It is difficult to decide whether it was a misfortune or an advantage to her to figure in the gallery of the ducal memoir-writer, Saint Simon. That portrait, sketched with a breadth and freedom by which her womanly character has somewhat suffered, depicts her as devoured by a thirst for power, without even allowing the important services which she rendered to the two nations to be so much as suspected. The great master has not given us a bust-portrait of Madame des Ursins, but a full-length likeness, with that lavish excess of colour flung upon the canvas which imparts more life than truth, more of relief than perspective to the majority of his pictures. If in that brilliant delineation the great lady shines with a somewhat theatrical majesty, the national object which she pursued is in no wise indicated--a grave though natural omission on the part of a man in whom a passionate fondness for details almost always blinds him to the collective point of view, and who is not the first of portraitists only because he is the least reliable of historical painters. He, nevertheless, in her case, always manifests the feeling that she is worthy of a careful, special, and patient study, and he points out such study for the edification of posterity. "She reigned in Spain," he remarks, "and her history deserves to be written." We will now reproduce his elaborate portrait of the Princess. "Rather tall than short of stature, she was a brunette with blue eyes whose expression incessantly responded to everything that pleased her; with a perfect shape, a lovely bosom, and a countenance which, without regularity of feature, was more charming even than the purely symmetrical. Her air was extremely noble, and there was something majestic in her whole demeanour, and a grace so natural and continual in all she did, even in things the most trivial and indifferent, that I have never seen anyone approach to, either in form or mind. Her wit was copious and of all kinds. She was flattering, caressing, insinuating, moderate, desirous to please for pleasing sake, and with charms irresistible when she strove to persuade and win over. Accompanying all this, she possessed a grandeur that encouraged rather than repelled. A delightful tone of conversation, inexhaustible and always most amusing--for she had seen many countries and peoples. A voice and way of speaking extremely agreeable and full of sweetness. She had read much and reflected much. She knew how to choose the best society, how to receive it, and could even have held a Court; was polite and distinguished; and, above all, careful never to take a step in advance without dignity and discretion. She was eminently fitted for intrigue, in which, from taste, she had passed her time at Rome. With much ambition, but of that vast kind far above her sex and the common run of men--a desire to occupy a great position and to govern. An inclination to gallantry and personal vanity were her foibles, and these clung to