the latter subject she says herself, "I must be cruelly
ugly: I never had a passable feature. My eyes are little, my nose
short and big, my lips long and flat, my cheeks hanging, my face long,
my waist and my legs large, my stature short: sum-total, a little old
fright." But she was intelligent and witty, and that, in France at
least, goes a long way with a woman. She was also loyal and truthful.
No one doubted her word when once she had spoken. This makes her
testimony valuable, though many incidents circumspectly narrated by
her seem incredible. Of the young duchesse de Bourgogne, second
daughter of Louis XIV., she says: One of her amusements was to make
her lackeys drag her over the floor by her feet. It is to be presumed
that the duchess was a _very_ young person at this time.

Madame Charlotte's portrait of Marie Therese, queen of _Le Grand
Monarque_, is not very flattering: "Her teeth were black and broken,
and she ate immoderately of garlic and chocolate. She was very fond of
basset, but she never won, for she could never learn to play any game.
She ate long and very slowly, taking mouthfuls for a canary." The
diagnosis of the disease of which the queen died displays the popular
pathological lore of those times. Madame says: "She died of an abscess
on the arm, for which Fagon bled her. The humor entered and fell on
the heart: he then gave her an emetic to remove the humor, and this
suffocated her." La Valiere, according to Madame Charlotte, was the
only woman who ever really loved the king. She limped a little, had
lovely eyes, irregular teeth, and was very neat in her person, while
Madame de Montespan was just the reverse.

Of Cardinal Richelieu we have a glimpse in madame's letters which his
biographers, generally at least, omit. She tells us that he used to
have violent fits of insanity, during which he would imagine that he
was a horse, jump over a billiard-table, kick his servants, neigh, and
make a fearful noise for an hour. His domestics would then get him
into bed, and after much sweating he would wake without the least
memory of what had passed. As "jumping over a billiard-table" might
appear an incredible feat, at least for an aged cardinal, it is proper
to remark that the billiard-tables of those times bore about the same
relation in size to our modern billiard-tables that the ancient
spinnet did to a grand pianoforte.

JAPANESE ART.

Some of our young ladies have a pretty art of constructi