of the church, which Time had changed so little, to the business or the pleasure of the world, which changes every moment as we breathe. At the dinner, which was served on our return to the hotel, there sat down two or three ladies with their husbands-residents at Abbevilletwo young Americans from the Southern States, and ourselves. The two Americans had been for several weeks in the hotel, and they purposed to stay there for some time yet. They had come over, like so many of the sons of wealthy Southerners, to avoid the evil chances of the war; and they beheld from afar off-by means of the newspapers and occasional letters the issue of that struggle in which the fate of their friends, and their estates, and their own life prospects, were involved. Men who have not been upon the Continent during the last three years can have no idea of the number of Americans who wander upon the face of it, during their country's time of trouble. They are to be found almost all over Europe. They fill the Hôtel du Louvre and the Grand Hôtel at Paris. They are strolling about the picture-galleries at Dresden, and driving up and down the Prater at Vienna. They salute each other on the Newska Perspective; for of all the cities of the Old World, which the republicans of America desire to see, it is St. Petersburg-the stronghold of Imperialism-that they desire to see the most excepting it may be London. And they are to be met with, as I have said, even in French cities as small as Abbeville. But if the reader will forgive this digression, I will continue the story of my own short stay in Picardy last summer. On the second day after our arrival at Abbeville, I paid a visit to S. Riquier, a village six miles distant from the city. They told me that the parish church of S. Riquier was S. Wulfran in miniature, and it was because they told me so that I went to see it. It was in the month of August, as I said in the beginning of the paper, and the long roadsometimes dipping down into a valley, sometimes passing over a hill, but generally going through a level country, and without a bend in its entire course was as hot a road as any I ever travelled on. There were a few small trees planted here and there along its edge, but on either side of it broad acres of stubble-land were stretched out, hard and dry, under a scorching sun. When we got to S. Riquier, we found the church was closed. The keys were to be obtained from a blacksmith in the village. So we walked up the broad, grass-grown street to his shop, and then he came down with us to the church, unlocked the doors, and let us in. What a com fort it was to be allowed to walk about as we chose! The blacksmith did nothing more than follow us, ready to answer-and answer intelligently -the questions we asked; but not attempting that long, wearisome recitation of names and dates which the verger by trade insists upon giving you. There are some curious things to be seen in the church of S. Riquier, and at least one work of real art-a small but exquisitely-carved figure of the Saviour, above the High Altar. The day after our visit to this secluded but most interesting village, I went to Amiens to see the cathedral, which is confessedly the finest church in Northern France, and, if I may be permitted to say so, one of the finest in the world. As we look at its soaring front, at the miracles of design in statues and tracery, at the beauty of the parts, and the splen dour of the whole, we may be half inclined to ask-as Mr. Browning asked when he saw S. Peter's Is it really on the Earth, This miraculous House of GOD? Which numbered cubits, gem from gem, S. Firmin, at Amiens, was built about the same time as the cathedral of Wells. Its west front is not so broad as is the front of Wells, but how very much higher it is we need hardly say. And when we come to speak of the general proportions of Amiens, it is not with Wells, so much as with Salisbury, that we should compare it. The spire of Salisbury rises four hundred feet above the pavement; the spire of Amiens rises four hundred and twenty-two feet. But then the enormous height of the roof of Amiens-which adds immensely to the effect of the interior-seems to take away from the height of the spire. The height of the nave roof of Amiens is two hundred and eight feet; that of the roof of Salisbury is only eighty-one. Amiens covers seventy-one thousand square feet; Salisbury only fifty-five thousand. Altogether, the cubic contents of Amiens are at least double those of Salisbury, and the labour and cost bestowed upon it must have been more than double. And no one will say that labour and cost-often so badly bestowed in the world-have been badly bestowed here. The cathedral of Amiens is, as a whole, magnificent. Regarded from within or without, from the point of view of the architect, or from that of the common traveller, it is admirable. It is admirable in design and wonderful in decoration. Stained glass has very seldom been more effectively used than in the great rose window of the west front, and the colouring of some of the chapels in the east end is gorgeous. Here and there, indeed, the ornaments of an altar seem offensive; splendour and tawdriness mingle, as with regret we sometimes see them mingle in the continental churches. But