burned in the breasts of these austere fanatics, gave them a boldness, against which the polished civilities of life formed an ineffectual barrier. And the natural audacity of power, when it has been newly acquired, and especially when it has been just lodged among the lower orders of life, lent them such an addition of effrontery, that the venerable form of majesty itself seemed to shrink into indifference before it.

To augment the difficulties of her situation, Mary, in addition to the fanaticism of the vulgar, had to struggle with the contending factions of a turbulent and ungovernable nobility. It is hardly possible for the human mind to conceive a race of men more thoroughly brutal and ferocious than the Scotch nobility of this period. Rebellion was then scarcely looked upon as a crime, and murders, treasons, plots, assassinations, and conspiracies, were so common as no longer to be held in any horror. Such was the state of the Scottish nation, when their lovely queen appeared among them.

It was an additional misfortune to Mary, that her cousin and a female filled a neighbouring throne. England was then governed by Elizabeth, a princess whose character was very different from Mary's. In all the stronger and deeper lineaments of the mind, it was much superior; but it was much inferior, also, in all the amiable, the elegant,

and the dignified graces of the heart and understanding. Elizabeth had some grounds of special animosity against Mary. The latter had a title, such as it was, to the throne of the former; and this was naturally preferred by the prejudices of the papist, to the right of Elizabeth herself. Mary had even assumed the arms and appellation of Queen of England when she was Queen of France. And though she had forborne to take them ever since she became her own mistress, Elizabeth had none of that generosity about her which could forgive. She had been alarmed, and she was still alarmed, for the papists continued the claim, though Mary had resigned it. She might one day see a formidable competitor for the crown in her, supported by all the popish faction in the island, and seconded by all the popish powers on the continent. Elizabeth's life was a life of misery and mischief; of mischief to others, in the plots which she was always forming against them; and of misery to herself, in the fears and apprehensions which she was always entertaining of them. She was continually forging schemes of malignity against them, from some visionary schemes of her own concerning them. She then changed her visionary into real fears, from the jealousies which she conceived of their retaliating upon her. And she was finally obliged to fabricate new schemes of mischief against them, in order

to prevent or counteract the designs, which she was sure they would form against her, because she was sensible they had every right to form them. Thus does Providence punish the insidious with airy suspicions at first, torment them with well-grounded jealousies afterwards, and afflict them at last with the very success of their own machinations.

Scarcely had Mary landed in her native Scotland, when the treacherous Elizabeth began to conspire her ruin. The beauty of Mary's person, and the attraction of a crown, recommended to her many suitors. Among others the archduke Charles of Austria, one of the most gallant and . accomplished princes of the age. But Elizabeth interposed, and insisted that she should not marry with any foreign prince, but make choice of a husband from among her own nobility. In the tone rather of a mistress giving commands, than of a sovereign writing to another independent sovereign, she recommended to her either the Earl of Leicester (her own paramour) or the Lord Darnley, son of the Earl of Lenox, and next in succession to the throne; observing, at the same time, that her succession to the throne of England would be very precarious if she did not comply.

Overawed by the threats of Elizabeth, and smitten with the person of Darnley, who is admitted on all hands to have been a young nobleman of a most prepossessing form and appearance, though very deficient in point of understanding,

and extremely dissolute in his manners, Mary consented to marry him, and having created him Earl of Ross and Duke of Rothesay, they were married on the 29th of July, 1565, and the same day Darnley was proclaimed king at Edinburgh.

The queen found to her cost, that the superior personal charms of Darnley, had nothing in them to compensate for the weakness and wickedness of his heart. He was ambitious without any ability for business; and without any discretion in dignity, he was childishly eager for authority. An Italian domestic, named David Rizzio, whom Mary had brought over with her from France, and who by his taste for music had recommended himself to her favour, so that she appointed him her foreign secretary, and at her leisure hours amused herself with his musical compositions, or his conversation. This person incurred the deep displeasure of Darnley, and a plot, perhaps the most brutal and savage ever conceived within the heart of man, was entered into for his destruction. king, at the head of five or six assassins, entered the apartment where Mary sat at supper with the countess of Argyll, her natural sister, and Rizzio attending upon them. At first the unfortunate musician endeavoured to skreen himself behind the robes of the queen, but was stabbed by one of the villians over her very shoulders. The blow queen's face, as she herself

was aimed so near the

The

afterwards declared, that " she felt the coldness of the iron in its movement over her cheek." It was also struck with so much fury, that the striker could not recover the dagger, but was obliged to leave it sticking in the body. The wretched Rizzio was then forced from his hold, while a dagger was held up against herself, by another of the ruffians, in the very act to stab her. He was at last dragged away, bleeding and screaming, amidst the tears and entreaties of the queen, into an adjoining apartment, and instantly dispatched there by the swords and daggers of these murderers, with no less than fifty-six wounds.

There never was, perhaps, when contemplated in all its varieties of horror, the time, the place, the woman, and the queen, so atrocious a deed of inhumanity perpetrated.The queen in an advanced stage of pregnancy; the place, her

closet; the persons who were the actors; the man who was the leader; the mode; the deed; all conspire to rank this bloody transaction savage beyond any thing that occurs, among all the wildest eruptions of brutality and barbarism, in the history of the human species. Every circumstance fills us with horror. It is a scene too painful even for the imagination to dwell upon.

On the 19th of July, 1566, Mary was delivered of a son, who was afterwards James the sixth of Scotland, and the first of England. This event