tion she was in "Master Partridge's house," where, on his way, he had passed beneath her window, and received her last gesture of remembrance.

In the south-west angle of the great area, in front of the chapel of St. Peter, there is a small portion of the pavement distinguished by a somewhat darker appearance of the stones. Formerly, we hear, the space all around was covered with grass, but nothing would grow on that spot. Here was placed the scaffold, with all its frightful appendages. Advancing toward it, accompanied by her maids, Elizabeth Tilney and Mistress Helen, who wept bitterly, she encountered the headless corpse of her husband borne to the chapel.

"O Guildford, Guildford!" was her only exclamation; "the antepast is not so bitter that thou hast tasted, and which I shall soon taste, as to make my flesh tremble; it is nothing compared to the feast of which we shall partake this day in heaven!" and so saying she went calmly on toward the scene of her last trial.

Holding a book in her hand, from which she occasionally prayed, she ascended, with a firm step, the scaffold. From the platform she addressed a few words to those around, expressive of her resignation. She said she was not to be blamed for "having offended the queen's majesty: but only for that I consented to the thing which I was enforced unto." She then commended herself to God.

When the executioner would have assisted to disrobe her she motioned him aside, and turned to her attendants, who, with many sobs, bared her beautiful throat. As they did so, she said "I pray you dispatch me quickly;" and, kneeling, inquired, "Will you take it off before I lay me down?" "No, madam," was the answer. Then tying the handkerchief over her eyes, and feeling for the block, she said, "Where is it?" One of the bystanders "guided her thereto;" and laying down her head, she resigned meekly, as she had fulfilled, her forfeit existence.

Two records of her remain in the Tower: the ax with which this crime was perpetrated, and which was the same used to deprive the fair Anne Boleyn of life, and the word "JANE" traced upon the wall of one of the apartments in the Beauchamp Tower, attributed to the hand of her husband.

It is possible that history will never again present a combination of merit and misfortune parallel to that exemplified in Lady Jane Grey; yet it is true that sorrow is the atmosphere in which real excellence best thrives. To mortal short-sightedness, unable to fathom the designs of omniscient wisdom, it may seem strange that the weakness of an hour should sometimes incur a more fearful temporal punishment than the crimes of a whole life; but if the sufferings

"Which patient merit of th' unworthy takes,"

set forth the honor of the Creator, improve the world, and sublimate the victim's faith, most certainly will this last bear its reward with it. The ocean is purified by turbulence, the candle burns brighter by consumption of itself; and thus the human mind is cleared from evil by the agitation of sorrow, and the martyr's faith shines most radiantly in the hour of physical dissolution!

MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS.

Born 1542-Died 1587.

THE name of "Mary Stuart," to judge by the number and ardor of her biographers, as well as by the strange fascination with which it falls upon our own ears, is, and will be, a spell equally potent in all times; but her character has perhaps formed the theme of more controversy, more diversity of opinion

as well in excess of advocacy as in illiberal reprehension than that of any other historical personage, ancient or modern. Yet, be her faults extreme, her weakness unpardonable, we must confess it ever difficult to judge impartially the unfortunate; and saying nothing about the halo of feminine loveliness, mental and physical, which to a certain degree constantly obscures the graver outline of the object it encircles, it is almost an impossibility to regard a life of such unprecedented misfortune-years spent in melancholy confinement and terminated by a violent death-without feeling that while the character of Elizabeth, were it of spotless pretension otherwise, would be completely marred by the cir cumstance of her unfortunate kinswoman's execution, that of Mary is elevated by the injustice which dictated her fate, and the meekness with which it

was accepted, into somewhat the dignity of a martyr. Born to wreath her "baby brows" with the circlet of sovereignty, to sustain with the soft and yielding grasp of youth a scepter which the firmest masculine hand could scarcely have held-nurtured amid the dangerous fascinations of the French court, never so magnificent, never so insidiously seductive as at her epoch-it would indeed be strange if the womanhood of a youthful widow, unsupported by a mother's precepts, unsustained by a husband's advice or aid, had presented other than a sad picture, where lines of irresolution and frivolity were sometimes deepened by broad and gloomy shadow. We have no opportunity of discussing the question either of actions or their motives; nor inclination to enter the lists, and swell the ranks of champions or assailants. All that is here necessary is a brief record of this queen's eventful life; and, though the mind of youth requires to be made up by others, it will be perhaps well, in the present instance, for judgment to be postponed until conflicting authorities are consulted, and opposing works perused, relative to one who must ever remain what Dargaud, her French biographer, has proclaimed her, "the most problematical of all historic personages, the eternal enigma of history."

Equally inauspicious as the existence which was to follow, Mary's birth occurred almost simultaneously with her father's decease. James V. of Scotland was expiring when intelligence was brought