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MEMOIRS OF THE FIRST YEARS OF THE LIFE OF THE

CELEBRATED MADAME DE MAINTENON.
J. A

Of all the instances that occur in the history of Europe of great changes of fortune, no one is more surprising than those that respect madame de Maintenon; who, after a variety of adventures, that would be reckoned extravagantly · absurd in a novel, became the wife of the greatest monarch at that time in Europe. What follows is a slight sketch of her parentage and history, during the early period of her life.

• Frances d'Aubignè, grand-daughter to Theodore Agrip.. pa d'Aubignè who distinguished himself in the civil wars, and of mademoiselle de Cardillac, was born on the 27th of November 1635, in the prison of Niort, in which her father was at that time confined, on account of his imprudent conduct, and in which his wife, a prudent and virtuous woman, had shut herself up with him.

'Madame de Villette, sister to the husband, came to visit the lying-in woman, and beheld them in all the horrors of indigence; her brother deprived of reason by despair, and emaciated by hunger; their eldest child wrapped in rags, and already sensible of the miseries of her condition; their second in the cradle, a girl two days old, who, by her cries, seemed to invite death; the mother weeping, and offering her breasts, sometimes to her husband, sometimes to her daughter, but hopeless of saving. either the one or the other, as distrefs and hunger had dried up her milk, and fhe was unable to pay a nurse.?

'Abstracting from this description, whatever it may be supposed to owe to the imagination of the author, we may still conclude, that, at her birth, Frances d'Aubignè was exposed to extreme misery. Madame de Villette, took her

with her, and put her into the hands of the same nurse to whom the had intrusted mademoiselle de Villette, her daughter.

In a few years madame d'Aubignè obtained liberty to her husband, and set out with him and all her family for America, where they had considerable claims. In the course of the voyage, Frances fell ill, and was reduced so low, that she ceased to exhibit signs of life. A sailor was, going to throw her overboard. The signal gun was ready loaded. Madame d'Aubignè begged leave to prefs her poor infant once more in her arms;-fhe put her hand on the heart, and felt it still palpitate, ( She is not dead;' cried the, and her maternal cares restored her fully to life. The vessel in which this unfortunate family were pafsengers, was attacked by a corsair, but escaped, and arrived safe at Martinico.

D'Aubignè established himself there in so advantageous a situation, that he was enabled to live in opulence. His wife was obliged to return to Europe to settle some affairs. In her absence, d'Aubignè spent his whole fortune at play, and the found him, on her return, ruined and dying. The widow returned to France to obtain afsistance, leaving her daughter, who was now seven years of age, as security to her creditors, who sent the child about from one to another. The judge of the place, taking pity on her, received her into his house, but becoming soon weary of her as the others, sent her after her mother. She fell first into the hands of madame de Montalambert, her kinswoman, who refused to entertain her. She was then received by madame de Villette her aunt, who brought her up in the Calvinist religion.

'Her mother, a good catholic, wifhed, notwithstanding her distress, to take her daughter into her own hands,

This madame de Villette refused, alleging that madame d'Aubignè could not possibly support her. But to obviate the objection, madame de Nuillant, another relation, in easy circumstances, obtained an order to have her delivered to her, wishing to bring her back to the catholic religion; fhe attempted that at first by gentle and fair means, but when these did not succeed, had recourse to severity. Frances was confounded with the servants, and degraded to the meanest talks about the family, the kitchen and the court yard. She went every morning with a mask on her face, to preserve her fine complexion, a straw hat on her head, a basket under her arm, and a switch in her hand, to watch the turkies; with orders not to touch her breakfast, which she carried in the basket under her arm, till she had first got by memory five stanzas of sacred poetry. Ill treatment had no effect to make her gratify the wishes of madame de Nuillant, fhe therefore placed her among the Ursuline nuns of Niort, where madame de Villette agreed to pay her board; but after her conversion, that lady withdrew her kindness, and the young catholic then returned to madame de Nuillant.

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This lady went occasionally to Paris in a sedan chair, carried by two mules, on one of which mademoiselle d'Aubignè used to ride. She introduced her to the company with which she herself used commonly to afsociate, boasted in public of her growing charms, and in private exercised over her all the tyranny which dependants are liable to suffer from their benefactors. The young lady was ałready charming, and promised to become completely beautiful; her figure and her understanding were both above her years. She was about thirteen when madame de Nuillant took her to communicate for the first time with the Ursuline nuns in St James's street. Frances continued with them, except when she went to see her mother, who

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supported herself by her labour, and madame de Nuillant, who continued to fhew her in the world.'

It was in the family of madame de Nuillant that Scarron, the facetious French poet, became acquainted with madame d'Aubignè. Her marriage with Scarron, when he was in a state of decrepitude; her exemplary conduct as his nurse, rather than his wife; her marriage,' while in her state of widowhood, with Louis xiv. and her subsequent history, under the name of madame de Maintenon, are so well known, as not to require to be here developed. She was the most amiable woman that ever figured at that court; and her history makes a beautiful exception to the general train of base anecdote that so deeply degrades mankind in the eyes of the philosophical reader of the private history of that period.

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Hot house plants reared by the aid of steam, a new discovery. A

GENTLEMAN, who is eminently distinguished for his mechanical talents, and his improvements in several branches of rural economics, has lately contrived to rear pine apples, melons, and other hot house plants, without the use of tan, or other fermentative mixtures, the necefsary heat being communicated by means of steam; and after having practised it for at least two years, he can now, with some degree of confidence, pronounce, that it has even exceeded his highest expectations; and is, in several respects, preferable to any mode hitherto practised for any hot house plants, particularly in respect to insects; for he does not find that any one clafs of insects, have ever once attacked any of the plants that have been reared after his. new method.

The circumstance that led him to the discovery, was the difficulty of finding tan, in his particular situation. Chagrined at this, he began to reflect if it might not be possible to do without it. It readily occurred to him, that heat and moisture are the two great agents in promoting vegetation, and he thought, that if these two could be conjoined together, it could not fail to prove salutary; steam properly managed seemed to promise to do this. He then contrived an apparatus by which water can be kept properly heated to transmit steam; and this steam, so mamaged, as to be capable of acting either by its heat only, or by its heat and moisture united, as circumstances should indicate to be proper; by means of flues, either horizontally disposed under a bed of earth, or in a perpendicular wall, both the soil, in which the plants grow, or the wall, to which they are nailed, can be heated to any degree wanted; and by admitting the steam itself at pleasure, either into the body of the mould, or into the hot house, the plants may be subjected to a heated bath, if you please so to call it, which appears, by the experience he has had of it, to be wonderfully kindly to vegetation. The whole plant comes to be moistened with a warm vapour, which slowly condenses into a dew, which seems to penetrate every part of the leaf, and confers an envigorating freshnefs to the whole plant, that nothing else could have effected. It is impossible to conceive any thing more beautiful, luxuriant, and fruitful, than the vines I saw that had been reared by this mode of management.

The world is indebted for this discovery to Mr Wakefield of Liverpool, a gentleman, who, to indefatigable activity and industry, conjoins a spirit of research, and a talent for mechanical invention, that gives room to hope for many additional discoveries from that quarter; among others, he has already made a machine for cutting chaff

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