STABAT MATER.

"The mills of the gods grind slowly,They grind exceedingly fine;"

which we take to be only a modern, heathenish way of saying, as we chant every Sunday at vespers,

"Et justitia ejus manet in seculum seculi."

Look at the Galileo story. Galileo died more than two hundred years ago. Yet it is only within a lifetime that the truth concerning him began to dawn upon the English mind.

Mary Queen of Scots surrendered her soul to God and her head to Elizabeth nearly three centuries ago, and the combat over her reputation to-day rages as hot as ever. In the case of the Florentine astronomer, there has been no strongly decided hereditary transmission of the falsehood. In that of the Queen of Scotland every inch of ground is obstinately fought, because her innocence means the shame of England, the disgrace of Knox, the condemnation of the ornaments of the Anglican and Puritan churches, and the infamy of Elizabeth.

These enemies of Mary yet live in transmitted prejudices and powerful hereditary interests. The very existence of all the boasting, pride, false reputation, hypocritical piety, and national vanity represented by the familiar catchwords of "Our Noble Harry," "Glorious Queen Bess," "The Virgin Queen," "Our Sainted Reformers," has its inspiration and life-breath in the maintenance of every calumny against Mary Stuart and the Catholic Church of that day; and we must do these supporters the credit of admitting that they are instant in season and out of season, and never weary in their work.

But their case was long since made up. They have said their last word, and shot all the arrows of their quiver. With each succeeding year Elizabeth's reputation fails, and is rapidly passing into disgrace. With the same rapidity Mary's fame grows brighter.

The books and pamphlets written in attack or defence of Mary would of themselves form a library. For the attack, the key-note is to be found in Cecil's avowed principle concerning the treatment of the dethroned queen, thattheir purpose could not be obtained without disgracing her. Hence, the silver-casket letters, and the so-called confessions of Paris. Hence, the issue, during every year of her long imprisonment of eighteen years, of some vile pamphlet, under Cecil's instructions, calculated to blast her character. Two men in particular powerfully contributed to defame the Queen of Scots—John Knox and George Buchanan. Knox by his sermons, in which, says Russel, (History of the Reformation, vol. i. p. 292,) "lying strives with rage;" Buchanan, by his writings, which have been made by Mary's enemies one of the sources of history. Buchanan was an apostate monk, saved from the gallows by Mary, and loaded with her favors. An eye-witness of her dignity, her goodness, and her purity, he afterward described her as the vilest of women. He sold his pen to Elizabeth, and has been properly described as "unrivalled in baseness, peerless in falsehood, supreme in ingratitude." HisDetectionwas published (1570) in Latin, and copies were immediately sent by Cecil to Elizabeth's ambassador in Paris with instructions to circulate them; "for they will come to good effect to disgrace her, which must be done before other purposes can be obtained."

This shameful work has been the inspiration of most of the portraits drawn of Mary. De Thou in France, Spotiswoode, Jebb, and many others in England, have all followed him. Holinshed too was deceived by Buchanan; but it is doubtful if he dared write otherwise than he did, between the terrors of Cecil's spies and Elizabeth's mace.

An English translation of Buchanan was first published in 1690, being called forth by the revolution of 1688. Jebb's two folio volumes appeared in 1725.

Two additional lives of Mary, by Heywood (1725) and Freebairn, were little more than translations from the French. In 1726, Edward Simmons published Mary's forged letters as genuine. Anderson's voluminous collection of papers (four large volumes) appeared in 1727 and 1728. Meantime, from the accession of a new dynasty and the rebellion of 1715, there arose in Edinburgh a sort of society having for its principal object the work of supporting Buchanan's credit and vilifying the Scottish queen. Later came the well-known and widely published histories of Scotland and of England by Robertson and Hume, which, read wherever the English language was known, may be said to have popularized the culpability of Mary. Until within comparatively few years, Hume's work was the only history of England generally read in the United States. Then came Malcolm Laing, who imagined he had closed the controversy against Mary in his bitterDissertation. Mignet, in France, went further than Laing, while Froude, in his history of England, distancing all previous writers, portrays Mary in the blackest colors as one of the most criminal and devilish of women. For his material there is no statement so absurd, no invention so gross, no lie so palpable, no calumny so vile, provided only that it be to the prejudice of Mary Stuart, that does not find favor in his eyes. In his blind hatred of the Catholic queen, forgetting all historic dignity and even personal decency, he showers upon her such epithets as "panther," "ferocious animal," "wild-cat," "brute;" her persecutors being white-robed saints, such as "thepious Cecil," and "the noble and stainless Murray," and the virgin Queen Elizabeth appearing "as a beneficent fairy coming out of the clouds to rescue an erring sister."

But Mary's cause has not wanted defenders. Among the best known are, John Leslie, Bishop of Ross; Camden and Carte, the English historians; Herrera, the Spanish bishop; Robert Keith; Goodall, (1754,) who made the first searching analysis of the silver-casket letters, showing that the French text of the pretended Bothwell love-letters, until then supposed to be original, was a poor translation from the Latin or Scotch. William Tytler (1759) and John Whitaker (1788) proved that the letters were forged by those who produced them. Stuart, in his history of Scotland, (1762,) and Mademoiselle Keraglio, in herLife of Elizabeth, (1786,) both protested against the conclusions of Hume and Robertson. In 1818, George Chalmers took up Laing's book, and proved conclusively, with a mass of newly-discovered testimony, that the accusers of Mary were themselves the murderers of Darnley. Then followed the learned Dr. Lingard, Guthrie, and H. Glassford Bell. But all these works were either too heavy and cumbrous for popular reading, or too narrow in their scope; most of them being better prepared for reference than for reading, and of but slight effective service in the field occupied by Hume and Robertson. Miss Strickland's work is well known to all our readers, and has done much good. In 1866, Mr. McNeel Caird publishedMary Stuart, her Guilt or Innocence, in which he effectively defends Mary and seriously damages Mr. Froude's veracity.

