PREFACE.

SOME indulgence, it is hoped, will be accorded by the gentle readers of the "Lives of the Queens of England," for the tardy appearance of the present volume, when it is explained that the materials for the biography of the consort of James II. are chiefly derived from the unpublished letters, journals, and documents of the period. Many of these, and indeed the most important, are locked up in the Secret Archives of France; papers that are guarded with such extreme jealousy from the curiosity of foreigners, that nothing less than the powerful influence of M. Guizot himself could have procured access to those collections. Through the kindness and liberality of that accomplished statesman-historian, every facility for research and transcription was granted during my residence in Paris, in the spring and summer of 1844. The result was fortunate beyond my most sanguine expectations, in the discovery of inedited letters, records, and documents, connected with the personal history of the beautiful and unfortunate princess whose memoir occupies the present volume of the "Lives of the Queens of England." Not the least curious of those records is part of a MS. diary, kept, apparently, by one of the nuns of Chaillot, of the sayings and doings of the exiled queen during her occasional retreats to that