his second queen, which he, with great reluctance, fixed for the 13th of May, 1610. "The more Henry contemplated the approach of that moment," says Sully, so in proportion did he feel trouble and dread redouble in his soul." In bitterness and dejection, the poor king spent whole hours in the study of Sully, seated on a little, low chair, made expressly for him. "Ah! my friend," exclaimed the monarch, "how this coronation displeases me! I know not what it is, but my fears tell me that some signal misfortune will happen." While thus expressing himself, Henry kept striking his spectacle-case with his fingers, buried in profound thought; and from this melancholy reverie, he suddenly started up, striking his thighs vehemently with both hands, and crying aloud: "I shall die in this city, I shall never quit it-they will kill me." Sully then proposed to defer the coronation. "I wish to conceal nothing from you," said the king; "I must now candidly avow that it was formerly predicted I should be assassinated at the period of a grand solemnity, which I had commanded, and that I should expire in a coach; it is on this account I am so fearful." But the queen insisted upon the ceremony. When in private with Sully, the same sombre presentiments took possession of the king's mind, and he only interrupted the sad and melancholy silence, by repeating emphatically:"They will kill me, my friendthey will kill me."

contemporary writer says:-" I shall not dwell upon the dreams which, it is stated, his majesty, as well as the queen, had, on the night preceding the monarch's death, of a house falling upon his majesty in the street Ferronerie," &c. One thing, however, is certain, that, about six months before the murder, one Thomassin, a famous astrologer, foretold to the king, that it was essential he should beware of the month of May, 1610, and he even specified the day and hour when the king was to be murdered. Henry, however, ridiculed the astrologer, and taking him by the hair or the beard, he led him two or three times round the apartment, and then dismissed him.

On the day preceding the monarch's death, Marshal Bassompierre and the Duke of Guise, beheld, from a window of the Louvre, at Paris, the maypole fall, which had been planted near the staircase leading to the royal apartment, not a breath of air stirring at the time. On witnessing this circumstance, they looked mournfully at each other, and Bassompierre remarked, " I would not for all the world that had happened."

Such superstitious credence is referable to the prevalence of an implicit belief in omens at this period, which also seized upon the king's rooted melancholy. It is proved that Henry received numerous intimations that

conspiracies were plotting against his life; and one writer states upwards of fifty plots to have been planned for this king's destruction. An attempt had likewise some years previously been made upon the king's life.

The last mentioned writer, as well as Sully, states that a month prior to the king's assassination, a report was spread throughout Spain, and at Milan, of Henry's death, in a printed document; and that a courier, in his way through Liege, had announced the monarch's being killed. At Montargis, a note was found upon the altar of the principal church, containing a prediction of his approaching death. The report that Henry would terminate his existence in the course of this year being generally disseminated throughout France, it is, by no means astonishing that the people who adored him should have imagined they saw fatal prognostics in every direction.

Bassompierre says: "The king, shortly before his death, remarked: I know not how it is, Bassompierre, but I cannot persuade myself that I shall proceed to Germany.' He also, at various times, affirmed, I believe that I shall die soon.'

At Douai, a priest, on his death-bed, said, "I have just beheld the greatest prince in Europe perish :" to which might be added a multiplicity of similar tales. At the queen's coronation, it was remarked that the arms of that princess had been improperly blazoned, the painter having, by mistake, annexed to the same the attributes of widowhood.

Every one now recalled to mind with dread, the grand eclipse of the sun which had occurred in 1608, and the terrible comet of 1609 in short, tremblings of the earth, the pestilence that raged throughout Paris in 1606; monsters born in various parts of France, (extraordinarily hideous and unknown fish, according to Sully, were caught on the French coast;) showers of blood, that is, rain of a reddish colour; singular inundations, an apparition, and many other prodigies, all which kept men in fear of some horrible catastrophe.

The coronation at St. Denis, on Thursday, the 13th of May, was performed in sadness and silence. The queen was to make her public entry into Paris, on the ensuing Sunday, May 16, and all expedition was used in preparing for that concluding ceremony. The day after the coronation, says Sully, the king's sadness so obviously increased, that all the courtiers were struck with his appearance. When he arose, he stated that he had enjoyed no rest, and M. de Vendôme entreated his majesty to take care of himself on that day in particular, which had been predicted as fatal; and requested his majesty not to go out: "I perceive," said the king," that you have consulted the almanack, and heard of that fool La Brosse, (the astrologer,) and

one of the king's gentlemen in ordinary, had followed the carriage, but was not near it at the moment of the assassination. He came up on hearing the noise, drew his sword, snatched the bloody knife from the hand of the regicide, whom he would have killed, had not the duke of Epernon interposed. The villain was then confided to proper hands, and led away. "Two circumstances were particularly remarked," says Mezerai, "from which the reader may draw what inference he pleases. The one was, that immediately after the seizure of Ravillac, seven or eight men arrived with swords in hand, saying it was requisite the assassin should be killed; but they instantaneously concealed themselves among the crowd. The other fact was, the murderer's not being immediately conveyed to prison, but placed in the hands of Montigny that he was kept for two days in the hotel of Rais, with so little privacy, that all ranks of people were permitted to communicate with him; and, among others, an ecclesiastic greatly indebted to the king, who, having addressed Ravillac, my friend, cautioned the prisoner not to implicate the innocent."

