"It is not probable that the Queen-mother would have taken notice of such a sentence on the lips of any ordinary child; but it is evident, not only from the accounts of those biographers, whose works were composed after the Prince of Bearn had risen into renown as King of France, but by letters written while he was yet in extreme youth, that there was something in his whole manner and demeanour which impressed all those who knew him with a conviction of his future greatness. We shall have hereafter to cite several of these epistles, which give an accurate picture of the Prince at the age of thirteen years; but before that time he had undergone a long course of desultory instruction. At one period his education was carried on in the chateau of Vincennes, where he remained for more than a year with the royal children; and at another we find him studying in the college of Navarre, together with the Duke of Anjou, who afterwards became King under the name of Henry III., and with Henry, eldest son of the Duke of Guise, against whom he was destined to take so prominent a part in arms. At this early age, however, no enmity or rivalry was apparent between the three Princes; but on the contrary, to use the words of the memoirs of Nevers, the three Henrys had the same affection and the same pleasures, and always displayed for one another so uncommon a degree of complaisance, that not the slightest dispute took place between them during the whole time they were at the college. In regard to the course of instruction pursued with the Prince of Bearn we have no farther information, and only know that he acquired a sufficient knowledge of the Latin language to translate with ease all the best writers of Rome; and that he applied himself, though apparently with no great perseverance, to the art of drawing, in which he displayed a considerable degree of talent--the Duke of Nevers, or his biographer, having seen an antique vase which he had sketched in pen and ink with a masterly hand, and under which he had written, _Opus principis otiosi_." The Massacre of St Bartholomew, which has given an infamous immortality to the name of Charles IX., was unquestionably the great cause of reviving the religious wars which in the early part of his reign seemed to have been in a great measure stilled. Mr James does not add much to the information on the subject already furnished by the French historians, but he sums it up in a dramatic and interesting manner. Our space will not permit of our quoting the entire passage, and we shall rather proceed to the period when the assassination of Henry III. opened to the King of Navarre the throne of France. The situation of the monarch, when this brilliant but perilous succession opened to him, is thus justly described by Mr James:--