the magnificence of the whole must please the eye: it may also gladden the heart. It may help us to remember, as we think of such great houses of prayer that have risen all over Europe, what in England we might otherwise be tempted to forget-that the words of the old Ambrosian Hymn are as true as they are tolerant: "The Holy Church throughout all the World doth acknowledge Thee." T. FREDERICK WEDMORE. ELIZABETH CHARLOTTE OF ORLEANS. "I CANNOT bear for the Germans to wish to be other than Germans and despise their country: those who do so are not worth a hair." With these words of her own we introduce a German woman, who, after fifty years' residence in France, preserved her German feelings in their purity, although this residence took place at an epoch when Louis XIV., at whose court she lived, had become a sun, round which Paris, France, and Europe revolved. This woman is Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, the wife of Duke Philip of Orleans, and mother of the Regent. In the numerous memoirs of the period she is always alluded to with a mixture of respect, fear, and ridicule. She extorted respect by her purity at an utterly corrupt court, and was notorious for a sharp tongue, but through her German bluntness she exposed herself to the court wits, who eagerly seized the opportunity to avenge themselves on the female Cato. In order to know her better than can be done from such memoirs, dictated by malice and hatred, it is necessary to consult her letters, which are at the same time a current critical history of the French court from 1671. The largest and most important part of her correspondence was recently examined in the Hanoverian archives by Leopold Ranke, and employed in the fifth volume of his History of France. From this work a biography of the excellent woman has just been compiled, and published in the latest volume of "Raumer's Historic Pocket-Book."* Elizabeth Charlotte was a granddaughter of Frederick V., the unhappy Winter King of Bohemia. At the age of nineteen she was obliged to quit Heidelberg Castle, in order to become the wife of Philip d'Orléans, and sister-in-law of Louis XIV. She took with her to Versailles a healthy constitution, both mentally and physically, but personal beauty was no part of her dower. "I must certainly be ugly," she says in a letter. "I have small eyes, a short, thick nose, a large face, and am short, stout, and broad: summa summarum, I am a very ugly prize." Philip d'Orléans was least competent of all men to appreciate her great mental and social qualities. "Monsieur had more feminine than masculine manners about him," she describes her husband; "loved neither horses nor hunting, nothing but gambling, holding soirées, eating well, dancing, and being finely dressed; in a word, everything that ladies love." Ön festal occasions he decorated himself like a woman, with pearls and diamonds. He neither loved his wife nor any other lady. Two men, the Chevalier de Lorraine and the Marquis d'Effiat, completely ruled the weak duke. It was more than court scandal that these two favourites poisoned Henrietta of England, the first wife of Philip d'Orléans. These two men also assumed a hostile position to Charlotte Elizabeth, because they were afraid of losing their influence over the husband through her. In her letters she frequently complains of "the Chevalier stuff, the cabal, these devils, who gain the upper hand of Monsieur, and do me all the injury imaginable." That Louis XIV. respected her the more he learned to know her, and proved this to her by marks of favour, was not of such benefit to her as might be supposed at such a court as Versailles. Her * Leipzig: Brockhaus. 1865. public position was thus secured, but she received no protection from secret insults, which always hurt the most, and the less so, because she could not often lay her complaints before the king, who was very fond of his Olympian serenity. Elizabeth Charlotte had been married ten years when Lorraine and Effiat formed a plan to cast doubts on her connubial fidelity. Madame de Grançay, who was supposed to be Philip's mistress, declared she had been insulted by Chevalier Sinsanet. At the hunts, upon which the duchess accompanied the king every week, Sinsanet always rode at her side, and the courtiers, who were aware of this, opened their ears to the scandal that he had insulted the mistress in order to please the wife. It was not till months later that Elizabeth Charlotte heard of it and complained to the king. He advised her not to make any disturbance: his brother knew her too well, and knew, like all the world, that no one was less desirous of admiration than she was. Her husband, of whom she implored protection, would not listen to the affair, but some months later, when she was riding with the king, the latter told her how his brother had begged him to offer her a public insult. The intriguers had now brought on to the stage a pretended confidante, a Mademoiselle de Theobon, in addition to the pretended lover, Sinsanet. Philip d'Orléans again declared his ignorance, and considered an explanation as unnecessary; but in the summer of 1682, or eighteen months after the first spreading of the disgraceful calumny, he suddenly dismissed Mademoiselle Theobon, and not only forbade