MADAME JUNOT'S CELEBRATED WOMEN.
Tnz subjects of these biographical notices have been hitherto, almost exclusively, either unhappy in their destiny or unamiable in their dispositions. The Third Number centains the memoirs and portraits of Cnsasorrs Coan&v, the lovely and misguided murderess of MARAT; JOSEPIII7NIE, the amiable and repudiated wife of NAPOLEON; Bloody Queen MARY; and a personage less familiar to the reader, and whose career is most remarkable of all—MARYNA MNISZECII, a Polish lady, who became Czarina of Muscovy.
The adventures of this woman belong to the romance of bio- graphy. Her father was an ambitious man, whose ruling passion was flattered by a fortune-teller predicting that his daughter, then a child, should wear a crown. From that moment the idea took possession of his brain ; and he not only anticipated the fulfilment of the prediction, but had his daughter reared up in the expecta- tion of her high destiny. It is scarcely to be wondered that the girl also become inoculated with this fever of ambition; but that they should have ultimately accomplished the object for which alone they lived, is strange. Their diseased aspirations found a congenial subject in the person of an impostor, who pretended to be DMrrav, the murdered son of Ivast the Fourth ; with whom the father of Mamma. contracted his daughter in marriage, on condition of his obtaining possession of the usurped throne of Muscovy. The artificial sympathy which these two deluded crea- tures entertained for each other, ripened into a strong natural affection; and the overthrow of the usurper and the accession of the pretended rightful heir to the throne of Ivaer realized their dream of greatness. Their felicity was, however, shortlived. So soon as the usurper's fate was scaled, doubts were raised as to the legitimacy of the claims of the new Czar : his pretensions would not bear scrutiny ; plots were formed against him, and the un- happy man was murdered in the Kremlin. The subsequent career of his widow affords an extraordinary instance of the predominance of the ruling passion. On her way to her native country, she was captured by the trovs of a man who, they stated, was her supposed murdered husband, recovered from his wounds. Being led into his prosenee, she was struck with amazement and disgust, at beholding a loathsome, vile, and
.1.,w—a brute, front wilrve violence she had formerly
rescuAl a young and help'ess This wretch, stimulated only by desire of gain, and enemy:aged by the success of her hus- band, had proclaimed himself the murdered Czar ; who was thus represented to have twice miraculously escaped the daggers of his enemies. The very extravagance of his pretensions seems to have aided his success ; or the people were so eager for a Czar, that they grasped at the shadow of a Sovereign. The Jew was at the gates of Moscow, backed by a victorious band of followers; and only wanted the assistance or MARXNA to accomplish his o tied. Urged by her father's entreaties, and stimulated by her own thirst for power, she consented to be a party to the trick, and publicly acknowledged the hateful Jew as her identical husband. She soon found, however, that the impostor sought money only, and not command, and that he had seized upon the vacant throne only to sell his abdication. This she resolved if possible to pre- vent. Scornfully upbraiding him, she said, " Thou shalt either reign, or die ; " and kept a striet guard upon all his movements.. At last, in the confusion of a battle that ensued, the wretch con- trived to escape : but MARYNA, now mail for sovereignty, disguised. herself as a soldier, pursued, and brought him back. In defence of her throne, she performed prodigies of valour ; but was at length taken and condemned to death. The very night before her intended execution, she was liberated by one of her coun- trymen, who had loved her from a youth, and had followed her through all the vicissitudes of her fortune. She became his wife, and at the same time mistress of a horde of Cossacks, of which he was the chieftain. Not contented with a predatory rule, she planned and achieved the conquest of Astracan; where for a short time she once more reigned over a kingdom. But here too her power was of short duration : she was attacked and defeated by " the Russians in a pitched battle; andescaping only with life, wan- dered with her husband and her infant over the frozen steppes of the Oural Mountains ; where the miserable group perished by the hands of a troop of soldiers, and found a grave in the snowy desert.
History does not furnish a more fearful lesson upon the miseries of false ambition, than in the life of this wretched woman ; who but for her father's folly might have equally adorned the world by her talents and her beauty. The portraits that accompany the large edition of these memoirs, ere beautiful and spirited specimens of French lithography. Those in the smaller series, are not only inferior in point of execution, but the faces are unlike, and deficient in character.
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