gate by which they may enter England, diverting our forces, and taking the scene of war to our own borders. Learn to forget your French, or, if ye be so enamoured of France, love her after our manner; come, take a share, and be partakers of our victories! Are not our forces, if united, sufficient to overcome, nay, to bring hither in chains that king of Bourges, and make us the masters of his continent? France did never so much good to Scotland in twenty years as Scotland hath suffered loss from England by the love of France. Are not your wounds received at Crevant and Verneuil yet bleeding, and all for France! It hath been your valour, and not the French, which heretofore impeached our conquest and progress in France; had it not been for your · swords, we had ere now planted our trophies on the loftiest summits of the Alps and the Pyrenees."*

But the alliance with the continent was preferred; the poor young princess, in her twelfth year, was consigned to the mercies of the horrible Louis XI., and closed a sorrowful life in France by dying of a broken heart.

*Hawthornden, &c.

I

THE CHEVALIER D'ARTAGNAN,

Captain-Lieutenant of the Mousquetaires du Roi.

A

LL who have read that famous romance of

Alexandre Dumas, "The Three Musketeers,” are familiar with the name of the valiant Gascon adventurer, the comrade of those three mysterious swordsmen, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis; but few, we believe, are aware that he was a man of flesh and blood, who really existed, and whose memoirs were published at Cologne by a certain Peter Marteau, in the year 1700, and that they extend -to three volumes of some five hundred pages each.

The editor tells us that they were collected from loose papers in the hand-writing of the Chevalier, which documents he had found after his death and simply connected. From these we learn that he was one who really shared in the confidence or intrigues of Richelieu and Mazarin; who served in the wars of the Grand Monarque under Condé; who ran alike after great court ladies and gay grisettes; made love to any man's

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wife or daughter without compunction, punished him for interfering-if a citizen by a good caning, if a gentleman of good blood by leaving him on the green turf of the Pré-aux-Clercs, or in the barren fields near the old Convent des Carmes, with three feet of a bowl-hilted rapier in his body; who as a soldier may have been drilled by the great Martinet, as a courtier may have danced to the music of Raimond Lully, laughed at the jokes of Rochefoucault (the Rochester of Louis's court), and frequented the Hôtel de Bourbon when flirtations with chanoinesses were no scandal in the salons of Paris; and who was a contemporary, perhaps acquaintance, of Racine, Corneille, and Molière, as he was the comrade of Condé, of Turenne, and of Grammont.

From those quaint old volumes of Peter Marteau we learn that Claude de Batz de Castelmor, the Chevalier d'Artagnan, who was born about the last years of the reign of Henry IV., was the youngest son of a poor old Gascon gentleman, who had little or nothing whereon to support a large family, and who consequently sent him forth to seek his fortune in the world, after having given him all he could spare, to wit, a little shaggy Bearnese pony, worth about two louis, with ten crowns for his journey.

To these the old gentleman added his blessing, and that which proved more useful in those cutand-thrust days, the old sword which he had worn

J

in the wars of Henry of Navarre; and with these small properties, and a threadbare cloak and doublet, our Chevalier came to Paris, at a time when hate was high between the Catholics and Huguenots, when men's swords were seldom from their hands and never from their girdles, and when robbers, mendicants, murderers, and all manner of brawlers, made the gay city of the Bourbons a perilous residence.

The ten crowns of D'Artagnan were soon spent, and want compelled him to enlist, not in the Musketeers, as we are told in the brilliant romance of M. Dumas, but as a private soldier under Louis XIII., in the old Gardes François, a body originally raised by Charles IX., in 1563, for the immediate protection of the palace. Five feet four inches French (about six feet English) formed the standard height of this corps, to which peculiar privileges were attached, and to which no stranger, or even a native of Savoy, Alsace, Strasbourg, or Piedmont, could belong.

In consequence of his good conduct and courage, he was soon transferred from this corps to the first company of the King's Musketeers, commanded by the Comte de Treville, the son of an old Leaguer, and a prime favourite with Louis XIII., who appointed him premier CapitaineLieutenant in 1634.

The gentlemen composing the household troops of France, particularly the Mousquetaires Gris et

י

Noires, seem to have been pretty much in character as Dumas describes them. "Loose, halfdrunk, imposing, the King's Musketeers, or rather M. de Treville's, would spread themselves about in the cabarets and in the public walks, shouting, twisting their moustaches, clanking their swords, and taking great pleasure in annoying the guards of M. le Cardinal; then drawing in the open streets, as if it were the best of all possible sports, sometimes killed, but sure to be in that case both wept and avenged; often killing others, but then certain of not rotting in prison, M. de Treville being there to claim them." Hence, in the first volume, the public duties of D'Artagnan are mingled with a great many savage duels fought with the sword for himself or his comrades, and innumerable amours, the relation of which suits not the somewhat fastidious taste of the present day.

The Mousquetaires consisted of two companies selected from the young men of the best families in France. The king was captain of each; consequently, the captain-lieutenant, the rank speedily attained by D'Artagnan, stood high in position among the officers of the Guards. The second company was attached in after-years to Cardinal Mazarin as his personal guard.

The uniform of the Mousquetaires was scarlet, with scarlet cuffs and lining. The first company had their ornaments, lace and buttons of gold; the second, of silver. The uniform of D'Artagnan