A most valuable historical contribution is the late work (1869) of M. Jules Gauthier. The first volume is out and the second will be issued in a few months. M. Gauthier says that after reading the work of M. Mignet, he had no doubt that Queen Mary had assassinated her husband in order to avenge the death of Riccio. "I was, therefore, surprised," he continues, "on arriving at Edinburgh, in 1861, to hear Mary warmly defended, and reference made to documents recently discovered that were strongly in her favor. I then formed the resolution to study for myself this historical problem and to discover the truth. I had no idea of writing a book, and no motive but that of satisfying my own curiosity. I have devoted several years solely to this object in Scotland, England, and Spain." M. Gauthier then gives a formidable list of authorities and manuscripts not usually quoted, acknowledges the aid of the librarians of the legal library at Edinburgh, the learned Mr. Robertson of the Register House, Robert Chambers, and the archivist of Simancas, Don Emanuel Gonzalez, and announces the result to be a complete change of opinion. He goes on to say that, before examining all the documents of the trial, he had no doubt of the guilt of Mary Stuart; but after having scrutinized and compared them, he remained and still remains convinced that it was solely to assure the fruit of their shameful victory that the barons, who had dethroned their queen with England's help, sought to throw upon her the crimes of which they themselves were the authors or the accomplices, and in which their auxiliaries were Elizabeth and her ministers.

But what is of far greater importance, M. Gauthier announces the discovery among the SimancasMSS.of documents that prove beyond all question that the silver-casket letters were forgeries. This important revelation he promises for the secondvolume. Preceding M. Gauthier in time, M. Wiesener, another French writer, had, in an admirablecritique, demolished the foundations on which rest most of the calumnies against Mary Stuart.

And now we have Mr. Hosack's work. There is a beautiful poetic justice in the fact that the most effective defences of Mary Stuart, in the English language, come from Protestant pens, and that in Scotland among the sons of the Puritans are found her most enthusiastic advocates. Mr. Hosack is an Edinburgh lawyer, and a Protestant.

His book, written in a tone of legal calmness and dignity, stands in refreshing contrast with Mr. Froude's savage bitterness and repulsive violence, and seriously damages any credit that may be claimed for the latter as a historian. Entirely at home in the customs, localities, laws, and history of Scotland, he throws unexpected light on a hundred interesting points heretofore left in obscurity by foreign, and even English historians. Mr. Hosack also produces many valuable documents never before published. Among these are the specific charges preferred against Mary at the conference at Westminster in 1568. The "Articles" produced by Mary's accusers before they exhibited their proofs to the commissioners of Queen Elizabeth, although constantly referred to by historians, are nowhere to be found among all the voluminous collections heretofore published on the subject. Mr. Hosack discovered this valuable paper in the collection known as the Hopetoun Manuscripts, which are now in the custody of the lord clerk register. Another most interesting document presented by Mr. Hosack is one long supposed to be lost, namely, the journal of the proceedings at Westminster on the day upon which the silver casket containing the alleged letters of Queen Mary to Bothwell was produced. Then comes the inventory of the jewels of the Queen of Scots, attached to her last will and testament, made in 1566, when Mary was supposed to be dying. This paper has been but recently discovered in the Register House, Edinburgh. It is of high importance, as throwing light on a disputed point concerning Darnley. Finally, with the aid of Professor Schiern, of Copenhagen, Mr. Hosack has succeeded in ascertaining the date of the capture of Nicholas Hubert, commonly called "French Paris." This point is also weighty in connection with the question of the authenticity of the deposition ascribed to him. The English critics of Mr. Hosack's book—many of them partisans of Froude, and armed in the triple steel of their national prejudice—are unanimous in praise of his research, and the able presentation of his argument. Mr. Hosack distinctly charges Mr. Froude with "inventing fictions," and, moreover, sustains the charge. The aim of Mr. Hosack's work is not so much to write the life of Mary Stuart as to demonstrate that her accusers were guilty of the very crime (the murder of Darnley) of which they charge her, and that she was innocent, not only of that, but of any intrigue with Bothwell. Passing over in silence the period of Mary's residence in France, our author rapidly glances at the salient points in the administration of Mary of Lorraine, the mother of Mary Stuart, an admirable character, whose energy, integrity, resolution, and fortitude would have adorned the character of the greatest sovereign that ever reigned. Mr. Hosack thus speaks of her death:

"The words of the dying princess, at once so magnanimous and gentle, were listened to with deep emotion by the Protestant chiefs, who, though in arms against herauthority, all acknowledged and admired her private virtues. Amidst the tears of her enemies, thus died the best and wisest woman of the age."

Knox alone, adds Mr. Hosack, sought by means of the most loathsome slanders to vilify the character of this excellent princess; and it was no doubt at his instigation that the rites of Christian burial were denied to her remains in Scotland. Mr. Hosack then takes up the history of Mary from the period of her arrival in Scotland, and ends with the commencement of her imprisonment in England.

Mary came to reign over a country virtually in the power of a band of violent and rapacious lords, long in rebellion against their king. Of the five royal Jameses, three had perished, victims of their aristocratic anarchy. The personal piety of these rebellious lords was infinitesimal; but they had an enormous appreciation of Henry VIII.'s plunder of the monasteries and division of the church lands among the nobles, and desired to see Scotland submitted to the same regimen—they, of course, becoming ardent reformers. The young queen soon won the hearts of the people of Edinburgh by her sweetness and grace. One of her first experiences was the remarkable interview with Knox, in which he bore himself as properly became "the ruffian of the Reformation," while Mary, a girl of nineteen, utterly overcame him in self-possession, logic, and command of citation from the Old Testament. The man was brimful of vanity. The wound rankled, and from that moment he was Mary Stuart's personal enemy.

Long before Mary's arrival, Knox and his friends had obtained full sway. The reformers had destroyed the monastic establishments in the central counties, and, under the influence of Knox, had an "act" passed for the total destruction of what they called "monuments of superstition;" the monuments of superstition in question being all that Scotland possessed of what was most valuable in art and venerable in architecture.