Meanwhile, the sad intelligence was communicated to the queen, who, on the same day, was declared regent during the minority of her son. Towards four o'clock, the news reached Sully at the Arsenal, who hastily dressed himself to proceed to the Louvre, where the king was laid out upon his bed, with his suite around him. Sully did not, however, enter the palace until two days afterwards, owing to some sinister warnings, which he received on his way thither: and he had not fortitude to enter the chamber containing the corpse of the monarch he adored, though it lay in state during eighteen days at the palace. The body was embalmed, and placed in a wooden coffin on a wooden bier, with a canopy covered with cloth of gold. After the above period, it was conveyed to St. Denis, and there buried with great pomp. In the mean time, such was the affliction of the Parisians, that the women, with dishevelled hair, rushed franticly through the streets; and the men bewildered with anguish, named imaginary accomplices, and swore to sacrifice them to their vengeance. The tumult became terrific, and was only appeased by the queen sending her nobles to address the crowds, whom, with great difficulty, they brought to reason.

Ravillac, the assassin, was a native of Angouleme, where he kept a school till the age of thirty-one or thirty-two. He was supposed by some persons to be of unsound mind; but this was not denoted by his conversation in prison, or his conduct at his execution. He had a brother, who died in Holland, and who, upon his death-bed, declared that in case Francis Ravillac had not

succeeded, he would have undertaken the deed.

A careful examination of Ravillac only proved that he was a man of heated imagination, who conceiving, according to his statement, that Henry had resolved on declaring war against the Pope, and did not take efficient measures to convert the Huguenots, adopted the resolution of assassinating him, whom he regarded as a tyrant that ought to be destroyed: in which ideas he had been strengthened by the sermons of the preachers of the Catholic League.

The torture to which Ravillac was submitted, has few parallels in the records of barbarity. Howel, writing from Paris, thus describes it: "Many consultations were held how to punish Ravillac, and there were some Italian physicians that undertook to prescribe a torment, that should last for three days; but he escaped only (!) with this :-his body was pulled between four horses, that one might hear his bones crack, and after the dislocation they were set again; and so he was carried in a cart, standing half naked, with a torch in that hand which had committed the murder; and, in the place where the act was done, it was cut off, and a gauntlet of hot oil was clapped upon the stump, to staunch the blood, whereat he gave a doleful shriek; then was he brought upon a stage, where a new pair of boots was provided for him, half filled with boiling oil; then his body was pincered, and hot oil was poured into the holes: in all the extremity of this torture, he scarcely showed any sense of pain, but when the gauntlet was clapped upon his arms to staunch the flux, at which time, he of reeking blood gave a shriek only; he bore up against all these torments about three hours before he died. All the confession that could be drawn from him was, that he thought he had done God good service, to take away that king, which would have embroiled all Christendom in an endless war."*

Ubaldini writes, May 30:-Ravillac persists that he has no accomplices, and that he has been moved by nothing but religious zeal. At last he has confessed his folly and guilt, with penitence, God be thanked, who, according to his wisdom and providence, has

Sir James Crofts. From Paris. Sixth edit. 1688.

Howel's Familiar Letters, vol. i. No. xviii. To

The date of the letter is, in this edition, May 12, 1620; though the assassination did not take place till May 14. Howel adds: "A fatal thing it is that France should have three of her kings come to such violent deaths in so short a time: Henry II. running at tilt, was killed by a splinter of a lance that pierced his eye: Henry III., not long after, was killed by a young friar, who, instead of a letter which he pretended to have for him, pulled out of his long sleeve a knife, and thrusting it into the king's abdomen, so dispatcht him; but that regicide was hacked to pieces in the place by the nobles. The same destiny attended this king (Heury IV.) by Ravillac, which is now become a common name of reproach and infamy in France."

of which endless mischiefs might have proceeded.*

We have not space to enumerate the parties upon whom suspicion fell of participation in the assassination, notwithstanding Ravillac's avowal. As may be supposed, they were persons ambitious of power and place, to the acquirement of which the king was the only obstacle.

It remains to be explained that the street in which the assassination was perpetrated, was considerably widened in 1671, when the proprietor of the house marking the spot, placed in front of it a bust of Henry IV. with this inscription:

Henrici Magni recreat presentia cives,

Quos illi æterno foedere junxit amor.

The accompanying cut represents the elevation of the house, the present occupier of which is the king's mercer.

* Raumer's Hist. Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Translated by Lord Francis Egerton. Letter xli.

New Books.

GLEANINGS IN NATURAL HISTORY.-THIRD AND LAST SERIES.

By Edward Jesse, Esq.

[OUR commendatory notices of the two preceding Series of these Gleanings, may be extended to the present volume; so as to render uncalled for the author's "apology for having protracted so light a work to its third series." It is brimful of delightful anecdotes of the habits of animals, exemplifying their peculiar faculties and sensibilities, and showing "how capable they are of affection, fidelity, courage, and, indeed, of many of the

virtues which are wont to be admired in the human race." By setting forth these good qualities, and portraying the character of animals in its proper light, Mr. Jesse endeavours to awaken more kindly feelings towards them. He then notices the little inclination of the English to treat the brute creation with kindness, which he indulgently attributes to thoughtlessness rather than absolute cruelty. Yet, in what nation of Europe besides England are laws made for the protection of animals, and where else is published such a work as "The Animal's Friend, or, the Progress of Humanity," "*-the latter part of the title almost implying that our country is scarcely rescued from barbarism. To return to Mr.Jesse: he adds, that his object will be attained, "should any one be induced to lessen the miseries and sufferings of those animals which had been previously treated with unnecessary severity."

The natural-historical anecdotes extend

through some two hundred pages of the pre

No. III. just published, enumerates 120 prosecutions by the Animal's Friend Society in ten months