come. But to hear Jenny Lind once is a treat to last until we go to heaven, where, and where alone, I suppose, such music can be heard. It is impossible to say what I think of her; as to criticising her, I could not attempt it until I had heard her fifty times, and then it would be but to admire each particular achievement. How any one can think her cold I know not. I find her full of passion, fire, energy, and possessing an earnestness which makes this passionate energy stronger than in any Italian I ever listened to. It is enough to hear her Casta Diva to be convinced that the most fervid expression of feeling can be felt and given by her ; Years rolled by, but no tidings were heard of the that she would be great in tragedy or tragic opera. vanished solicitor. By many he was believed to She gives the Prayer with deep feeling, but calmly have been long dead and buried, when suddenly a and solemnly. At the end of the first part she rumor reached Inverness that he was yet alive and put in two or three notes of a flourish, perfectly well. Many and stiff were the tumblers of toddy admissible and very simple; but I regretted this, that were drunk that night in the capital of the as I think the composer's music should be given Highlands, in discussing the credibility of a report with rigid fidelity in such a thing as Casta Diva, which affirmed that the broken-down leather-seller and she is evidently so little given to the ornate, of Clach-na-cuddin was now, under another name, her style is so artistic, in the solemn music so a man of fortune, high in office in Dublin Castle, a almost severe, that this must have been a lapsus dispenser of magnificent charities, the counsellor linguæ. Then in the second verse, Tempra, O of statesmen, the instructor of parliaments. Even Diva, tempra tu in cori ardenti ;" oh, what fervor! so it was; when closely questioned, Mr. George what deep, passionate entreaty she threw into those Mathews of the secretary's office in Ireland conwords! as though she were indeed praying for all fessed his identity with Duncan Chisholm, the man the tumultuous passions of her fellow-beings to be of law and leather in Inverness; and seeing that calmed by holy influences; no one without a great better could not be, he told the story of his transheart and deep sympathies with humanity could so formation. Enlisting in the 53d regiment of foot, sing it. In the Allegro her whole manner changed; he rose to be a sergeant. He was reduced from such an expression of love as she gave! and when that grade after a few months, only to rise again she descends in a cadenza, and repeats "Ah to a higher rank-that of staff-military-clerk in BELLO a me ritorno," &c., it was electrifying-so the brigade office at Dublin. Hence, about 1833, loving, so passionate. As to wonderful voice and he made his way as a clerk into the Irish Tithe execution, I can only say, as of the rest, it was Cffice. Five years afterwards he was appointed beyond all my powers of imagination. The rest secretary of the Tithe Million Fund, with a salary was all like this, and her versatility is amazing. of ten pounds a week, besides his pay as a clerk John Andersen, as she says, was inimitable, ex- in the Irish secretary's office. His ascent was quisite. As soon as she said, ""T is the last rose now rapid; another year or two saw him in the of summer," I felt an interest in that particular management of the Regium Donum Fund of rose profound and moving; and when she said, 30,000l. a year, closeted with Irish secretaries, con"Ah! who would inhabit this bleak world alone?" trolling Irish estimates, and despatched to London I really felt as if there was a wintry blast within when the Irish government wanted "a useful witand about me. ness" to stop the mouth of a troublesome committee. Weber's, (the Jubilee overture,) a famed composi- | years of age. He was somewhat slender in tion, beautiful and elevating. Really, when I think person; his stature was of the middle size-or, of all this, it seems enough of a treat for a year to to be more specific, he stood about five feet nine in his boots his shoulders were high, his complexion sallow; and it was particularly remarked that he seldom looked any one in the face. For his dress, he affected a blue surtout, a black waistcoat, pantaloons, and a hat. He united the somewhat incongruous vocations of a solicitor and dealer in leather. Between these two professions it was fated that Duncan Chisholm should fall to the ground; in plain terms, he found his way into the list of "sequestrations" in the Gazette. On becoming bankrupt, he clandestinely left Inverness, and could not be found, although a reward of fifty guineas was offered for his apprehension. 