a 
1826.] Notes of a Miscellaneous Reader. 27h 
intellects—more creative geniuses, there may have been—there haye. 
been. Of as benevolent, hearts we have also some, though few, exam- 
ples. But where did we ever see them united as. in him? When. did) 
we ever see in any other warrior, brave among the brave, a heart of even) 
woman’s.tenderness united to more than even manly courage ?,. Be 
sieging a town with skill and bravery unrivalled—yet undoing with his 
left hand the work of his right, by surreptitiously sending food. to, stay, 
the sufferings of his famished people! How few are there who. have 
put to so much profit the lessons of hard fortune, as he who, as_his 
poet says of him, 
‘“ —par de longs malheurs apprit 4 gouverner, 
Calma les factions, sut yaincre et pardonner, 
Confondit et Mayenne, et la ligue, et I’ Ibere, 
Et ffit de ses sujets le vainqueur et le pére.”’ 
This is a furiously long note on half-a-dozen lines ; but when I get on 
the topic of Henri Quatre, my subject always takes the bit between its 
teeth, and runs away with me. 
There are many very curious and characteristic anecdotes of the times 
of the Ligne, in the History of the Order of the Holy-Ghost by M. de 
St. Foix. (CEuvres, t. 6.) This order was instituted by Henry III, on 
his return from Poland, partly as a stroke of policy to attach to himself 
the great nobles of the kingdom; and partly to supply the place of the 
order of St. Michael, which had fallen (from over-use), into comparative 
insignificance :—both from the number having so greatly increased as 
to render it common, and from the proofs of birth being. less rigidly 
enforced, and birth itself less exacted as a sine gud non, than formerly. 
It was.only, however, during the reign of Charles IX. that this desertion 
of the order arrived at any pitch, and that probably during the latter years 
of his reign only, for on Michaelmas 1572, that is, on the Michaelmas 
immediately succeeding the massacre of St. Bartholemew (23d and 24th 
of August), Charles IX. held a solemn chapter of the order; at which(as 
M. de St. Foix quotes from the Mémoires de l’Etat de France, ) Henri 1V, 
then King of Navarre, and the young prince de Condé were obliged to 
assist. After this, however, it seems to have fallen rapidly into’ the 
slight esteem incident to the great numbers and obscure birth of those: 
who were admitted into it. For it was early as December 1578—only 
six years afterwards, that Henry III instituted his new order of 
the Holy Ghost: one of the first rules of which is, that the knight 
must. previously have been admitted a knight of the order of St. 
Michael., The order thus being instituted during the height of ‘the 
power of the Ligne, the history of that order, which consists chiefly of 
short précis of its different members, casts necessarily much light upon 
the national manners and feelings of the period. One cannot but regret: 
that M. de St. Foix, who writes with the learning of an antiquary and 
the animation of a novelist and philosopher, should not have undertaken 
this. history til] his age induced him to leave it rather a mass or seriés 
of curious, materials and notes for history, than an history itself. - His 
Essais, Historiques sur Paris display vast acquaintance with the domestic 
history; of his country, and would, one should have thought, have furnished 
an, historian of the ordres du Roi with much valuable and spirited matériel 
for his, work. Still his age (upwards, I believe, of seventy) when he com-) 
menced it, renders it more a store houseof material, than history itself. 
There is)a\ distinct and separate notice of every individual knight’: to be 
accurate in which hecessitaied an extent and precision of study and 
‘¥ 
