Death of William the Conqueror, Sept. 9, 1087.

The death-bed of William was a death-bed of all formal devotion, a death-bed of penitence which we may trust was more than formal. The English Chronicler [William of Malmesbury], after weighing the good and evil in him, sends him out of the world with a char.table prayer for his soul's rest; and his repentance, late and fearful as it was at once marks the distinction between the Conqueror on his bed of death and his successor cut off without a thought of penitence in the midst of his crimes. He made his will. The mammon of unrighteousness which he had gathered together amid the groans and tears of England he now strove so to dispose of as to pave his way to an everlasting habitation. All his treasures were distributed among the poor and the churches of his dominions. A special sum was set apart for the rebuilding of the churches which had been burned at Mantes, and gifts in money and books ard ornaments of every kind were to be distributed among all the churches of England according to their rank. He then spoke of his own life and of the arrangements which he wished to make for his dominions after his death. The Normans, he said. were a brave and unconquered race; but they needed the curb of a strong and a rightcous master to keep them in the path of order. Yet the rule over them must by all law pass to Robert. Robert was his eldest born; he had promised him the Norman succession before he won the crown of England, and he had received the homage of the barous of the Duchy. Normandy and Maine must therefore pass to Robert, and for them he must be the man of the French king. Yet he well knew how sad would be the fate of the land which had to be ruled by one so proud and foolish, and for whom a career of shame and sorrow was surely doomed.

But what was to be done with England? Now at last the heart of William smote him. To England he dared not appoint a snccessor; he could only leave the disposal of the island realm to the Almighty Ruler of the world The evil deeds of his past life crowded upon his soul. Now at last his heart confessed that he had won England by no right, by no claim of birth; that he had won the English crown by wrong, and that what he had won by wrong he had no right to give to another. He had won his realm by warfare and bloodshed; he had treated the sons of the English soil with needless harshness; he had cruelly wronged nobles and commons; he had spoiled many men wrongfully of their inheritance; he had slain countless multitudes by hunger or by the sword. The harrying of Northumberland now rose up before his eyes in all its blackness The dying man now told how cruelly he had burned and plundered the land, what thousands of every age and sex among the no le nation which he had conquered had been done to death at his bidding. The sceptre of the realm which he had won by so many crimes he dared not hand over to any but to God alone. Yet he would not hide his wish that his son William, who had ever been dutiful to him. might reign in England afte him He would send him beyond the sea, and he would pray Laufranc to place the crown upon his head, if the Primate in his wisdom deemed that such an act could be rightly done.

Of the two sons of whom he spoke, Robert was far away, a banished rebel; William was by his bedside. By his bedside als stood his youngest son, the English Etheling. Henry the Clerk. And what dost thou give to me, my father?' said the youth. Five thousand pounds of silver from my hoard.' was the Conqueror's answer. 'But of what use is a hoard to me if I have no place to dwell in? Be patient, my son, and trus in the Lord. and let thine elders go before thee.'. It is perhaps by the light of later events that our chronicler goes on to make William tell his youngest son that the day would come when he would succeed both his brothers in their dominions, and would be richer and mightier than either of them. The king then dictated a letter to Lanfranc, setting forth his wishes with regard to the kingdom. He sealed it and gave it to his son William. and bade him, with his last blessing and his last kiss, to cross at once into England. William Rufus straightway set forth for Witsand, and there heard of his father's death. Meanwhile Henry, too, left his father's bedside to take for himself the money that was left to him, to see that nothing was lacking in its weight, to call together his comrades on whom he could trust, and to take measures for stowing the treasure in a place of safety.

And now those who stood around the dying king began to implore his mercy for the captives whom he held in prison. He granted the prayer...

The last earthly acts of the Conqueror were now done. He had striven to make his peace with God and man, and to make such provision as he could for the children

and the subjects whom he had left behind him. And now his last hour was come. On a Thursday morning in September, when the sun had already risen upon the earth, the sound of the great bell of the metropolitan miuster struck on the ears of the dying king. He asked why it sound d. He was told that it rang or prime in the church of our Lady. William lifted his eyes to heaven, he stretched forth his hands, and spake his last words: To my Lady Mary, the Holy Mother of God, I commend myself, that by her holy prayers she may reconcile me to her dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.' He prayed, and his soul passed away. Wiliam, king of the English and duke of the Normans, the man whose fame has filled the world in his own and in every following age, had gone the way of all fish. No kingdom was left him now but his seven feet of ground, and even to that his claim was not to be undisputed.

The death of a king in those days came near to a break-up of all civil society. Till a new king was chosen and crowned, there was no longer a power in the land to protect or to chastise. All bonds were loosed; all puplic authority was in abeyance; cach man had to look 10 his own as he best might. No sooner was the breath out of Willam's body than the great company which had patiently watched around him during the night was scattered hither and thither. The great men mounted their horses and rode with all speed to their own homes, to guard their houses and goods against the outburst of lawlessness which was sure to break forth now that the land had no longer a ruler. Their servants and followers, seeing their lords gone, and deeming that there was no longer any fear of punishmer, began to make spoil of the royal chamber. Weapons, clothes, vessels, the royal bed and its furniture, were carried off, and tor a whole day the body of the Conqueror lay well-nigh bare on the floor of the room in which he died.

