DUTENSIANA.

1. COUNT De Mercy.

FLORIMONT, Marshal de Mercy, who was born in 1666, and was killed at the battle of Parma in 1734, was the grandson of General Mercy (who fell at the battle of Nordlinguen in Suabia, on the 10th of August 1645), and the son of Baron de Mercy. The latter married Christine d'Alamont, the only daughter, and heiress to the great wealth, of Florimont d'Alamont, and of Anne Marguerite d'Argenteau. Marshal de Mercy obtained an order from the Emperor Francis I., Duke of Lorraine, that the estate of Mercy, which he possessed in Lorraine, should be erected into a county

* On his tomb are inscribed these words: Siste, viator; Heroem calças. The battle of Nordlinguen was gained by the Prince de Condé.

for him; and the Emperor added other fiefs to it, upon condition that, if the Marshal died without children, this estate should devolve upon the Dukes of Lorraine. The Marshal, dying without children, left all his property in Hungary to his cousin, Count d'Argenteau (father of the Ambassador), upon condition that he should take his name and arms; which induced him to re-purchase the estate of Mercy from the Duke of Lorraine, and assume the title of Count de Mercy. The family of d'Argenteau is from Limbourg. Count de Mercy, the Ambassador from Paris, died in London on the 25th of August, 1794.

2. COUNTESS OF DESMOND.

Sir Walter Raleigh, in his History of the World, (London, 1736, fol. p. 46) says: "I knew the old Countess of Desmond, of "Inchiquin, in the county of Munster; who

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was living in the year 1589, and a long "time after. She married the Earl of "Desmond during the reign of Edward IV.* "(1461-1433), and has received her dower ❝ from all the Earls of Desmond ever since

"that time. All the nobility of the county "of Munster can witness the truth of this "fact."

Sir William Temple, upon the authority of Robert Earl of Leicester, says: "That "the Countess of Desmond died at the age "of 140, very early in the reign of James "I., who died in the year 1625." She enjoyed very good health,

It is astonishing that Mr. Horace Walpole (since Lord Orford), in adducing the evidence of the Countess of Desmond, relative to Richard III., in his Historical Doubts, did not support what he says upon it, by citing at length the passages which I have just repeated.

3. THE DESIRE OF SOMETHING BETTER SPOILS PRESENT GOOD.

"Lemieux apparent qu'on cherche, détruit "le bien réel dont on jouit," says Mirabeau. Gresset, in the Méchant, has expressed the same idea upon a different subject extremely well: "L'esprit qu'on veut avoir gáte l'esprit qu'on a."

4. SIR ISAAC NEWTON'S OPINION OF THE BIBLE.

The Bishop of Llandaff (Apology for the Bible, p. 84, 5th edit.) says: That Dr. Smith told him, that, conversing one day with Sir Isaac Newton, at the time he was writing his Commentaries on Daniel, that celebrated philosopher said, “I find "more marks of authenticity in the books "of the Bible than in any profane history "whatever." Dr. Smith was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

5. DUKEDOM OF CHATELLerault.

James, fourth Lord Hamilton and second Earl of Arran, who was tutor to Mary Queen of Scots, was in the year 1548 ! created Duke de Châtellerault by Henry II. King of France; but only Duke by patent, and without a peerage. He had two sons ; the first of whom kept up the line of the Lords Hamilton, and the second began that. of the Lords Abercorn. The second Duke of Hamilton, who died in 1651, leaving no male child, his brother's daughter inherited the Scotch titles: but, according to the laws of France and the conditions of the patent,