country, rather than with the sobriety which became his years, he continued, to extreme

old age, the homage which he had lavished on the beautiful Duchess in his youth. It survived to a period of life when passion should have been a stranger to the one, and flattery unacceptable to the other. His devotion, in fact, only ceased with her death.

66

Of the octogenarian recollections of the Viscountess de Longueville, we have more than once availed ourselves. Her father had a house in Pall Mall, and she well remembered Monsieur de St. Evremond, a little old man in his black silk coif," who used to be carried every morning by her window in a sedan chair to the house of the Duchess. He always took with him a pound of butter, made in his own little dairy, for her grace's breakfast.*

The house of the Duchess of Mazarin at Chelsea became the most remarkable of her time. Her saloons were the resort of the gay, the intellectual, and the beautiful. There were to be found there the pleasures of the table combined with the charms of music, gaiety, and wit; the basset-table for those who loved gaming, conversation for the more social, and probably dancing for the young. "Freedom and discretion," writes St. Evremond, "are equally to be found there. Every one is made more at home than in his own house, and treated with more respect than at Court. It is true there are frequent disputes there, but they are those of knowledge and not of anger. There is play there, but it is inconsiderable, and only practised for its amusement. You discover in no countenance the fear of losing, nor concern for what is lost. Some are so disinterested, that they are reproached for expressing joy when they lose, and regret when they win. Play is followed by the most

Oldys, MS. notes to Langbaine.

excellent repasts in the world. There you will find whatever delicacy is brought from France, and whatever is curious from the Indies. Even the commonest meats have the rarest relish imparted to them. There is neither a plenty which gives a notion of extravagance, nor a frugality that discovers penury or meanness.""Her guests," he adds, "see nothing but her. They never come soon enough, nor depart late enough: they go to bed with regret to have left her, and they rise with a desire to behold her again." The temple must indeed have been a classical one, of which the Duchess of Mazarin was the deity, and St. Evremond the highpriest. Her residence at Chelsea was, latterly at least, in a small house which she rented of Lord Cheyne.

It is impossible to glance over the pages of the courtly St. Evremond, without catching a portion of his enthusiasm for the idol of his worship. Nevertheless, there were two sides to the picture. The spoiled beauty had her fits of peevishness, insolence, and spleen; and, in the last years of her life, is said to have resorted for adventitious excitement to the bottle. Moreover, there was perhaps no woman at the Court of Charles whose gallantries were more notorious, or whose intrigues were more unblushingly profligate. Rochester, in his Farewell to Court," places her the first in his "Roll of Infamy."

Though on thy head grey hairs, like Etna's snow,
Are shed, thou'rt fire and brimstone all below:
Thou monstrous thing, in whom at once do rage
The flames of youth and impotence of age."

Evelyn mentions his seeing her at Whitehall, a few days before the death of Charles, when the King was "toying" with her and his other beautiful mistresses, Cleveland and Portsmouth. She was afterwards treated with kindness by King James, and was not only well

received at his Court, but, as appears by a letter from the Princess of Denmark to her sister Mary, was invited to be present at the accouchement of his Queen.

The Duchess survived the Revolution, and met with civility at the gloomy Court of King William. During the last years of her life, her allowance from her husband having been withdrawn, she lived in poverty and almost in distress. There is evidence, in the parish books of Chelsea, that she was in arrears for the payment of her poor-rates during the whole time she resided in that place.* A schedule of her debts, which she sent to her friends at Paris, amounted to no less than 8,3331. 6s. 8d. After her death her body was actually taken possession of by her creditors. She died at her house at Chelsea, on the 2nd June, 1699, in the fifty-third year of her age. The event is noted by Evelyn in his Diary, a few days afterwards, 11th June, 1699.-"Now died the famous Duchess of Mazarin: she had been the richest lady in Europe. She was niece to Cardinal Mazarin, and was married to the richest subject in Europe, as is said. She was born in Rome, educated in France, and was of extraordinary beauty and wit, but dissolute and impatient of matrimonial restraint, so as to be abandoned by her husband and banished, when she came into England for shelter: she lived on a pension given her here, and is reported to have hastened her death by intemperate drinking strong spirits. She has written her own story and adventures, and so has her other extravagant sister, wife of the noble family of Colonna." St. Evremond frequently laments her in his writings, and sometimes in a very characteristic manner. In a letter to M. Silvester,

he writes: "Had the poor Duchess of Mazarine been

* Faulkner's History of Chelsea, vol. ii. p. 199.

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HORTENSIA MANCINI, DUCHESS OF MAZARIN.

alive, she would have had peaches, of which I should not have failed to have shared; she would have had truffles, which we should have eat together; not to mention the carps of Newhall. I must make up the loss of so many advantages, by the Sundays and Wednesdays of Montague House." Notwithstanding the apparently epicurean character of his attachment, St. Evremond, from the time of her death, is said never to have heard her name mentioned without tears.