With the fourth volume of his history Mr. Freeman ended what he termed his tale-the tale of the Norman Conquest of England. He had recorded the events which made it possible for a foreign prince to win and to keep England as his own. In the fifth volume he traced the results of the Conquest-the fusion of races-which was accomplished with little or no violence during the reign of William's son, Henry-and the important changes that then took place in the language and arts of the English people.

JOHN HILL FURTON.

The history of Scotland was left by MR. FRASER TYTLER at the period of the union of the crowns under James VI. A subsequent portion has been fully treated by MR. JOHN HILL BURTON, advocate, in a work, entitled 'History of Scotland from the Revolution to the Extinction of the last Jacobite Insurrection' (16-9-1748), two volumes, 185. This work has received the approbation of Lord Macaulay and all other historical readers; it is honestly and diligently executed, with passages of vigorous and picturesque eloquence-as the account of the battle of Killiecrankie, and the massacre of Glencoe. We subjoin part of the historian's notice of the Scottish language and literature.

The Scottish Language after the Period of the Revolution.

The development of pure literature in Scotland had, for half a century after the Revolution, to struggle with a peculiar dificulty arising out of the tenor of the national history. The languages of England and of Lowland Scotland, speaking of both in a general sense, were as entirely taken from a northern Teutonic stock common to both, as the languages of Essex and Yorkshire. Like other national characteristics, the language of Scotland took a direction severing itself from that of Eng

land after the War of Independence. Centuries elapsed, however, ere the distinctive peculiarities of each had gone far in its own direction, and away from the other. The earliest material change was in the language of England by the infusion of the Normau, while Scotland kept closer to the Old Saxon stock. Thus it is that Scottish writers of the age of Gower and Chaucer-such as Barbour, the Archdeacon of Aberdeen, and Wyntoun, the monk of Lochleven-wrote a language more intelligible to the present age than that of their English contemporaries, because it is not so sensibly tinged with Gallicisms. France had subsequently, as we have seen. a great 20cial and constitutional influence in Scotland which brought a few foreign terms into use, but it scarcely touched the structure of the language. This gradually assumed a purely national, or, as it came to be deemed when Scotland was becoming absorbed into the British community, a provincial tongue. The Scottish poets of the sixteenth century wrote in a language as different from the English as we might suppose the Norse of the same age to be from the Danish. John Knox. who lived much in England, was charged with the affected emp oyment of English novelties, because he attempted so to modify the Scottish peculiarities as to make his works readable to his friends beyond the Border. It was felt, indeed, in his day that the Scottish tongue was becoming provinci l, and those who desired to speak beyond a mere home audience wrote in Latin. Hence arose that class of scholars headed by Buchanan, who almost made the language of Rome vernacular to themselves. Those who are acquainted with the epistolary correspondence of learned Scotsmen in the seventeenth century. will observe how easily they take to Latin-how uneasy and diffident they feel in the use of English. Sometimes, indeed, the ancient language is evidently sought as a relief, when the writer is addressing one to whom he cannot use a Scottish expression, while he is unable to handle the corresponding English idiom. But Latin was dying away as the common language of literature and science. Each great nation was forming her own literary tongue. The revolution was completed within the time embraced in this history. But Scotland had not kept an independent literary language of her own, nor was she sufficiently expert in the use of that which had been created in England. Hence, in a great measure, we can distinctly account for the literary barrenness of the country. The men may have existed, but they had not the tools. An acquaintance with the correspondence of Scotsmen, for the first half century after the Revolution, shews the extreme difficulty which even those who were high in rank and well educated felt in conveying their thoughts through a dialect in perfectly resembling the language of The Spectator." Any attempt to keep up a Scottish literary language had been abandoned in prose before the Revolution In verse, incidental causes made it seem as if the struggle were still continued. The old Scottish melodies, so mysterious in their origin, Lever ceased to have the charm of musical association for the p ople.

Mr. Burton subsequently completed his Scottish history with seven more volumes, The History of Scotland from Agricola's Invasion to the Revolution of 1688' (1867–1870). These latter volumes fully sus.... tained the author's reputation for research, discrimination, and literary ability. A second edition, carefully revised, has been published. Mr. Burton has made further additions to cur knowledge of Scottish literature and society by his valuable Life and Correspondence of David Hume,' 1846, hisLives of Lord Lovat and Duncan Forbes of Culloden,' 1847--both works written from family papers and other original sources of information—and his ‘Narratives from Criminal Trials in Scotland.' In 1-62 he produced a very amusing and interesting volume, 'The Book-Hunter,' containing sketches of the ways of book-collectors, scholars, literary investigators, desultory readers, and other persons whose pursuits revolve round books and literature.' In 1864 appeared The Scot Abroad,' two volumes-a work, like the former, consisting of sketches and anecdotes, and referring to the relations of Scotland and Scotsmen with foreign countries.

