Agnes Sorel had three daughters by Charles VII., who all received dowries, and were married at the expense of the crown. They received the title of daughters of France, the name given at that time to the natural daughters of the kings. An account of the noble families into which they married, together with the honors bestowed upon the brother of Agnes, will be found in Moreri's "Dictionnaire Historique."
Africa has never been propitious to European settlement or colonization, but quite the contrary. The last founded state of the Anglo-American Union, of about two years' growth, is alone, at this moment, worth more than all that has been effected by the European race in Africa in two-and-twenty centuries. The most respectable product of African colonization is a Cape boor, and this is certainly not a finished specimen of humanity. Assuredly, for the last three hundred years, Africa has done nothing for the nations of Europe but seduce them into crime, folly, and extravagance.
The Romans were the first European settlers in Africa; it was at their very door, and they held it for eight centuries. Now, there is not left in it hardly a trace of Roman civilization; certainly fewer, at all events, than the Arabs have left in Spain. The Vandal occupation of Mediterranean Africa lasted only half a century. We should not have known that Vandals had ever set their feet on the Continent but for the written records of civilized men. There is nothing Vandal there, unless Vandalism in the abstract. The Dutch came next, in order of time, in another portion of Africa, and we have already alluded to the indistinct "spoor" which they have left behind them after an occupation of a hundred and fifty years.
The English have settled in two different quarters of the African continent, one of them within eight degrees of the equatorial line, and the other some thirty-four south of it. The first costs us civil establishments, forts, garrisons, and squadrons included (for out of Africa and its people comes the supposed necessity for the squadron), a good million a year. The most valuable article we get from tropical Africa is the oil of a certain palm, which contributes largely towards an excise duty of about a million and a half a year, levied on what has been justly called a second necessary of life--to wit, soap.