princess, more fruitful but less prudent, share the throne of her
ancestors, of whom she was the only representative. Elizabeth was
polluted with the blood of her cousin, the Queen of Scots, widow of
Marguerite's eldest brother. Marguerite saved many Huguenots from the
massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, and, according to Brantome, the life
of the King, her husband, whose name was on the list of the proscribed.
To close this parallel, Elizabeth began early to govern a kingdom, which
she ruled through the course of her long life with severity, yet
gloriously, and with success. Marguerite, after the death of the Queen
her mother and her brothers, though sole heiress of the House of Valois,
was, by the Salic law, excluded from all pretensions to the Crown of
France; and though for the greater part of her life shut up in a castle,
surrounded by rocks and mountains, she has not escaped the shafts of
obloquy.

The Translator has added some notes, which give an account of such places
as are mentioned in the Memoirs, taken from the itineraries of the time,
but principally from the "Geographie Universelle" of Vosgien; in which
regard is had to the new division of France into departments, as well as
to the ancient one of principalities, archbishoprics, bishoprics,
generalities, chatellenies, balliages, duchies, seigniories, etc.

In the composition of her Memoirs, Marguerite has evidently adopted the
epistolary form, though the work came out of the French editor's hand
divided into three (as they are styled) books; these three books, or
letters, the Translator has taken the liberty of subdividing into
twenty-one, and, at the head of each of them, he has placed a short table
of the contents. This is the only liberty he has taken with the original
Memoirs, the translation itself being as near as the present improved
state of our language could be brought to approach the unpolished