66 In truth she is a gifted being; she has consecrated her wonderful powers to the noblest ends, and Such splendid success could scarcely fail to God's blessing rests on every note she pours forth. provoke some little envy. The Irish government I went almost unwillingly, and never had an idea were duly informed of the Highland antecedents of being excited; nor was I excited; it went be- of their fortunate friend, and were particularly reyond that I was deeply impressed and solemnized. quested to see that his accounts were properly It seemed like a revelation from heaven; an en- vouched and audited. The hint was taken-a joyment among the highest and purest my nature board of inquiry was appointed by Earl de Grey, is capable of. I never expect to hear her again till the viceroy of the day; but that board reported I go to heaven. I hope I shall go there; she will that Duncan Chisholm, alias George Mathews, certainly have a high place there, and I should" was a public servant of unimpeachable integlike to hear her very often. You will think me crazy, but indeed I am not.-Nat. Intelligencer. From the Edinburgh Courant. STORY OF DUNCAN CHISHOLM. THOSE who were familiar with the pretty little town of Inverness five-and-twenty, or, it may be, thirty years ago, must remember the hero of this story. Duncan Chisholm, says our parliamentary authority, seemed at that time to be about thirty 66 rity;" and Under-Secretary Lucas was instructed to convey to the much-maligned gentleman the lord-lieutenant's opinion that he had been completely and honorably acquitted of every charge affecting his character." This was in the spring of 1842. An acquittal so emphatic seems to have silenced complaint if it did not remove suspicion, and it is not until after seven years have passed that the attention of the Irish government is again drawn by Mr. Sadleir, the member for Carlow, to the proceedings of Mr. Chisholm or Mathews. Mr. Sadleir's letter goes over the old field and breaks some new ground; but Lord Clarendon sees nothing in the statement to shake his full confidence | longing both to the government and the Presbyteriin the verdict of 1842, and pronounces, therefore, an Church, as well as to carry out other fraudulent that "any new inquiry would be unfair towards intentions." In these intentions he so far succeedMr. Mathews, and is uncalled for on any public ed that he caused to be paid over from the public ground." Mr. Sadleir returns to the charge, exchequer to the pretended agent of this new body which he enforces by at least one strong piece of a sum of 42207., which was lent out on mortgage, evidence; but still Lord Clarendon will not be in the name of himself and one or two others, apmoved, and the member for Carlow then retires parently his creatures. He had now a presbytery discomfited from the lists. endowed by the state, and as he had formerly provided it with imaginary missionaries, so he now proceeded to endow it with imaginary libraries. By a stroke of his all-powerful pen he prevailed on parliament to grant the sum of 15997. 13s., for a Presbyterian Congregational Fund Library," which never had any existence in this sublunary sphere. How the grant was spent is not clearly ascertained, but of course the inventor had his due share. One hundred pounds are shown to have gone in paying the expenses of Mr. Duncan Chisholm and his first spouse in a jaunt to London. But Duncan Chisholm had made to himself enemies more implacable than any political adversary. By the patronage which he lavished on the small religious sect of whose tabernacle he was a pillar, he had roused the hatred of some other sects of nearly the same persuasion. When once thoroughly excited, the odium theologicum never dies, never tires, never relents. The detection which had baffled successive viceroys, secretaries, and statesmen, was at length accomplished by the persevering enmity" the patient watch and vigil long”of two or three dissenting ministers who differed from Mr. Duncan Chisholm on certain recondite points of doctrine. The charges against him were once more renewed-another commission of inquiry was appointed; but before it could begin its labors the accused had admitted his guilt by an ignominious flight. The whole mystery was now at an end, and the twelve years' official career of this man, for whose "unimpeachable integrity" two lords-lieutenants had stood willing sponsors, was proved to have been one continued tissue of crime and imposture. The amount of public money which he had plundered by fraud and forgery does not exactly appear, but it must have been large and the daring way in which he effected his pillage is not a little remarkable. 