The following particulars of the history of that unfortunate princess will serve to illustrate some of the passages of the preceding pages, and at the same time convey a general idea of the life and character of this devoted queen.

The misfortunes of Mary seem to have commenced with her birth, which was on the 8th of December, 1542. She was the daughter and sole heiress of James V. king of Scotland, by Mary of Lorraine. On the death of her father, which happened when she was only eight days old, the regency of the kingdom devolved upon the earl of Arran, who was appointed guardian to the infant queen. Henry VIII. of England, demanded her in marriage for his son, afterwards Edward VI. but the proposition being rejected through the intrigues of the queen dowager, who wished her daughter to marry a prince of France, a war broke out between the two countries, and the Scottish army sustained a total defeat at the battle of Musselburgh.

The consequence of this event was, that the queen dowager fled, with her daughter, first to the island of Inchemahom, and afterwards retired with her to the court of France. At this period Mary was in the sixth year of her age. After passing some days at court, she was sent to a monastery, where the daughters of the chief nobility of the kingdom were educated. Here devotion

and study employed her time, and being blessed with an excellent natural capacity, she became one of the most accomplished women of her age.

To the accomplishments of her mind, the dignity of her birth, and her rank as an independent sovereign, she added a most captivating person, and her natural charms were set off and heightened by the sweetness, complacence, and gentleness of her demeanour. These qualities rendered her so acceptable to the court of France, that on the 20th of April, 1558, when she was little more than sixteen, she was married to the Dauphin, afterwards Francis II. This was the happiest period of her life. Young, beautiful, and accomplished, she became the admiration, as she was the peculiar ornament, of the most polished court in Europe.She there became the centre of a large circle; and appeared in it with a propriety that was acknowledged, and a gracefulness that was applauded by all. But her soul was superior even to such a state of admiration as this, though it had charms to gratify the generality of female minds to the utmost extent of their wishes. Mary's ambition was of a more exalted kind. She wished to appear as a woman of intellect, and to be considered as a woman of taste. The strength of her talents fitted her well for the one; the high polish which had been given them, calculated her eminently for the other. She therefore shone eminently in the

drawing-room and in the closet; in the necessary formalities of state, and in the mental intercourses of life. And, superadded to all these qualities, she had what is scarcely ever united with them, a native firmness of resolution.

Her youth indeed, her beauty, and her gracefulness, her literature, and her royalty, may seem to have raised her to an eminence of esteem and applause in France, which perhaps she did not properly deserve, and some powers of mind, perhaps, were attributed to her which she never possessed. Nothing so much imposes upon the spirits of the feeling and the refined, as youth, beauty, and gracefulness, united with literary accomplishments in a lady. And when these all appear in conjunction upon a throne, they are frequently rated beyond their worth, and the world is filled with hyperbolical admirations of them. Yet, with every allowance for the pleasing prejudices of the few in favour of such accomplishments, and with every deduction for the useful partialities of the many to the side of royalty, she was certainly one of the first women of her age. The very courtiers of Elizabeth, in their very addresses to their mistress, at a time too when Mary was just escaped from an imprisonment for months, under the tyranny of her own rebels; and when she had actually suffered the horrible indignity of a rape, from a confederacy among them; even then ac

knowledged her to have an equal vivacity of mind, yet to have that sound and sober wisdom which is of so much greater consequence in life, and qualified her to be peculiarly a woman of business; to possess also a large share of courage; to be actuated by a frank, a pleasant, and a generous spirit; and to be furnished with a free and eloquent address. "We found her in her answers," say they, "to have an eloquent tongue, and a discreet head; and it seemeth by her doings, that she hath stout courage, and liberal heart adjoining thereunto." They also, in the same moments, expressed their apprehension for the consequences; because a number of gentry from all the adjoining counties of England, had heard "her daily defences and excuses of her innocence, with her great accusation of her enemies, very eloquently told by her ;" and because a body of her agility and spirit might escape soon out of the windows of her English prison. Other instances might be cited, where the enemies of Mary admitted the superior excellence of her mental and personal endowments.

The happiest portion of Mary's life was that, unquestionably, which she spent at the court of France. But of that she was soon deprived by the death of her husband, in a little less than two years after their marriage. Soon after Mary was invited by her subjects to return to her native kingdom; and yielding to their solicitations, she quit

ted France with inexpressible regret, and sailed for Scotland. She was now to pass from a situation of elegance and splendour to the very reign of turbulence and incivility; from the most polished court in Christendom to one of the most barbarous; and to exchange scenes of refinement and taste, and the homage of a train of gallant, loyal, and accomplished courtiers, for scenes of barbarity and bloodshed, the rebellion of her subjects, and, in the end, the unextinguishable batred of an implacable rival. Our immortal bard, taking a rapid glance of the history of this unfortunate princess, in his Midsummer's Night Dream, says

Thou remembers't

Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music.*

"all

* Warburton, annotating upon this passage, says, this agrees with Mary, queen of Scots, and with no other. Queen Elizabeth could not bear to hear her commended; and her successor would not forgive her satirist. But the poet has so well marked out every distinguishing circumstance of her life and character in this beautiful allegory, as will leave no doubt about his secret meaning.

She is called a mermaid] 1. To denote her reign over a kingdom situate in the sea; and 2cly, her beauty.

On a dolphin's back] This evidently marks out that dis