yet they formed almost the only part of her German education, about which Maria Theresa had been particular:  the Empress-mother deemed them so valuable to her children that she ordered the celebrated Metastasio to write some of his most sublime cantatas for the evening recreations of her sisters and herself.  And what can more conduce to elegant literary knowledge, or be less dangerous to the morals of the young, than domestic recitation of the finest flights of the intellect?  Certain it is that Marie Antoinette never forgot her idolatry of her master Metastasio; and it would have been well for her had all concerned in her education done her equal justice.  The Abbe Vermond encouraged these studies; and the King himself afterwards sanctioned the translation of the works of his Queen’s revered instructor, and their publication at her own expense, in a superb edition, that she might gratify her fondness the more conveniently by reciting them in French.  When Marie Antoinette herself became a mother, and oppressed from the change of circumstances, she regretted much that she had not in early life cultivated her mind more extensively.  ‘What a resource,’ would she exclaim, is a mind well stored against human casualties!’ She determined to avoid in her own offspring the error, of which she felt herself the victim, committed by her Imperial mother, for whose fault, though she suffered, she would invent excuses.  ‘The Empress,’ she would say, was left a young widow with ten or twelve children; she had been accustomed, even during the Emperor’s life, to head her vast empire, and she thought it would be unjust to sacrifice to her own children the welfare of the numerous family which afterwards devolved upon her exclusive government and protection.’

“Most unfortunately for Marie Antoinette, her great supporter, Madame de Pompadour, died before the Archduchess came to France.  The pilot who was to steer the young mariner safe into port was no more, when she arrived at it.  The Austrian interest had sunk with its patroness.  The intriguers of the Court no sooner saw the King without an avowed favourite than they sought to give him one who should further their own views and crush the Choiseul party, which had been sustained by Pompadour.  The licentious Duc de Richelieu was the pander on this occasion.  The low, vulgar Du Barry was by him introduced to the King, and Richelieu had the honour of enthroning a successor to Pompadour, and supplying Louis XV. with the last of his mistresses.  Madame de Grammont, who had been the royal confidante during the interregnum, gave up to the rising star.  The effect of a new power was presently seen in new events.  All the Ministers known to be attached to the Austrian interest were dismissed; and the time for the arrival of the young bride, the Archduchess of Austria, who was about to be installed Dauphine of France, was at hand, and she came to meet scarcely a friend, and many foes—­of whom even her beauty, her gentleness, and her simplicity, were doomed to swell the phalanx.”