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 Several other examples are on record of the ready wit for which she was celebrated among her contemporaries. Held at the baptismal font by the distinguished Princess des Ursins, who governed Spain despotically under Philip V., she lived to see that monarchy submitted to the disposal of France, and its crown awarded to one born the private subject of an obscure province. That the Marchioness de Crèguy maintained through all these changes her cheerfulness of mind, shews that her literary pursuits had a happy effect on the tranquillity and usefulness of her long life.

CRETA, LAURA,

born in Italy, in 1669. She received a learned education, and was a proficient in languages and philosophy. She married Pietro Lereni, but he died in less than two years after their union. She had been much attached to her husband, and refusing several advantageous offers of marriage, devoted herself to her studies, and lived in honoured widowhood to the close of her life. She corresponded with most of the eminent scholars and philosophers then living in Europe, who were happy in forming an acquaintance, through the medium of letters, with such a lady, renowned as the most learned woman of the age. She died at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and was, says a contemporary writer, "lamented throughout Christendom."

CROMWELL, ELIZABETH,

of Oliver Cromwell, was the daughter of Sir James Bourchier, knight, of Felsted, in Essex. She was married on the 22nd. of August, 1620. In person and manners she was very plain, and not well educated, even for those times. She seems to have been an upright, religious, and charitable woman, who however did not possess much influence over her husband. After the death of Cromwell, in 1658, she retired for a short time into Wales, and then went to the house of her son-in-law Claypole, at Norborough, in Lincolnshire, where she lived till her death, October 8th., 1672. She was probably upwards of seventy when she died.

CROWE, CATHARINE,

maiden name was Stevens, was born at Borough Green, in the county of Kent. She married Lieutenant-Colonel Crowe, of the British army. She has one child—a son; the family reside chiefly at Edinburgh, or in the neighbourhood. Her published books are numerous, and she has written much for the periodicals and other serials, within the last ten years. Her writings have attracted considerable attention among the learned, and attained, as might have been expected, a wide popularity among those who like to read ghost-stories, though stoutly denying any belief in such nonsense. The term, "Night-Side of Nature," given to be the most remarkable of her productions, Mrs. Crowe explains as being borrowed from the German, signifying "that side of a planet which is turned from the sun; and during this interval, external objects loom upon us but strangely and imperfectly: the Germans draw a parallel between these vague and misty perceptions, and the similar obscure and uncertain glimpses we get of that veiled department of nature, of which, whilst comprising, as it does, the solution of