"The registers of the church, and the libraries," says Spotiswoode, "were cast into the fire. In a word, all was ruined; and what had escaped in the time of the first tumult, did now undergo the common calamity." In his sermons, Knox openly denounced Mary, not only as an incorrigible idolatress, but as an enemy whose death would be a public boon. In equally savage style he fulminated against the amusements of the court, and dwelt especially on the deadly sin of dancing. And yet Knox—we must in candor admit it—was not totally indifferent to some social amenities, for he was then paying his addresses to a young girl of sixteen, whom he afterward married. Mary had freely accorded to her Protestant subjects the privilege of worshipping God according to their own creed; but it did not enter into the views of Knox and his co-religionists that the same privilege should be accorded to Mary in the land of which she was sovereign, and with great difficulty could she obtain the right to a private chapel at Holyrood—even this being interfered with, and the officiating priest afterward insulted, beaten, and driven away. And these Christian gentlemen did not stop here. They had the insolence and inhumanity to present to the queen what they called a "supplication," in which they declared that the practice of idolatry could not be tolerated in the sovereign any more than in the subject, and that the "papistical and blasphemous mass" should be wholly abolished. To this, Mary's reply was that, answering for herself,she was noways persuaded that there was any impiety in the mass, and trusted her subjects would not press her to act against her conscience; for, not to dissemble, but to deal plainly with them, she neither might nor would forsake the religion wherein she had been educated and brought up, believing the same to be the true religion, and grounded on the word of God. She further advised her "loving subjects" that she, "neither in times past nor yet in time coming, did intend to force the conscience of any person; but to permit every one to serve God in such a manner as they are persuaded to be the best." On this, Mr. Hosack remarks, "Nothing could exceed the savage rudeness of the language of the assembly. Nothing could exceed the dignity and moderation of the queen's reply."

The enemies of Mary Stuart always seek to find excuse for the rebellious outrages of the lords and the kirk in the design attributed to Mary Stuart of introducing Catholicity to the exclusion of Protestantism. Mr. Hosack handles this portion of his subject with great ease and success, showing conclusively the admirable spirit of toleration that animated Mary throughout. Then follow the marriage of Mary with Darnley; the rebellion of Murray, Argyll, and others to deprive the queen of her crown; the energy, ability, and admirable judgment of Mary in dealing with them, and the consummate hypocrisy and falsehood of Elizabeth in feigning good-will to Mary while furnishing the rebels money and assistance. The French ambassador in London had discovered that six thousand crowns had been sent from the English treasury to the Scotch rebels. The fact was positive. He mentioned it to Elizabeth in person; but she solemnly assured him, with an oath, (elle nia avec serment,) that he was misinformed. There were strong reasons why Elizabeth would not have it believed that she had lent the rebel lords any countenance, and she therefore got up a remarkable scene for the purpose. The French and Spanish ambassadors had charged her in plain terms with stirring up dissensions in Scotland, and she desired to reply to the imputation in the most public and emphatic manner. Murray and Hamilton were summoned to appear, and in presence of the ambassadors and her own ministers she asked them whether she had ever encouraged them in their rebellion. Murray began to reply in Scotch, when Elizabeth stopped him, bidding him speak in French, which she better understood. The scene was arranged beforehand. Murray fell on his knees and declared "that her majesty had never moved them to any opposition or resistance against the queen's marriage." "Now," exclaimed Elizabeth in her most triumphant tone, "you have told the truth; for neither did I, nor any one in my name, stir you up against your queen; for your abominable treason may serve for example to my own subjects to rebel against me. Therefore get you out of my presence; ye are but unworthy traitors." This astounding exhibition of meanness, and falsehood, and folly, which it is certain, says Mr. Hosack, imposed upon no one who witnessed it, is without a parallel in history.

Mary's energy and prudence in suppressing this dangerous rebellion sufficiently refute a prevalent notion that she was indebted to the counsels of Murray for the previous success of her administration. Even Robertson admits that at no period of her career were her abilities and address more conspicuous. And more remarkable than her ability in gaining success was the moderation with which she used it. Not one of the rebelssuffered death, and her speedy pardon of the Duke of Chatelherault, a conspirator against her crown, of which he was the presumptive heir, was an instance of generosity unexampled in the history of princes.

The accusation against Mary of having signed the Catholic League, put forward by so many historians—Froude, of course, among them—is clearly shown by Mr. Hosack to be utterly untrue. She never joined it. By this refusal she maintained her solemn promises to her Protestant subjects—the chief of whom remained her staunchest friend in the days of her misfortune. She averted religious discord from her dominions, and posterity will applaud the wisdom as well as the magnitude of the sacrifice which she made at this momentous crisis.

Then comes the murder of Riccio, which is generally attributed to the jealousy of Darnley and the personal hatred of the nobles. These motives, if they ever existed at all, were but secondary with the conspirators who contrived Riccio's death.

Their main objects were the restoration of the rebel lords, the deposition of the queen, and the elevation of Darnley to the vacant throne, on which he would have been their puppet.

Mr. Hosack traces, step by step, the progress of the conspiracy, and the bargaining and traffic among the conspirators for their several rewards. There was a bond of the conspirators among themselves, a bond with Darnley, and one with the rebel leaders who waited events at Newcastle. Elizabeth's ministers in Scotland were taken into their confidence and counsels, as was also John Knox, while Elizabeth was advised of and approved it. Many years ago, a Catholic convent was burned in Boston—with what circumstances of atrocity we do not now desire to recall. On the Sunday preceding the outrage, exciting sermons were delivered on the horrors of popery from more than one Protestant pulpit. So, also, on the Sunday preceding the murder of Riccio, the denunciations of idolatry from the pulpits of Edinburgh were more than usually violent, and the texts were chosen from those portions of Scripture which describe the vengeance incurred by the persecutors of God's people. The 12th of March was the day fixed for the parliament before which the rebel lords were cited to appear, under pain of the forfeiture of their titles and estates. This forfeiture the conspirators were resolved to prevent, and chose the 9th of March to kill Riccio. They could have assassinated him at any time on the street, in the grounds, in his own room; but the lords selected the hour just after supper when Riccio would be in attendance upon the queen, in order to kill him in her presence, doubtless with hope of the result of her death and that of her unborn babe from the agitation and affright that must ensue from such a scene.The contingency of Mary's death was provided for in the bond.We need not here repeat the horrible details of the scene in which, while a ruffian (Ker of Faudonside) pressed a cocked pistol to her breast until she felt the cold iron through her dress, the hapless victim of brutal prejudice and bigotry, whose only crime was fidelity to his queen, was dragged from her presence and instantly butchered. Nor need we describe the fiendish exultation and savage conduct of the assassins toward a sick, defenceless woman.

