1826.) Notes of a Miscellaneous Reader. 269 
strange that the country and the birth-place of one who is so favourite a 
hero, of what may be termed the romance of history, should have 
attracted so. little distinctive notice and remark. The Highlands of 
Scotland. are not. more dissimilar from the Weald of Kent, than was 
Béarn, the native country of Henri Quatre, from Normandy, Picardy, 
or the, Isle of France: neither, at the period of his birth, and. indeed 
for many years after, was there more probability of his ever sueceeding 
to the crown. of France, than there was for Mary, Queen of Scots, to 
be the mother of the successor to the English throne, when Edward, 
Mary,\and Elizabeth, were still alive and youthful. This broad and par- 
ticular distinction is not, I think, sufficiently borne in mind by the 
general, reader—nay, even by historical readers, and writers also; for 
though no. one could have more intimate and minute knowledge of the 
period of French history which comprehends the civil wars than the 
author of the Henriade, yet, in another place, in alluding to the Prince 
of Béarn being presented by his mother to the Protestant troops at 
Jarnac, he says, ‘ thus, like Charlemagne, Henri Quatre was a rebel 
before he became a king.” But it was not so: whatever might be the 
relative position of Antoine de Bourbon, his father, as first prince of 
the blood of France, there can be no doubt that Henri, who, in right 
of his mother, was the immediate heir to her independent sovereignty, 
could in no case be a rebel to the crown of France.. Béarn, in par- 
ticular, was never subject to that crown. It had been always ‘held from 
God alone,” as the feudal phrase expressed it. Thus even Henri him- 
self, who united the two, was king of France and of Navarre ;;con- 
firming,. by the second possessive article, the decision pronounced after 
his accession, as to the independence of Béarn, which : formed so 
considerable and so peculiar a portion of the later kingdom of ; Navarre. 
But in other respects, also, Béarn is singularly worthy of some par- 
ticular remark. Its romantic and peculiar characteristics bore, as it 
appears to me, no small share in the formation of the character. of 
Henri. It is certain that Henri d’Albret, his maternal, grandfather, 
was most superlatively national ; and thence adopted all those curious 
fantasies of rearing, which, in this case, succeeded so well. Bred in 
the mountains, on an equality with the young mountaineers, Henriot, 
as his companions called him, became vigorous in a most unprincely 
degree, both as to the physical frame and the spirit within; which last 
was. thus rendered worthy of being cultivated by such men as Florent 
Chrétien, as La Gaucherie, and, I may add, as Mornay. The latter, 
indeed, was only three years older than his great master ; but the sterling 
soe of his mind, and the severe integrity of his character, gave 
him always a stronger hold over Henri than is usual with so slight a 
disparity of age. He also was a Béarnais. (i 
T even question whether many of the most striking and peculiar 
points of Henri’s character and genius would have existed if he had 
been a French prince of the blood only. As it was, with all the vivacity 
and graceful courage of his father’s country, he united the characteris- 
tics of the free mountaineers of Béarn—of his mother’s country—of 
his mother’s race. Jeanne d’Albret, indeed, was a person so emifent 
and) extraordinary in herself, that she needed such’a son as Henri 
Quatre to throw her own fame into the shade. She was to the full the 
equal in intellect, activity, and genius to Catherine of Medicis—(I speak 
here of the degree, not the exercise of those intellects)—but this latter 
had only Francis II, Charles IX, Henry III, the Duc d’Alencon, for her 