66 have escaped detection for more than a dozen years is a disgrace to the executive, and may be said to shake confidence in that very self-suflicient thing, the whole red-tapist system. From Chambers' Journal. We cannot accompany the parliamentary paper any further in its exposure of the profligacy of this enormous rogue-his personation of dead men, his personification of men who never lived, his foisting his own relatives into the pension-list, his defrauding the deserving poor of their little pittances, his placing on one charitable fund "no less than thirty-two persons, all of whom, with a few exceptions, are or were members of the congregation of his own presbytery." Imperfect as is the outline which we have sketched, it may serve at least to point the twofold moral of this extraordinary history-to show, in the first place, the fatal facility with which the cloak of religious pretension can be assumed as a screen for the vilest rascality; and to demonstrate, in the second place, the necesWe have said that he was a shining light in a sity for an instant and thorough purgation of the petty religious body. This was a sect describing subordinate offices of Dublin Castle. That such a itself as Trinitarian Presbyterians, holding what monstrous and impudent system of deception as are theologically called non-subscribing principles-that daily practised by Duncan Chisholm should that is, rejecting subscription to any creed, confession, catechism, or other formulary as a test or condition of admission into the ministerial office." This denomination, consisting only of a few scanty congregations, seems early to have presented itself to Chisholm as a convenient means for carrying on his robbery of the public, while he gratified at the same time his love of sanctimonious display. In the end of the year 1839, by one stroke of his pen he called into being three missionaries of his sect laboring in the south of Ireland; while, by another stroke of the same ingenious instrument, he conferred on these aerial preachers the substantial benefit of a stipend of about 1007. a year. The stipend was voted by Parliament, and paid by the Irish government; but as the missionaries never had any existence except in the teeming brain of the Highland leather-seller, the reader will scarcely need to be informed into whose purse the stipend went. What Sydney Smith somewhat profanely fancied of the sideboard of a New Zealand bishop might be truly and literally affirmed of the table of Mr. Duncan Chisholm. He found missionaries to be indeed meat and drink to him-pocketing on this head alone, it would seem, somewhere about 5007. Emboldened by his success in the creation of a missionary-staff, the exemplary Mr. Chisholm next erected a presbytery. "The Presbytery of Munster," says the parliament paper, 66 was created, in 1840, into a separate body of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, by Mr. Mathews, as a medium through which he contemplated appropriating to his own management and trust sundry funds be LETTERS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. ONE is not accustomed to contemplate this princess, with her romantic and tragic history, as a person of great industry. Yet that this must have been the fact, has been established beyond all question by those industrious investigators who have failed to establish what they originally set about— her innocence of any connection with the death of her husband, Darnley. That her guilty accession has been proved by the few who have taken up that side of the controversy it would be harsh and dogmatic to assert. Where there are so many zealous defenders ready to break a literary lance for her reputation with all comers, it were presumption to maintain that they are under a miserable delusion. Still those who are not enlisted by their enthusiasm in the cause are slow to admit that the evidence and arguments of the chivalrous counsel in defence of outraged beauty have been entirely successful—the question would lose all its romantic and exciting interest if they were. But one thing, as we have already said, and in itself a very interesting matter, they have been successful in proving-that the beautiful queen was a woman of great industry; we should also say of great talent and varied accomplish ment. Though living in an age when writing was | Balcarras Collection of Papers in the Advocates' no common qualification, and a command of the pen Library. There are fourteen of these letters extremely rare, the letters from her already in print addressed to her mother-Mary of Guise, the queenwould have entitled her to be termed a prolific regent of Scotland. They have been pronounced correspondent even in Horace Walpole's days. by critical inquirers to be in the young queen's There are but few letters extant of her able and own handwriting, all except two, and they must enterprising rival, Queen Elizabeth. Perhaps it have been all written ere she was fifteen years old. may be said that she had other things to do, and At what precise period of her life the earliest one little time to give to correspondence, while Mary may have been written it would be difficult to dehad too much; but, on the other hand, poor Mary termine. Only two of them have dates: that of the spent a long period of her life in durance, when she earlier is 23d June, 1554. She was born on the 8th could only correspond by stealth and artifice, and December, 1542. They are written