"Machiavelli," remarks Mr. Hosack, "never conceived—he has certainly not described—a plot more devilish in its designs than that which was devised ostensibly for the death of Riccio, but in reality for thedestruction both of Mary Stuart and her husband."

For two days the noble assassins appeared to have been entirely successful. Riccio was killed, the parliament was dissolved, the banished lords recalled, and the queen a prisoner. But her amazing spirit and resolution scattered all their plans to the winds. The poor fool Darnley began to see the treachery of the men who had made him their tool, and Mary fully opened his eyes to his danger. At midnight on the Tuesday after the murder, the queen and Darnley crept down through a secret passage to the cemetery of the royal chapel of Holyrood and made their way "through the charnel house, among the bones and skulls of the ancient kings," to where horses and a small escort stood waiting for them. Twenty miles away Mary galloped to Dunbar, where, within three days, eight thousand border spears assembled to defend her.

The assassins, Morton, Ruthven, and their associates, fled to England, where, under Elizabeth's wing, they were of course safe. Maitland went to the Highlands, and Knox, grieving deeply over the discomfiture of his friends, took his departure for the west.

The complicity of Murray,

"The head of many a felon plot,But never once the arm,"

was not known, and he was pardoned his rebellion, and again received by Mary into her confidence. This is the Murray constantly referred to by Mr. Froude in his History of England as "the noble Murray," "the stainless Murray"—a man who, for systematic, thorough-going villainy and treachery has not his superior in history.

Darnley, with an audacity and recklessness of consequences which seem hardly compatible with sanity, made a solemn declaration to the effect that he was wholly innocent of the late murderous plot.

The indignation of his associates in the crime knew no bounds. He alone, they said, had caused the failure of the enterprise; he had deserted them, and now sought to purchase his safety in their ruin. From that moment his fate was sealed.

Buchanan's famous lie concerning Mary's visit to the Castle of Alloa, which, to his shame, Mr. Froude substantially repeats, is disposed of effectually in a few words by Mr. Hosack.

The ride from Jedburg, too, as recounted by Buchanan in his own peculiar style, repeated by Robertson and by Froude, as far as he dares, in the teeth of the testimony on the subject, also receives itsquietusat Mr. Hosack's hands.

Then follow the dangerous illness of Mary, the aggravating and fatal misconduct of Darnley, the poor queen's mental suffering and anxiety, the preliminary plotting by Murray, Maitland, Argyll, and Huntly to put Darnley out of the way, the signing of the bond among them for the murder of the "young fool and tyrant," and the insidious attempt by these scoundrels to entrap the poor heart-broken Mary into some such expression of impatience or violence against Darnley as would enable them to set up the charge of guilty knowledge against her. The conspirators themselves have put on record the noble and Christian reply of Mary Stuart, "I will that ye do nothing through which any spot may be laid on my honor or conscience; and therefore, I pray you, rather let the matter be in the state that it is, abiding till God of his goodness put remedy thereto."

Following upon the baptism of the infant prince, who afterward became James VI. of Scotland, came the unfortunatelytoo successful endeavors of Murray, Maitland, Bothwell, and Queen Elizabeth to obtain the pardon of the Riccio murderers.

Poor Mary's political success would have been assured if she had possessed but a small share of Elizabeth's hardness of heart and vindictiveness. Always generous, always noble, always forgiving, she allowed herself to be persuaded to grant a pardon to these villains—seventy-six in number—excepting only George Douglas, who stabbed Riccio in presence of the queen, and Ker of Faudonside, who held his pistol at her breast during the perpetration of the murder. This ruffian remained safely in England until Mary's downfall, when he returned to Scotland and married the widow of John Knox.

It was about this period that Buchanan was extolling to the skies, in such Latin verses as those beginning

"Virtute ingenio, regina, et munere formæFelicibus felicior majoribus,"

the virtues of a sovereign whom he afterward told us every one knew at the time to be a monster of lust and cruelty! His libel was written when Mary was a fugitive in England, to serve the purposes of his employers, who had driven her from her native kingdom. The most assiduous of her flatterers as long as she was on the throne, he pursued her with the malice of a demon when she became a helpless prisoner. His slanders were addressed not to his own countrymen, for whom they would have been too gross, but to Englishmen, for the great majority of whom Scotland was aterra incognita. His monstrous fictions were copied by Knox and De Thou, and later by Robertson, Laing, and Mignet, who, while using his material, carefully abstained from quoting him as authority. Mr. Froude, the author of that popular serial novel which he strangely entitlesThe History of England, with deliciousnaïvetédeclares his belief in the truth of Buchanan'sDetection, and makes its transparent mendacity a leading feature of his work.

According to Buchanan, the Queen of Scots was, at the period above referred to, leading a life of the most notorious profligacy. Mr. Hosack, in his calm, lawyer-like manner, shows conclusively that at that very time she never stood higher in the estimation both of her own subjects and of her partisans in England. Considering the difficulties of her position, he adds, Mary had conducted the government of Scotland with remarkable prudence and success; and her moderation in matters of religion induced even the most powerful of the Protestant nobility to regard her claims with favor.

And still the plotting went on. Motives enough, for them, had Murray, Morton, Maitland, and the rest to seek the destruction of Darnley—revenge and greed of gain. These men had imposed upon the generous nature of the queen in the disposal of the crown lands, and they well knew that Darnley had made no secret of his disapproval of the improvident bounty of his wife. These grants of the crown lands, under the law of Scotland, could be revoked at any time before the queen attained the age of twenty-five. That period was now at hand, and the danger of their losing their spoils under the influence of Darnley was imminent.

