e usual
branches of "profane letters," as well as an accomplished scholar in
philosophy and theology. As an author--though her writings are somewhat
voluminous and not without merit--she was comparatively unimportant; her
great service to letters was the result of the sympathy and encouragement
she gave to others.

Wherever she might be, she was the centre of a literary and religious
circle, as well as of the society in which she moved. She was in full
sympathy with her brother in making his "_College_" an institution in
which greater liberty was accorded to the expression of individual
opinion than had before been known in France, and by reason of her
protection of liberty in thought and speech she suffered much in the
esteem of the bigots of her day.

The beautiful Mlle. de Heilly--the Duchesse d'Etampes--whose influence
over Francis I. was pre-eminent, while her character was totally unlike
that of his sister, was described as "the fairest among the learned, and
the most learned among the fair." When learning was thus in favor at
Court, it naturally followed that all capacity for it was cultivated and
ordinary intelligence made the most of; and the claim that the
intellectual brilliancy of the women of the Court of Francis I. has
rarely been equalled is generally admitted. There were, however, no
artists among them--they wielded the pen rather than the brush.

* * * * *

In England, as in France, there was no native school of art in the
sixteenth century, and Flemish, Dutch, and German artists crossed the
channel when summoned to the English Court, as the Italians crossed the
Alps to serve the kings of France.

English women of this century were far less scholarly than those of Italy
and France. At the same time they might well be proud of a queen who
"could quote Pindar and Homer in the original and read every morning a
portion of Demosthenes, being also the royal mistress of eight
languages." With our knowledge of the queen's scholarship in mind we
might look to her for such patronage of art and literature as would rival
that of Lorenzo the Magnificent; but Elizabeth lacked the generosity of
the Medici and that of Marguerite de Valois. Hume tells us that "the
queen's vanity lay more in shining by her own learning than in
encouraging men of genius by her liberality."

Lady Jane Grey and the daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke are familiar
examples of learned women, and many English t