rom Fraser's Magazine.]

MADAME DE POMPADOUR.

In the gallery of the Louvre at Paris there is, or was some few years
ago, a crayon drawing by La Tour, which represents Madame de Pompadour in
all the pride and luster of her early beauty. The marchioness is seated
near a table covered with books and papers, among which may be
distinguished Montesquieu's _Spirit of Laws_ and the _Encyclopaedia_, two
of the remarkable works which appeared during her reign of favor. An open
album shows an engraving of Gay, chiseling some portrait of Louis XV., or
his mistress. The marchioness is represented with her hair slightly
powdered; she is clad in an open, flowered brocade robe, and wears
red-heeled shoes, of a delicacy, as regards size, worthy of an Oriental
foot. In this portrait there is much to admire: the neck, which is
slender and well-shaped, springs most gracefully from the shoulders; the
head, which is also admirably proportioned, is a model of feminine
beauty; the brow is lofty and severe; the lips, slightly compressed,
express at the same time decision and irony; the eyes are of a most vivid
brilliancy, and the nose is perfection itself: in short, there reigns
throughout every lineament of this most striking countenance an air of
nobility, and even of dignity, which qualifies in some measure the
accounts left us by history of the share she bore in the _petits soupers_
of Versailles, the masked balls of the Hotel de Ville, and the thousand
other orgies got up for the entertainment of the most dissolute monarch
of (at that period) one of the most dissolute courts of Europe.

The history of Madame de Pompadour is not generally known in all its
particulars, though much has been written of her by persons of every
shade of opinion. Some have exalted her virtues, while others have
multiplied her crimes. Both parties are right, and both wrong. A
courtier, and a man seeking to be revenged, are not historians when they
write. With a little patience, and by a careful study of the writers of
the eighteenth century, we are enabled to seize here and there a faithful
trait of this extraordinary, yet most fascinating woman, and by
diligently sifting conflicting opinions arrive at something approaching
the truth. That Madame de Pompadour was a woman endowed with great
talents, many virtues, and as many vices, is not to be denied; that she
employed those talents in general for her country's good we think is
equally true, though many writer