He had just been taken down with the small-pox at Glasgow, and the conspirators, well knowing Mary's forgiving temper, feared, as well they might, that his illness would lead to a reconciliation between them.

Although Bothwell had shared less in the bounty of the queen than the others, his motive was no less powerful for seeking the death of Darnley.He aspired to Darnley's place as the queen's husband, and his ambition was no secret to Murray and the others. Full willingly they lent themselves to aid him, knowing that, if successful, his plans would be fatal both to the queen and to himself.

Queen Mary went from Edinburgh to Glasgow, to visit Darnley on his sick-bed. On this visit hinges a mass of accusations against Mary by her enemies. We regret that the passages of Mr. Hosack's book in which he dissects and analyzes all the evidence covering the period from the journey to Glasgow down to the explosion at Kirk-a-field are too long to be copied here. They are masterly, and more thoroughly dispose of the slanders than any statement we have seen. He moreover demonstrates that the queen's journey to Glasgow, heretofore relied on as a proof of her duplicity because she went uninvited, was undertaken at Darnley's own urgent request. It is during this visit to Glasgow that Mary is charged with having written the two casket letters, which, if genuine, certainly would prove her to be accessory to the murder of her husband. With thorough knowledge of Scotch localities, language, customs, and peculiarities, and with a perfect mastery of all the details of testimony,proandcon, in existence on the subject—a mastery which Mr. Froude is far from possessing—Mr. Hosack makes the examination of this question of the genuineness of the Glasgow letters with an application of the laws of evidence that enables him—if we may be permitted the homely phrase—to turn them inside out. Contrasted with the sweet, trusting, child-like confidence with which the letters are received by Mr. Froude, Mr. Hosack's treatment of them is shockingly cool. In commenting upon Hume's opinion that the style of the second Glasgow letter was inelegant but "natural," Mr. Hosack remarks that human depravity surely has its limits, and the most hardened wretches do not boast, and least of all in writing, of their treachery and cruelty. Even in the realm of fiction we find no such revolting picture.

Of the third letter, the historian Robertson long since remarked that, "if Mary's adversaries forged her letters, they were certainly employed very idly when they produced this." And this remark may correctly be applied to the fourth letter. The difference between the two first and the two last is the most striking. The Glasgow letters breathe only lust and murder; but these are written, to all appearance, by a wife to her husband, in very modest and becoming language. She gently reproaches him with his forgetfulness, and with the coldness of his writings, sends him a gift in testimony of her unchangeable affection, and finally describes herself as his obedient, lawful wife. This is not the language of a murderess, and these simple and tender thoughts were not traced by the same hand that composed the Glasgow letters. They are the genuine letters of Mary, not to Bothwell, but to her husband Darnley, and they are here by result of an ingenious device to mix up a few genuine letters of Mary with those intended to prove her guilty of the murder. The only letters of importance as testimony against the queen are the two first, and they were conclusively proven by Goodall, more than a century ago, to have been written originally in Scotch.

Concerning Paris, whose testimony is strongly relied on by Mary's enemies, Mr. Hosack has made a very important discovery. According to a letter of Murray to Queen Elizabeth, Paris arrived in Leith (a prisoner) about the middle of June, 1569.But Professor Schiern, of Copenhagen, in compliance with a request made by Mr. Hosack to search the Danish archives for any papers relating to Scotland, found the receipt of Clark, Murray's agent, acknowledging the delivery to him of the prisoner Paris on the 30th of October, 1568. So that Paris was delivered up nearly a year before his so-called deposition was produced. The authenticity of his deposition, monstrous though it be, has been stoutly maintained by several of Mary's enemies. Even Hume remarks upon it,

"It is in vain at present to seek improbabilities in Nicolas Hubert's dying confession, and to magnify the smallest difficulty into a contradiction. It was certainly a regular judicial paper, given in regularly and judicially, and ought to have been canvassed at the time, if the persons whom it concerned had been assured of their own innocence."

Mr. Hume is an attractive writer, but as a historian it is long since people ceased to rely upon him for facts. The passage here quoted is a characteristic exemplification of his extraordinary carelessness. According to Mr. Hosack, the short sentence cited contains three distinct and palpable mistakes. In the first place, the paper containing the depositions of Paris was authenticated by no judicial authority. Secondly, it was not given in regularly and judicially; for it was secretly sent to London in October, 1569, many months after the termination of the Westminster conferences. Lastly, it was impossible that it could have been canvassed at the time by those whom it concerned; for it was not only kept a profound secret from the queen and her friends during her life, but it was not made public for nearly a century and a half after her death. The depositions of Paris were first given to the world in the collections of Anderson in 1725.

It did not at all suit Murray's purpose to produce Paris in open court. So, after being tortured, he was executed, and in place of a witness who might have told what he saw and heard, was produced a so-called deposition professedly written by a servant of Murray, and attested by two of his creatures, Buchanan and Wood, both pensioners of Cecil, and both enemies of the Queen of Scotland. Buchanan, of course, had full cognizance of the Paris deposition, for he subscribed it as a witness; and yet we have the singular fact that, although he appended to hisDetectiothe depositions of Hay, Hepburn, and Dalgleish, that of Paris is omitted. Again, in hisHistory of Scotland, published subsequently, although he refers to Paris in several passages, he is still silent as to his deposition. The solution of this seeming singularity is simple. He rejected it for its manifest extravagance and absurdity, which, he wisely concluded, could not impose on the worst enemies of the queen.

Fable and fiction answering Mr. Froude's purpose just as well as authentic history, he of course accepts the "Paris" paper as perfectly true. A successful writer of the romance of history, Mr. Froude deserves great credit for his industry in gathering every variety of material for his novel without any absurd sentimental squeamishness as to its origin.

And now, little by little, the truth begins to come out. For full two years after the murder of Darnley, no one was publicly charged with the crime but Bothwell and the queen. And this because it was the interest of the ruling faction in Scotland, (themselves the murderers,) to confine the accusation to these two persons. But as in time events develop, we find the leaders of this faction, quarrelling among themselves, begin to accuse each other of the crime, until the principal nobility of Scotland areimplicated in it. Mr. Hosack's conclusion, from a searching analysis of all the evidence on record, is, that the mysterious assassination of Darnley was not a domestic but a political crime; and it was one which for many a day secured political power to that faction which from the first had opposed his marriage, and had never ceased from the time of his arrival in Scotland to lay plots for his destruction.