with extreme had often to use the circuitous medium of a cipher. clearness, each letter being finished by itself. The extent to which, under all her difficulties, she Their form is the modern written hand known for managed to blacken paper, may be conceived by an a long time after her period as the Italian. Indeed, inspection of the collection of her letters published she must have been one of the first out of Italy who at Paris in 1845 by the Russian prince, Alexander employed it; for a sort of corruption of the old Labanoff. Gothic form was used not only at that time, but for The prince has proved himself the most truly a century and a half later. There is no misreading disinterested and romantic of all her chivalrous her words, and any one with a tolerable knowledge champions, since even the vanity of literary dis- of French will be able to make out her letters in tinction has not been courted by him, and he has their antiquated diction. The lines are long and been content to hunt the world for her letters, straight, containing many words; and, on the transcribe them, and accurately put them in type. whole, the letters of this young girl have a matured, In the British Museum, the State Paper Office, the almost manly air of systematic strength which is Advocates' Library, the archives of the Scottish very remarkable. The signature, " Marie," is parCatholics; in the collection of several private ticularly large, square, and powerful. As an ongentlemen; in the archives and libraries of Paris, looker remarked, it was more like that of a surveyor Rome, Vienna, Florence, and many others, did the of taxes or a messenger-at-arms than of an acprince gather the objects of his search; and the re-complished high-born female; but it has been long sult was that he printed the "Recueil des Lettres de a practice to accustom royal personages, even of the Marie Stuart," in seven well-filled octavo volumes gentler sex, to write a large, bold signature, as that -a goodly correspondence for one person to in- of her present Majesty Victoria may testify. The dite. Whatever expectations the minds of persons letters of mere children are spoiled in translation, fresh from reading Sir Walter Scott's novel of the as their interest consists in the simple peculiarities "Abbot" might form about anything connected of expression. In English, therefore, and to the with the romantic history of Queen Mary, the English reader not very deeply versed in old French greater part of this collection is dull enough. Many idioms, there is nothing very remarkable in these of the letters are on business; and that they are letters. One of the shortest may be thus renchiefly written in antiquated French does not make dered:them more inviting. Some of them are of course extremely interesting, as bearing on the more striking parts of her history; but, as a whole, the chief impression imparted by the collection is the notion we have already referred to of Queen Mary's industry. She appears to have had an active mind, ever desiring something to occupy itself upon. Quantities of needlework are shown as the work of her hands; and though much of it is perhaps spurious, there must have been a considerable portion of it genuine to set imitators at work. One letter, written when in captivity at Sheffield, shows an earnest hankering for occupation:-"I have nothing else to tell you except that all my exercise is to read and work in my chamber; and therefore I beseech you, since I have no other exercise, to take the trouble, in addition to the rest, for which I thank you, to send me as soon as you can four ounces more or less of the same crimson silk which you sent me some time ago, similar to the pattern which I send you. The safest way is to inquire for it at the same merchant's who provided you with the other. The silver is too thick: I beg you will choose it for me as fine as the pattern, and send it to me by the first conveyance, with eight ells of crimson taffeta for lining. If I have it not soon my work must stand still, for which I shall be very vexed, as what I am working is not for myself.” * The most interesting of Queen Mary's letters to inspect in autograph are certainly those which were written in extreme youth, and are contained in the *Translation in Mr. Turnbull's selection from Prince Labanoff. "MADAM-I feel assured that the queen and my uncle the cardinal make you acquainted with all the news, and I am thus deterred from writing you at great length, or further than to beg you very humbly to hold me in your good grace. Madam, if it is your pleasure to increase my establishment with a groom of the chamber (huissier de chûmbre), I pray that it may be Ruflets, my groom of the hall, because he is a very good and old servant. you the letters which madam my grandmother has written to you. Praying our Lord to give you with long health a happy life, your very humble and very obedient daughter, "To the Queen, my Mother." I