her from any future intercourse with the duchess, but strictly ordered the servants not to convey any letters between them. The measure of insults was now full, and Elizabeth Charlotte petitioned the king for leave to end her days in the convent of Maubuisson. On the same day, Philip d'Orléans had begged his brother to settle his matrimonial quarrel. After her painful experiences, the duchess did not wish for a reconciliation, and to the king's remark that she was still young, and might live many years, she replied: "I confess that formerly I never could understand how a woman could live in a convent. But as I now see that it is of no avail to live innocently, that every invention of the Evil One meets with belief, that my honour is left unguarded, and that all promises are of no effect, it seems to me only commanded by common sense that I should voluntarily form a resolution into which I might be forced hereafter. For, as my enemies will not dare to prepare the same fate for me as for my predecessor, they must do their utmost to rob me of all respect in the sight of the duke and yourself. With one they have succeeded, and how can I tell how long it will require with the other?" The king offered to pledge his word that no one should insult her in future, but the insulted lady would not be conciliated, and only his express prohibition prevented her from entering the convent. After this, Philip d'Orléans was summoned, and declared himself convinced of his wife's innocence. "In that case, let us all three embrace," cried the king, and thus terminated the scene of reconciliation, as it would be performed on a stage. Mademoiselle Theobon must not be recalled, but the king granted her a pension as a consolation, and the gentlemen and the calumnious Grançay retained their situations. Madame's two children, a son, Philip, the future regent, and a daughter, Elizabeth Charlotte, who might have made up to her for the want of an affectionate husband and respectable suite, became the source of fresh quarrels between the parents. In 1689, Philip entered on his fifteenth year, and a tutor had to be selected for him. The father made a most disgraceful choice, for he intended the post for the Marquis d'Effiat. This man the duchess opposed with all the energy of a mother's heart. "He is the greatest scoundrel in France," she said to her husband; "and it would be a bad beginning for a young prince to commence life with the worst excesses of the world." The duke urged that D'Effiat was quite an altered man, but the duchess denied this on well-founded grounds. If D'Effat were an honest nian, she said, she would willingly sacrifice her dislike of him, but the question affected her conscience and her son's reputation. What could she answer him hereafter, if he reproached her with having sacrificed his welfare to her own interests? She found no support from the king in this affair, for Madame de Maintenon backed D'Effiat. Originally governess to the children of Madame de Montespan, she had entered into intimate relations with the king, and always behaved as the protectress of his children, especially of the Duke de Maine, for whom Louis XIV. felt the greatest affection. Elizabeth Charlotte suspected that the Maintenon wished for Maine to be better educated than Orleans, so that he might hereafter surpass the legitimate prince in every respect. She thus remained alone in her opposition, but would not let her opinion be altered by her husband, or by the king, or by his clerical and temporal accomplices. Her firm maternal love gained the victory, and D'Effiat did not become her son's tutor. And what did the brave lady gain by this? When the first tutor, Laurent, an honest and deserving man, died two years after, his successor was the immoral Abbé Dubois. Louis A heavier trial was already preparing for her mother's heart. XIV. sought legitimate alliances for his illegitimate children, and had selected the Duke de Chartres (the younger Philip d'Orléans) for Mademoiselle de Blois, and Princess Elizabeth Charlotte for the Duke de Maine. The duchess was in a terrible state of alarm when she received a hint that she would have to sacrifice her two children. "I do not know how I shall manage," she writes to her aunt in Hanover, "to escape this misfortune. To see my only son and daughter offered up as sacrifices to heighten the grandeur of my worst enemies, is the most painful thing one can feel in life." She had nobody to whom she could repeat her woes, and had to be more on her guard with her husband than with the rest, "for he has the agreeable habit, when I say a word to him, of carrying it at once to the king, adding a great deal, and doing me great mischief with his majesty." For three years the king held his tongue to the duchess about this plan. What she knew she had learned through third parties. He was afraid of a scene, and took the energetic lady by surprise. He sent for the Duke de Chartres, and informed him of his will. The young man was embarrassed by the king's authoritative language, and left the decision to his parents. His father, who was present, at once gave his assent: Elizabeth Charlotte was called in, and immediately on her entrance the king expressed, with assumed confidence, a hope that she would not |