As might be expected, Mary's enemies accuse her of a criminal degree of inactivity after the death of her husband. But what could she do? Who were the murderers? No one could tell. The whole affair was then involved in impenetrable mystery. Her chief officers of justice, Huntly the chancellor, and Argyll the lord-justice, were both in the plot; Bothwell, the sheriff of the county, on whom should devolve the pursuit and arrest of the criminal, had taken an active share in the perpetration of the murder, and Maitland, the secretary, who had first proposed to get rid of Darnley, was probably the most guilty of all. In a memorial afterward addressed by Mary to the different European courts, she thus describes the situation: "Her majesty could not but marvel at the little diligence they used, and that they looked at one another as men who wist not what they say or do."

And now calumny ran riot. Slanderous tongues and pens were busy. Since Mary had dismissed the insolent Randolph from her court, Elizabeth had maintained no ambassador there, so that the usual officialespionagecould not be carried on. Instead thereof, Sir William Drury, stationed on the Scotch border, transmitted day by day a current of scandalous stories. Mary was a woman, and her enemies might effect by slander what they could not accomplish by force. Then, too, a bigoted religious prejudice made the work easy. No matter, says our author, what was the nature of the accusation against a Catholic queen; so long as it was boldly made and frequently repeated, it was sure to gain a certain amount of credit in the end. Here follows, in Mr. Hosack's pages, an able presentation of contemporary testimony going to show the falsehood of the accusations that the queen was at this time on a footing of intimate understanding with Bothwell. Under the circumstances his trial was, of course, a farce.

The most powerful men in Scotland were his associates in guilt. One of his noble accomplices in the murder rode by his side to the Talbooth. Another accomplice, the Earl of Argyll, hereditary lord-justice, presided at the trial; and the Earl of Caithness, a near connection of Bothwell by marriage, was foreman of the jury. The parliament which met soon after did little, besides passing the Act of Toleration, but enact statutes confirming Maitland, Huntly, Morton, and Murray in their titles and estates. As we have seen, this was precisely the main object sought by these men in the murder of Darnley, an object passed over in silence by most historians, and not understood by others. Their common interest in his death was the strongest bond of union among the noble assassins. If Darnley had lived, he would have prevented the confirmation of these grants; for he had made significant threats on that subject, especially as to the gifts to Murray. Murray and the others wanted the lands and titles. They obtained them. Bothwell had his own designs, and these were insolent in their ambition. He wanted the queen's hand in marriage as a step to the throne. It was but just that his companions should help himas he had aided them. On the evening of the day on which parliament rose, (April 19th,) Both well gave an entertainment at a tavern in Edinburgh to a large party of the nobility. After wine had circulated freely, he laid before his guests a bond for their signatures. This document recited that it was prejudicial to the realm that the queen should remain a widow; and it recommended him, (Bothwell,) a married man, as the fittest husband she could obtain among her subjects. With a solitary exception—the Earl of Eglinton—all the lords present signed this infamous bond, and thereby bound themselves to "further advance and set forward the said marriage," and to risk their lives and goods against all who should seek to hinder or oppose it. It is claimed by Mr. Froude that his special saint, "the noble and stainless Murray," did not sign this bond; but it is now made plain that he did. Meantime calumny had free scope, and no invention was too gross for belief by many, if it but carried with it some injury to Mary's reputation. Thus, she is accused of journeying to Stirling for the express purpose of poisoning her infant son. Poor Marie Antoinette in after years, as we know, was accused of something worse than taking the life of her child. The answer of these two Catholic queens, great in their sufferings, and grand in their resignation, was, in each case, an eloquent burst of nature and queenly dignity. "The natural love," said Mary Stuart, "which the mother bears to her only bairn is sufficient to confound them, and needs no other answer." She afterward added, that all the world knew that the very men who now charged her with this atrocious crime had wronged her son even before his birth; for they would have slain him in her womb, although they now pretended in his name to exercise their usurped authority.

On the 23d of April, while travelling from Linlithgow to Edinburgh, with a few attendants, the queen was stopped by Bothwell, at the head of one thousand horse. Bothwell rode up, caught her bridle-rein, and assured her that "she was in the greatest possible danger," and forthwith escorted her to one of her own castles, Dunbar. Here she was kept a prisoner. Melville, who accompanied her, was sent away, having heard Bothwell boast that he would marry the queen, even "whether she would herself or not." No woman was allowed near her but Bothwell's sister.

Although our readers are familiar with the horrible story, the best account of it is, after all, Mary's own simple and modest narrative of the abominable outrage. It is found in Keith, vol. ii. p. 599, and in Hosack, p. 313. After referring to the great services and unshaken loyalty of Bothwell, she says that, previous to her visit to Stirling, he had made certain advances, "to which her answer was in no degree correspondent to his desire;" but that, having previously obtained the consent of the nobility to the marriage, he did not hesitate to carry her off to the castle of Dunbar; that when she reproached him for his audacity, he implored her to attribute his conduct to the ardor of his affection, and to condescend to accept him as her husband, in accordance with the wishes of his brother nobles; that he then, to her amazement, laid before her the bond of the nobility, declaring that it was essential to the peace and welfare of the kingdom that she should choose another husband, and that, of all her subjects, Bothwell was best deserving of that honor; that she still, notwithstanding, refused to listen to his proposals,believing that, as on her former visit to Dunbar, an army of loyal subjects would speedily appear for her deliverance; but that, as day after day passed without a sword being drawn in her defence, she was forced to conclude that the bond was genuine, and that her chief nobility were all in league with Bothwell; and finally, that, finding her a helpless captive, he assumed a bolder tone, and "so ceased he never till, by persuasion and importunate suit,accompanied not the less by force, he has finally driven us to end the work begun." Forced to marry Bothwell Mary was, to all who saw her, an utterly wretched woman, and longed only for death. The testimony on this point is very ample, and her behavior at this crisis of her history, concludes Mr. Hosack, can only be explained by her rooted aversion to a marriage which was forced upon her by the daring ambition of Bothwell and the matchless perfidy of his brother nobles.

