It was a singular coincidence that the three great kingdoms of Europe were governed at this time by young Kings, or rather, virtually, by their favourites. France, in the reign of Louis the XIII., was governed by Richelieu; Spain, in that of Philip the IV., by Olivares; England by Buckingham; “and this,” adds the same historian, “Europe reckoned in those times amidst its unhappy destiny.” Immediately after the funeral of the late king, the marriage of Charles to Henrietta Maria--a union fraught with evils eventually, and replete with early discomfort--was eagerly anticipated both by the Monarch and his favourite. The impatience of Charles to welcome the young Princess as his bride was ascribed to the favourable impression which her youthful loveliness had produced upon his imagination, when he had seen her himself, incognito, two years previously in passing through Paris. But when it is remembered that, after that brief interview, he had been enamoured of the loving Infanta, it will be readily supposed that the influence of persuasion was employed in advancing this ill-starred marriage. It was attributed, indeed, to the rivalry and hatred between Buckingham and Olivares, which had succeeded their professions of amity, and to the eager desire for an alliance with France, England being during the first fifteen years of Charles’s reign, as Coke expressed it, “perfectly French.” “The Spanish wooing,” observes Miss Strickland, “certainly smoothed the way for the marriage of Charles and Henrietta. It had accustomed the English people to the idea of a Catholic Queen.”[174] The prepossessions of the party mainly interested in the match might indeed easily be gained over by the reputed graces and acquirements of the French Princess. Inheriting from her mother’s family a taste for the fine arts, Henrietta’s musical acquirements were considerable. Her voice was by nature so sweet and powerful, that if she had not been a queen, she might have been, as Disraeli observes, “Prima Donna of Europe.” She had learned to dance with grace, and became, even during her childhood, a frequent performer in the court ballets, which, with other displays and festivities, are said to have interrupted the education of the young Princess, and to have prevented her from receiving a solid course of instruction. Footnote 174: Lives of the Queens of England, vol. viii., p. 13.