send MARIE. The address on the cover is in the same brief terms: "A la Reyne, ma mere." Royal letters went by special messengers, who knew well for whom they were intended without specifying the place. It was a peculiarity, too, especially in the letters of great personages, that the address should indicate nearly as distinctly the writer of the letter as the person it was sent to; so in the same volume there are letters from her uncle, Henry of Lorraine, with the address-in French of course-" To my good Sister, the Queen-Dowager of Scotland." The short letter above quoted indicates an amiable feature in the young queen's character, which adhered to her to the last, and seemed to grow in her adversity-a kindness and concern for her dependents and adherents. From the Bishop of Ross to her "three Maries" she indentified herself with the interests of those who were faithful to her-a point very interestingly brought out by Sir Walter | From the Examiner. MIGNET, Member of the Institute, and of the French Academy. Two vols. Vol. I. Bentley. Scott. In the instances of Chatelar and Rizzio, The History of Mary, Queen of Scots. By F. A. this feeling became a weakness, which was the occasion of her worst calamities; but there is no doubt that it laid the foundation of the chivalrous devotion which procured her so many champions during her life, and vindicators of her memory after death. M. MIGNET's book (of which the first volume is now before us in a very elegant translation) owes Some of these letters are of considerable length. its existence to Prince Labanoff's collection of Mary They generally bear on matters of family business, Stuart's letters. It is the substance of a series of have little sprightliness or youthful carelessness, papers upon that extraordinary work published and are, on the whole, scarcely like the productions originally in the Journal des Savants, and now reof so young a person. Nor do they seem to have cast in a continuous form. But M. Mignet had been written by dictation or instruction, as they obtained access to original documents, (chiefly the contain here and there the alterations and erasures despatches of the Spanish embassies in England, which a letter-writer makes in changing the inten-France, and Rome,) which even Prince Labanoff tion or expression. But the interest attached to them is not in their substance so much as in the associations connected with them, and the wonderful and melancholy history which passed over the writer between the bright dawn of hope in which they were penned and the darkness which closed over her in her latter days. History scarcely records an instance where, at an age so early, the prospects were so magnificent as those of the writer of these scraps. Queen of Scotland ere she was conscious of existence, she was acknowledged by nearly all Europe as the heiress of the throne of England, and it was generally believed that any opposition offered to her claims was a mere partial, factious attempt, that would blow over. Then she was betrothed to the king of France, and people naturally expected that this couple would be the parents of a line of monarchs ruling the greatest empire of the world. An accident at a mock tournament destroyed all these brilliant prospects, leaving the young queen only the comparatively poor, and the very factious and turbulent kingdom of Scotland. With her fate there every reader of history is acquainted. The collection of documents in which these letters appear is an instance, like that of Sir James Balfour already noticed, of the importance of preserving the collections made by persons whose rank or official position has given them the means of procuring such documents. The Balcarras Papers, bound up in nine thick volumes, were collected by John Lindsay of Menmuir, secretary of state to James VI., who died in 1598. He was a clergyman and a judge, and appears to have been a man of some scientific acquirements: for he was appointed master of the metals, the king having noticed" his travellis in seiking out and discovering of dyverss metallis of great valor within this realme, and in sending to England, Germanie, and Denmark to gett the perfeite essey and knawlidge thairof." He was for some time ambassador in France, and it was probably when holding this office that he enriched his collection. An interesting account of Lord Menmuir will be found in Lord Lindsay's "Lives of the Lindsays." The papers collected by him were very liberally made over to the Advocates Library by Colin, Earl of Balcarras, in 1712. For upwards of a century they lay a shapeless mass, little known, and it was only when they were arranged and bound up in volumes that their rich contents were really appreciated. They are more interesting to the students of French than of English history, containing many letters from the Lorraine family, including the celebrated cardinal, the Orleans, and other branches of the royal family-the Constable