But already a fresh plot was on foot. Melville wrote to Cecil concerning it, on the 7th of May; and on the following day, Kirkaldy of Grange sent to the Earl of Bedford a letter intended for Elizabeth's eye. Kirkaldy, the Laird of Grange, an ardent Protestant, who, at the age of nineteen, was one of the men who murdered Cardinal Beaton, enjoyed among his fellow-nobles the reputation of being a man of honor, and the best and bravest soldier in Scotland. He advised Bedford of the signing of a "bond" by "the most part of the nobility," one head of which was, "to seek the liberty of the queen, who is ravished and detained by the Earl of Bothwell;" another, "to pursue them that murdered the king." The letter concludes by asking Elizabeth's aid and support for "suppressing of the cruel murtherer Bothwell." But Elizabeth had lost not only much money, but all credit for veracity, by her last interference in Scottish affairs, and refused to have any thing to do with this plot.

For three weeks after her marriage the queen remained at Holyrood; the prisoner, to all appearance, rather than the wife of Bothwell. She was continually surrounded with guards; and the description of her situation given by Melville, who was at court at the time, agrees entirely with that of the French ambassador. Not a day passed, he says, in which she did not shed tears; and he adds that many, even of Bothwell's followers, "believed that her majesty would fain have been quit of him." The insurgent leaders—Morton, Maitland, and Hume—were busy, and soon in the field with their forces. Bothwell raised a small levy to oppose them, and the two armies met at Carberry Hill on the 15th of June, 1567, exactly one month after the marriage. There was no fighting. Dangerous as it was, Mary preferred to trust herself to the rebel lords than to remain with Bothwell. She received their pledge—that, in case she would separate herself from Bothwell, they were ready "to serve her upon their knees, as her most humble and obedient subjects and servants"—through Kirkaldy of Grange, the only man among them whose word she would take. They kept their pledge as they usually observed such obligations. What followed is too horrible to dwell upon. It is wonderful that any human being could have lived through the physical exhaustion, the insults, and the brutal treatment this poor woman was subjected to during the next two days. The people of Edinburgh grew indignant; and Kirkaldy of Grange swore the lords should not violate their promises. But they quieted him byshowing a forged letter of the queen to Bothwell. It was not the first time some among them had forged Mary's signature. With every circumstance of force and brutality, Mary was then imprisoned in Lochleven, whose guardian was the mother of the bastard Murray.

And now, while the friends of Mary, numerous as they were, remained irresolute and inactive, the dominant faction made the most strenuous efforts to strengthen itself. In the towns, where its strength chiefly lay, and especially in Edinburgh, says Mr. Hosack, the Protestant preachers rendered the most valuable aid. By indulging in furious invectives against the queen, and charging her directly with the murder, they prepared their hearers for the prospect of her speedy deposition, and theestablishment of a regency in the name of the infant prince. It is clear that Murray was not forgotten by his friends the preachers.

Strange as it may appear, there can be but little doubt that Elizabeth was sincerely indignant on hearing of the outrageous treatment of Mary by the lords. In her whole history, she never appeared to so much advantage as a woman and a queen. She would not stand tamely by, she said, and see her cousin murdered; and if remonstrances proved ineffectual, she would send an army to chastise and reduce them to obedience. Such conduct, and her messages to Mary while a prisoner at Lochleven, no doubt inspired the Scottish queen with the fatal confidence which induced her, a few months afterward, to seek refuge in England. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, and perhaps more unfortunately for Mary, the Queen of England's reputation for duplicity was now so well established that no one but her own ministers believed she was now sincere. Maitland, for the Scotch nobles, plainly told Elizabeth's ambassador that, after what had occurred in times past, "they could place no reliance on his mistress;" and the King of France said to Sir Henry Norris, "I do not greatly trust her." Meantime, the ministers daily denounced Mary as a murderess in their sermons, and demanded that she should be brought to justice like an ordinary criminal. Elizabeth's ambassador tried to induce the confederate lords to restrain the savage license of the preachers; but we cannot doubt, says Mr. Hosack, that they were secretly encouraged by their noble patrons to prepare the minds of the people for the deposition, if not for the murder, of the queen. Throgmorton's opinion was that, but for his presence in Scotland, she would have been sacrificed to the ambition and the bigotry of her subjects.

Still a prisoner at Lochleven, Mary had to suffer the brutality of the ruffian Lindsay, and the infamous hypocrisy of Mr. Froude's "stainless Murray," who, with money in both pockets from France and England, now came, with characteristic deceit, to defraud his sister of her crown. Mr. Hosack thus estimates his performance:

"First, to terrify his sister with the prospect of immediate death, then to soothe her with false promises of safety, and finally, with well-feigned reluctance, to accept the dignity he was longing to grasp, displayed a mixture of brutality and cunning of which he alone was capable."

Murray was proclaimed regent on the 22d of August. Soon afterward began the machinations for accusing Mary of Darnley's murder; and Murray's first care was to put out of the way every witness whose testimony could be of any importance. Hay, Hepburn, and Powrie and Dalgleish, on whom the queen's letters were said to have been found, were alltried, convicted, and executed on the same day. It was remarked that the proceedings were conducted with extraordinary and indecent haste. Hay and Hepburn, from the scaffold, denounced the nobles who had "made a bond for the king's murder." Public confidence was shaken in the regent, and the discontent of the people was expressed in plain speech and satirical ballads. Murray began to feel the need of Elizabeth's assistance. Mary, in her trusting confidence, had voluntarily placed all her valuable jewels in Murray's hands, for safe keeping. From among them he selected a set of rare pearls, the most valuable in Europe, which he sent by an agent to Elizabeth, who agreed to purchase what she well knew he had no right to sell. Under such circumstances, as is the custom among thieves and receivers, she expected a bargain, and got it. It was a very pretty transaction. In May, 1568, Mary escaped from Lochleven castle, and in a few days found herself at the head of an army of six thousand men. Of the ten earls and lords who flew to her support, nine were Protestants; and our Puritan historian finds it remarkable that, in spite of all the efforts of Murray and his faction, and in spite of all the violence of the preachers, she—the Catholic Queen of Scotland, the daughter of the hated house of Guise, the reputed mortal enemy of their religion—should now, after being maligned as the most abandoned of her sex, find her best friends among her own Protestant subjects, appears at first sight inexplicable. A phenomenon so strange, he adds, admits of only one explanation. If, throughout her reign, she had not loyally kept her promises of security and toleration to her Protestant subjects, they assuredly would not, in her hour of need, have risked their lives and fortunes in her defence.

