gument in favour of Diane de Poitiers, as being one of a band
of devoted Frenchwomen who saved their country from foreign ideas. We are
reminded of the patriotism of Agnes Sorel, and of the excellent influence
of Gabrielle d'Estrees. The Duchesse d'Estampes, we are told, preserved
Francis I. from the influence of the Italian renaissance, and prevented
the subjugation of France 'by a Benvenuto or Da Vinci'; and in the same
way, when Catherine de Medici was preparing to introduce other strange
fashions, Diane came forward in her 'magical beauty' and saved the
originality of her nation.

The three sons of Catherine were all fond of books in their way. Francis
_ii._ died before he had time to make any collection; if he had lived,
Mary of Scotland, who shared his throne for a few weeks, might have led
him into the higher paths of literature. Some of their favourite volumes
have been preserved; the young King's books bear the dolphin or the arms
of France; the Queen bound everything in black morocco emblasoned with
the lion of Scotland. Charles IX. had a turn for literature, as beseemed
the pupil of Bishop Amyot; he studied archaeology in some detail, and
purchased Grolier's cabinet of coins. He brought the library of
Fontainebleau to Paris, where his father had made the beginning of a new
collection out of the confiscated property of the President Ranconnet,
and gave the management of the whole to the venerable Amyot. His brother,
the effeminate Henri Trois, cared much for bindings and little for books:
it is said that he was somewhat of a book-binder himself, as his brother
Charles had worked at the armourer's smithy, and as some of his
successors were to take up the technicalities of the barber, the cook,
and the locksmith. Being an extravagant idler himself, he passed laws
against extravagance in his subjects; but though furs and heavy chains
might be forbidden, he allowed gilt edges and arabesques on books, and
only drew the line at massive gold stamps. His own taste combined the
gloomy and the grotesque, his clothes and his bindings alike being
covered with skulls and cross-bones, and spangles to represent tears,
with other conventional emblems of sorrow.

Louise of Lorraine, after the King's death, retired to the castle of
Chenonceau: and the widowed queen employed her time, in that 'palace of
fairy-land,' at forming a small cabinet of books. The catalogue describes
about eighty volumes, mostly bound by Nicolas Eve; an