of the fair sex, when before God they, for their livelong existence, resign their happiness, their purse, and their persons to the will of the lover of their choice. The ceremony was followed by gorgeous pageants, feasts, and merry-makings, such as only Frenchmen can enjoy. Isabella's husband was tall, handsome, and well-proportioned. Endowed with a superior and highly-accomplished mind, ho liberally encouraged literature and art, and was the author of several elegant poems, a copy of which, said to have been transcribed for Henry the Seventh, exists in the British Museum. On. the diabolical murder of his father, in 1407, he became Duke of Orleans ; but Isabella did not live long to enjoy the happiness which the elevation of her affectionate and beloved husband afforded. Whilst yet in the prime of Ufo, the pains of parturition put a period to her existence, on the thirteenth day of September, 1410. Although the mother died, the child (a daughter) lived, and, in after-yeai-s, became the wife of the Duke of Alençon. Isabella died in the twenty-second year of her age, at the castle of Blois. Her husband deeply mourned her loss, as the following elegant verses, penned by the bereaved Duke, and translated by the gifted Mr. Carey, will shew :— " To make my lady's obsequies, My love as minister wrought; And in the chantery-service there Was sung by doleful thought. The tapers were of burning sighs, That light and odour gave ; And grief, illumined by tears, Irradiated her grave ; And round about, in quaintest guise, Was carved—' Within this tomb there lies The fairest thing to mortal eyes.' Above herlietb spread a tomb Of gold and sapphires blue: The gold doth shew lier blessedness, The sapphires mark her true ; For blessedness and truth in her Were livelily pourtrayed, When gracious God, with both his bands, Her wondrous beauty made. She was, to speak without disguise, Tbe fairest thing to mortal κ yes. So more, no more, my heart doth faint, When I the life recall, Of her who lived so free from taint, So virtuous deemed by all ; Who in herself was so complete, I think that she was ta'cu By God to deck his Paradise, And with His saints to reign : For well she doth become the skies, Whom, while on earth, each one did prize, The fairest thing to mortal eyes." The body of Isabella was interred, with imposing obsequies, in the abbey of St. Laumer, at lilois, where it rested undisturbed till 1624, when it was removed to the burial-place of the Orleans family—tho church of the Celestines in Paris. Her husband enjoyed but little happiness after her death. In 1415, he fought in the battle of Agincourt, was left by the French in the held for dead, dragged from beneath a heap of slain, and restored to lite by the humanity of an English knight, named Waller, conveyed a prisoner to England by Henry the Fifth—the man Isabella so obstinately refused for a second husband— and after a captivity, principally in the Tower, which lasted for twenty-three years, and where he composed several of his pleasing poems, died a miserable death.