Montmorency, Diana of Poitiers, and other personages. had not explored; and has thus been able to give an original character to his narrative, while investing it with the well-known graces of his style. Judging from this volume, (for we have not seen the original,) we are disposed to rank it among the happier of M. Mignet's efforts. It is an excellent specimen of condensed yet clear historical writing. Leading incidents stand out boldly, and no essential facts are omitted, yet there is no excess of details. Similarly, motives are discriminated, and doubtful questions cleared, while we are spared the fatigue of elaborate disquisition. For the condensed yet forcible brevity of his notes, M. Mignet is particularly to be commended. After all, it may be said that this book is little more than a sketch-but it is a most valuable one and full of interest. Its most marked peculiarity we have yet to mention. With more materials before him than any previous biographer, M. Mignet has had to contend with fewer prejudices of his own. At the outset of his book he claims to be considered as neither apologist nor traducer of his heroine, and on the whole we think that he must be held to have kept his word. Neither as Catholic nor as Protestant, neither as Scotchman nor as Englishman, does he sit in judgment on poor Mary's history. He views the chequered scenes of her career with an impartiality as far removed from harshness as from indulgence-and may perhaps be pronounced her first unbiased biographer. It is right at the same time to add that this historic coldness of temperament does not always enable M. Mignet to judge quite fairly the difficulties under which both parties (but particularly the Protestant) labored at particular times; and perhaps it stops short now and then of the compassionate consideration which would best explain some points of Mary's own conduct. Indeed, it seems as though it were a necessary ingredient in the truly tragic interest of the history of Mary Stuart, that the final mystery of her conduct and its motives should never be completely cleared away. Were we sure of her entire guilt, the terrible catastrophe might move us little; were we as sure of her entire innocence, it would be too shocking to contemplate. Either way perhaps the tragedy is better as it stands. But we must not hesitate to say that M. Mignet's calm judgment depresses the balance more heavily against her than we remember in any previous instance. In that of Prince Labanoff, (who after fourteen years' labor of research added more than four hundred of her own original and inedited letters to the materials for her history,) the desire to exculpate her was so strong, yet the means of inculpation generally so abundant, that the effort resolved itself into representing her throughout as having been the hapless victim of the first bitter conflict betwen Protestantism and Roman Catholi- | of his father's example, Henry II. kept up the same cism. This no doubt in some material points she magnificence at his court, which was presided over was, but hardly to the extent which led Prince with as much grace as activity by the subtle Italian, Labanoff, in equal tenderness to Elizabeth, to charge Catherine de Medici, whose character had been formed Mary's death exclusively to the account of the by Francis I., who had admitted her into the petite English Reform party. M. Mignet is nearer the bande de ses dumes favorites, with whom he used to truth in making the opposite party, (far more pow-pleasure-houses! The men were constantly in the hunt the stag, and frequently sport with alone in his erful at the time than English historians are prone to admit,) and their plans for Elizabeth's dethronement which they undertook in Mary's name, more directly responsible for the tragedy of Fotheringay. But in this we anticipate M. Mignet's second volume. The volume before us conducts us only to the commencement of her English captivity; as to all the events immediately preceding which, including Darnley's murder, M. Mignet holds the belief of her complicity. 66 66 present at all the games and amusements of Henry company of the women; the queen and her ladies were II. and his gentlemen, and accompanied them in the chase. The king, on his part, together with the no blemen of his retinue, used to pass several hours every morning and evening in the apartments of Catherine de Medici. There," says Brantôme, "there was a host of human goddesses, some more beautiful than the others; every lord and gentleman conversed with her whom he loved the best; whilst the king talked This belief becomes more weighty from the fact to the queen, his sister, the dauphiness (Mary Stuart) of the little countenance he gives to the preceding and the princesses, together with those lords and slanders, and the large allowance he is manifestly princes who were seated nearest to him." As the inclined to make for the peculiarities of her posi-desirous that