med the three fair factionists above mentioned--"who threw us all
daily into more confusion than was ever known in Babel."

"Thank heaven!" replied Don Louis, somewhat ungallantly, "our women
_are_ of the disposition seemingly so well known to you. Provided that
they can finger the cash, whether of their husbands or their lovers,
they are satisfied; and I am very glad to say that they do not meddle
with politics, for if they did they would assuredly embroil everything
in Spain as they do in France."

It was during the minority of Louis XIV. that Mazarin had but too good
cause to complain of the three clever and fascinating women he thus
named to Don Louis de Haro, who through their political factions,
intrigues, and gallantries gave Anne of Austria's Minister no rest, and
for a long period not only thwarted and opposed him, but at intervals
placed the State, and even his life, in imminent jeopardy.

Fortunately, in our political history the instances are rare of women
who have quitted the sphere of domesticity and private life to take an
active part in the affairs of State. We say "fortunately;" for in our
opinion such abstention has tended to the happiness of both sexes in
England.

In French memoirs, politics and scandal, the jokes of the _salons_ and
the councils of the Cabinet are inextricably mixed up together, and
reveal a political system in which the authority exercised under free
institutions by men had been transferred to the art, the tact, and the
accomplishments of the female sex. We therein see how much women have
done by those subtle agencies. If France was a despotism tempered by
epigrams, it was the life of the _salons_ which brought those epigrams
to perfection; and the _salons_ thus constituted a sort of social
parliament, which, though unable to stop the supplies or withhold the
Mutiny Act, still possessed a formidable weapon of offence in the power
of making the Government ridiculous. Such was the difference existing
between two quite distinct modes of government; between Parliamentary
government and closet government; between the mace of the House of
Commons and the fan of the Duchess de Longueville. England, as we need
hardly say, has never had a government of this description. The nearest
approach to it which she has ever seen was under the sway of Charles the
Second, and, accordingly, the nearest approach to French memoirs which
our literature possesses is in the volumes of Pepys and Hamilton.