Against her better judgment, Mary was induced to fight the battle of Langside, and lost the field. And now the queen made the great mistake of her life. Instead of trusting to the loyalty of the Scotch borderers, she determined to throw herself on the hospitality of the Queen of England. In vain did her trusty counsellors and strongest supporters seek to dissuade her. The warm professions of friendship and attachment made to her by Elizabeth, when she was a prisoner at Lochleven, had completely captivated her; and, insisting on her project, she crossed the Solway, in an open boat, to the English shore. She was received by Mr. Lowther, deputy warden, with all the respect due to her rank and misfortunes. Although she did not yet know it, Mary was from this moment a prisoner. Here Mr. Hosack, in a few eloquent passages, sets forth the reasons why the forcible detention of Mary, independently of all considerations of morality and justice, was a political blunder of the first magnitude. As the inmate of an English prison, she proved a far more formidable enemy to Elizabeth than when she wore the crowns both of France and Scotland. Never did a political crime entail a heavier measure of retribution than the captivity and murder of the Queen of Scots entailed on England.

Mary was first taken to the castle of Carlisle. Here Queen Elizabeth was represented by Lord Scrope, the warden of the marches, and Sir Francis Knollys, the queen's vice-chamberlain. These noblemen appear to have been more impressed with the mental and moral qualities of the Scottish queen than with her external graces. They describe her, after their first interview, as possessing "an eloquent tongue and a discreet head, with stout courage and a liberalheart;" and, in a subsequent letter, Knollys says, "Surely, she is a rare woman; for as no flattery can abuse her, so no plain speech seems to offend her, if she thinks the speaker an honest man." All this was written to Elizabeth, to whom, of course, it was gall and wormwood. A more remarkable passage of their letter is that in which, speaking in simple candor as English gentlemen and men of honor, they ask their royal mistress whether

"it were not honorable for you, in the sight of your own subjects and of all foreign princes, to put her grace to the choice, whether she will depart freely back into her country without your highness's impeachment, or whether she will remain at your highness's devotion within your realm here, with her necessary servants only to attend her?"

To a sovereign whose policy was synonymous with fraud, the unconscious sarcasm of this honorable advice must have been biting.

Elizabeth pledged her word to Mary that she should be restored to her throne. She at the same time pledged her word to Murray that Mary should never be permitted to return to Scotland. Then began the long nineteen years' martyrdom of Mary. The conference at York and the commission at Westminster were mockeries of justice. It was pretended there were two parties present before them—Murray and his associates on one side, Mary on the other. Mary was kept a prisoner in a distant castle, while Murray, received with honor at court, held private and secret consultations with members of both these quasi-judicial bodies, showed them the testimony he intended to produce, and obtained their judgment as to the sufficiency of his proofs before he publicly produced them; these proofs being the forged letters of the silver casket. These letters were never seen by Mary Stuart, and even copies of them were repeatedly and persistently refused her. Mr. Froude makes a lame attempt to show thatsome onesecretly furnished her copies; but even if his attempt were successful, it does not affect the fact that the copies were officially refused her. By the time the scales had fallen from Mary's eyes, Elizabeth's art and duplicity had woven a web from which she could not be extricated. Her remaining years of life were one long, heart-sickening struggle against treachery, spies, insult to her person, her reputation, and her faith; confinement, cold, sickness, neuralgic agony, want; deprivation of all luxuries, of medical attendance, and of the consolations of religion. At every fresh spasm of alarm on the part of Elizabeth, Mary's prison was changed; frequently in dead of winter, and generally without any provision for the commonest conveniences of life. More than once, taken into a naked, cold castle, Mary's jailers had to rely on the charity of the neighbors for even a bed for their royal prisoner. At Tutbury, her rooms were so dark and comfortless, and the surroundings so filthy—there is no other word for it—that the English physician refused to charge himself with her health. But enough. We all know the sad story, and we trustingly believe the poor martyred queen has her recompense in heaven.

Mr. Hosack's treatment of the question of the authenticity of the silver-casket letters is exhaustive. More than a century ago, Goodall fully exposed the forgery, and he has never been satisfactorily answered. Mr. Froude, of course, accepts them without discussion. The conferences at York and the proceedings at Westminster are presented as only a lawyer can present them. Mary's cause gains by the most rigid scrutiny. Mr.Froude does not know enough to analyze and intelligibly present serious matters like these. He prefers a series of sensationaltableauxand highly-colored dissolving views, producing for authorities garbled citations and his own fictions. Mr. Hosack's testimony, independently of its great intrinsic merit, is valuable because of his nationality and of his religion, and we hope to see his work republished in the United States. His closing page concludes thus:

"In the darkest hours of her existence—even when she hailed the prospect of a scaffold as a blessed relief from her protracted sufferings—she never once expressed a doubt as to the verdict that would be finally pronounced between her and her enemies. 'The theatre of the world,' she calmly reminded her judges at Fotheringay, 'is wider than the realm of England.' She appealed from the tyranny of her persecutors to the whole human race; and she has not appealed in vain. The history of no woman that ever lived approaches in interest to that of Mary Stuart; and so long as beauty and intellect, a kindly spirit in prosperity, and matchless heroism in misfortune attract the sympathies of men, this illustrious victim of sectarian violence and barbarous statecraft will ever occupy the most prominent place in the annals of her sex."

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