their subjects should follow their examkings themselves had avowed mistresses, they were tion and temptations. "We know what 's done, ple. And if they did not do so," says Brantôme, but know not what's resisted." She had been eduthey considered them coxcombs and fools." Francis cated in all the license of a voluptuous court, and I. had taken as his mistresses, alternately, the Countwas suddenly thrown into the midst of the sour and ess de Chateaubriand and the Duchess d'Etampes; and intractable poverty of Scotland-she was filled from Henry II. was the chivalrous and the devoted servant top to toe with all the strongest prejudices of the of the Grand Seneschal of Normandy, Diana of PoiRoman Catholic faith, yet never did "apostolic tiers. But besides their well-known amours, they blows and knocks" descend so heavily on the had other intrigues; and Francis I., in his unblush strongest mailed man as on this frail and passionate- ing licentiousness, prided himself on training the hearted woman. Nor was the character of the ladies who arrived at his court. His second in this nobles within her palace less dangerous or barbar- work of debauchery and corruption was Mary Stuart's ous than that of the reforming preachers without uncle, the opulent and libertine Cardinal of Lorraine. its gates. Knox's indecent raillery and brutal re- the majority of those examples which he has comSuch was the court which furnished Brantôme with vilings were more than matched by the duplicity memorated in his Dames Galantes, and of the laxity of a Murray, and the savage ferocity of a Morton. of which we may form some conception from the folLet us show her in the court where her first im-lowing verses, addressed to a lady by Henry II.'s own pressions were received. almoner, the poet Mellin de Saint-Gelais : The mental and personal attractions of Mary Stuart were early developed. She was tall and beautiful. Her eyes beamed with intelligence and sparkled with animation. She had the most elegantly-shaped hands in the world. Her voice was sweet, her appearance noble and graceful, and her conversation brilliant. She early displayed those rare charms which were destined to make her an object of universal admiration, and which rendered even her infancy seductive. She had been brought up with the daughters of Catherine de Medici, and under the superintendence of the learned Margaret of France, the sister of Henry II., the protectress of Michel de l'Hôpital, and who subsequently married the Duke of Savoy. The court, in the midst of which Mary Stuart had grown up, was then the most magnificent, the most elegant, the most joyous, and, we must add, one of the most lax, in Europe. Still retaining certain military customs of the middle ages, and at the same time conforming to the intellectual usages of the time of the renaissance, it was half chivalric and half literary-mingling tournaments with studies, hunting with erudition, mental achievements with bodily exercises, the ancient and rough games of skill and strength with the novel and delicate pleasures of the arts. Nothing could equal the splendor and vivacity which Francis I. had introduced into his court by attracting thither all the principal nobility of France, by educating as pages therein young gentlemen from all the provinces, by adorning it with nearly two hundred ladies belonging to the greatest families in the kingdom, and by establishing it sometimes in the splendid palaces of Fontainebleau and St. Germain, which he had either built or beautified, on the banks of the Seine, and sometimes in the spacious castles of Blois and Amboise, which his predecessors had inhabited, on the banks of the Loire. A careful imitator Si du parti de celle voulez être Et que d'Amour n'avez rien que les ailes. It was in this school of elegance and depravity, which produced kings so witty and vicious, and princesses so amiable and dissipated, that Mary Stuart received her education. Then came her first marriage and its melancholy widowhood—thus tersely characterized by M. Mignet : Thus, the marriage which had just been dissolved by death had yielded Mary Stuart no advantage, and produced none but evil effects. In Scotland it had weakened the monarchy by causing the absence of the royal authority. It had united the nobility, and given the predominance to their disorderly government. It had secured the triumph of the Protestant Reformation, and added to the evils which sprang from feudal turbulence those which could not fail to issue from a religious democracy, disposed to disobey their prince, under the pretext of obeying God. had rendered the French alliance as odious as it had formerly been courted, and restored the English influence which had previously been so pertinaciously repulsed. When Mary Stuart became once more the Queen of Scotland only, she found her nobility accustomed to rebellion, and in possession of the supreme power; her kingdom allied against her wish to a It |