O all the charms of beauty and the utmost elegance of external form, Mary added those accomplishments which render their impression irresistible. Polite, affable, insinuating, sprightly, and capable of speaking and writing with equal ease and dignity. Sudden, however, and violent in all her attachments, because her heart was warm and unsuspicious. Impatient of contradiction, because she had been accustomed from her infancy to be treated as a queen. No stranger, on some occasions, to dissimulation, which in that perfidious court where she received her education was reckoned among the necessary arts of government. Not insensible to flattery, or unconscious of that pleasure with which almost every woman beholds the influence of her own beauty. Formed with the qualities which we love, not with the talents that we admire, she was an agreeable woman rather than an illustrious queen. The vivacity of her spirit, not sufficiently tempered with sound judgment, and the warmth of her heart, which was not at all times under the restraint of discretion, betrayed her both into errors and into crimes. To say that she was always unfortunate will not account for that long and almost uninterrupted succession of calamities which befell her; we must likewise add, that she was often imprudent. Her passion for Darnley was rash, youthful, and excessive; and though the sudden transition to the opposite extreme was the natural effect of her ill-requited love, and of his ingratitude, insolence, and brutality, yet neither these nor Bothwell's artful address and important services can justify her attachments to that nobleman. Even the manners of the age, licentious as they were, are no apology for this unhappy passion; nor can they induce us to look on that tragical and infamous scene which followed upon it with less abhorrence.
Humanity will draw a veil over this part of her character which it cannot approve, and may perhaps prompt some to impute her actions to her situation more than to her dispositions; and to lament the unhappiness of the former, rather than accuse the perverseness of the latter. Mary's sufferings exceed, both in degree and duration, those tragical distresses which fancy has feigned to excite sorrow and commiseration; and while we survey them, we are apt altogether to forget her frailties: we think of her faults with less indignation, and approve of our tears, as if they were shed for a person who had attained much nearer to pure virtue.
With regard to the queen's person, a circumstance not to be omitted in writing the history of a female reign, all contemporary authors agree in ascribing to Mary the utmost beauty of countenance and elegance of shape of which the human form is capable. Her hair was black, although, according to the fashion of that age, she frequently wore borrowed locks, and of different colours. Her eyes were a dark grey, her complexion was exquisitely fine, and her hands and arms remarkably delicate, both as to shape and colour. Her stature was of an height that rose to the majestic. She danced, walked, and rode with equal grace. Her taste for music was just; and she both sung and played upon the lute with uncommon skill. Towards the end of her life, long confinement, and the coldness of the houses in which she had been imprisoned, brought on a rheumatism which often deprived her of the use of her limbs. No man, says Brantome, ever beheld her person without admiration and love, or will read her history without sorrow.
GABRIELLE D'ESTREES.
[1576.]
DAVENPORT ADAMS.
HE most famous of the beauties of France, and whose renown is inseparably associated with the glory of the most popular of the French monarchs, was born at the Château de Cœuvres, near Soissons, in the year 1576. Her father was a gallant soldier, who had deserved well of his country, Antoine D'Estrees, Marquis de Cœuvres. At an early age Gabrielle gave promise of a remarkable beauty, when time should have developed the fair proportions, rounded the slender figure, and lent expression to the radiant face. Though her mother was notorious for the looseness of her life, the daughter showed a high sense of purity, and her reserve was the despair of all the young nobles in her neighbourhood. She reached the age of seventeen without knowing what it was to love, and her heart was as innocent as her loveliness was without blemish.
Shortly after the accession of Henri Quatre to his precarious throne, he despatched on a mission to Monsieur D'Estrees the first gentleman of his chamber, the handsome and accomplished Duke de Bellegarde. This brilliant courtier gazed with wonder on the beauty so long concealed in the obscurity of a feudal castle. Her tresses glowed with burnished gold; her blue eyes sparkled with a dazzling fire, her complexion was radiantly fair, her nose well shaped and aquiline, her mouth was well fitted with pearly teeth, and her lips resembled the all-compelling bow of the god of love. A stately throat, a gently swelling bust, a rounded arm and slender hand—these completed the charms which a fascinating address and natural elegance of movement rendered still more irresistible.