unfinished Memoirs, which opens the delightful series of autobiographies and reminiscences of women. Her account of the night of St. Bartholomew is justly celebrated; the whole record, indeed, is full of interest; but there were passages of her life which it was natural that she should pass over in silence; her sins of omission, as Bayle has observed, are many.[4] [Footnote 4: The _Memoires-Journeaux_ of Pierre de l'Estoile are a great magazine of the gains of the writer's disinterested curiosity. The _Lettres_ of D'Ossat and the _Negotiations_ of the President Jeannin are of importance in the records of diplomacy.] The controversies of the civil wars produced a militant literature, in which the extreme parties contended with passion, while between these a middle party, the aspirants to conciliation, pleaded for the ways of prudence, and, if possible, of peace. FRANCOIS HOTMAN, the effect of whose Latin _Franco-Gallia_, a political treatise presenting the Huguenot demands, has been compared to that of Rousseau's _Contrat Social_, launched his eloquent invective against the Cardinal de Lorraine, in the _Epistre envoyee au Tigre de la France_. Hubert Languet, the devoted friend of Philip Sidney, in his _Vindiciae contra Tyrannos_, justified rebellion against princes who violate by their commands the laws of God. D'Aubigne, in his _Confession de Sancy_, attacked with characteristic ardour the apostates and waverers of the time, above the rest that threefold recanter of his faith, Harlay de Sancy. Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde, in his _Tableau des Differands de la Religion_, mingles theological erudition with his raillery against the Roman communion. Henri Estienne applied the spirit and learning of a great humanist to religious controversy in the second part of his _Apologie pour Herodote_; the marvellous tales of the Greek historian may well be true, he sarcastically maintains, when in this sixteenth century the abuses of the Roman Church seem to pass all belief. On the other hand, Du Perron, a cardinal in 1604, replied to the arguments and citations of the heretics. As the century drew towards its close, violence declined; the struggle was in a measure appeased. In earlier days the Chancellor, Michel de l'Hospital, had hoped to establish harmony between the rival parties; grief for the massacre of St. Bartholomew hastened his death. The learned Duplessis-Mornay, leader and guide of the Reformed Churches of France, a devoted servant of Henri of Navarre, while fervent in his own beliefs, was too deeply attached to the common faith of Christianity to be an extreme partisan. The reconciliation of Henri IV. with the Church of Rome, which delivered France from anarchy, was, however, a grief to some of his most loyal supporters, and of these Duplessis-Mornay was the most eminent.