As a

member of the Scottish bar, Mr. Burton has also been a hard legal student, having written a work on the Scottish Bankrupt Law,' a 'Manual of the Law of Scotland,' &c. In another not very promising mine he has been a successful labourer: his Political and Social Economy,' 1849, is a little volume giving a clear and popular summary of this science, and he has extracted from the mass of Jeremy Bentham's works a very readable collection of 'Benthamiana.' To the Westminster Review,' 'Blackwood's Magazine,' and other literary journals, Mr. Burton has been an occasional contributor. This able and indefatigable littérateur is a native of Aberdeen, the son of a military officer, and born August 22, 1809. He was admitted to the Scottish bar in 1831. In 1854 he was appointed secretary to the Prison Board of Scotland. Mr. Burton has received from Edinburgh University the degree of LL.D.

Among other notable contributions to history may be cited the following: Scotland in the Middle Ages,' 1860, and Sketches of Early Scotch History,' 1861, by CoSMO INNES (1798-1874). Mr. Innes was Professor of History in the University of Edinburgh, and the two volumes we have named contain the substance of his lectures. They are interesting works as illustrating the social progress, the church organisation, the university and home life of the people, and are written in a pleasing, graphic style. Less popular, but more exact, is Scotland under Her Early Kings,' 1862, by E. WILLIAM ROBERT SON, which contains a history of the kingdom to the close.of the thirteenth century.

MISS STRICKLAND.

MISS AGNES STRICKLAND (1801-1874), authoress of historical memoirs of the Queens of England and Scotland, was a native of Suffolk, daughter of Thomas Strickland, Esq., of Reydon Hall. Her first publication was a poetical narrative, Worcester Field, or the Cavalier;' she also wrote a tale, Demetrius;' but she soon struck into that path for which she seemed best fitted-historical composition. She wrote historic scenes and stories for children, and in 1835 produced the Pilgrims of Walsingham,' constructed on the plan of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims.' She then, aided by a sister, Miss Elizabeth Strickland, entered upon her elaborate work, Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest.' twelve volumes, 1840-49. Of this work, a second edition was published in 1851, in eight volumes. The English history was followed by Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses connected with the Regal Succession of Great Britain,' eight volumes, 1850-59. The life of Mary, Queen of Scots, in this work is written with great fullness of detail and illustration, many new facts having been added by study of the papers in the Register House, Edinburgh, and documents in the possession of the Earl of Moray and the representatives of other ancient families. The collection of Mary's letters by Prince Labanoff

also afforded new materials, not available to previous historians of the unfortunate queen. In 1866 Miss Strickland published 'Lives of the Seven Bishops.' In 1871 she received a pension of £100 a year.

Queen Mary and the Lords of Council at Lochleven Castle.

The conspirators, calling themselves the Lords of Secret Council, having completed their arrangements for the long-meditated project of depriving her of her crown, summoned Lord Lindsay to Edinburgh, and on the 23d of July delivered to him and Sir Robert Melvile three deeds, to which they were instructed to obtain her signature, either by flattering words or absolute fore. The first contained a declaration, as if trom herself, that big in infirm hea th, and worn out with the cares of government, she had taken purpose voluntarily to resign her crown and office to her dearest son, James, Prince of Scotland.' In the second, her trusty brother James, Earl of Moray, was constituted regent for the prince her son, during the minority of the royal infant.' The third appointed a provisional council of regency, consisting of Morton and the other Lorus of Secret Council, to carry on the government till Moray's return; or, in case of his reusing to accept it. till the prince arrived at the legal age for exercising it himself. Aware that Mary would not easily be induced to execute such instruments, Sir Robert Melville was especially employed to cajole her into this political suicide. That ungrateful courtier, who had been employed and trusted by his unfortunate sovereign ever since her return from France, and had received nothing but benefits from her, undertook this office. Having obtained a private interview with her, he decentfully entreated her to sign certain deeds that would be presented to her by Lindsay as the only means of preserving her life, which, he assured her was in the most imminent danger.' Then he gave her a turquoise ring, telling her it was sent to her from the Lals of Argyle, Huntly, and Athole, Secretary Lethington, and the Laird of Grange, who loved her majesty, and had by that token accredited him to exhort her to avert the peril to which she would be exposed, if she ventured to refuse the requisition of the Lords of Secret Council, whose desigus, they well knew, were to take her life, either secretly or by a mock-trial among themselves. Finding the queen impatient of this insidious advice, he produced a letter from the English ambassador Throckmorton out of the scabbard of his sword, telling her he had concealed it there at the peril of his own life, in order to convey it to her '-a paltry piece of acting, worthy of the parties by whom it had been devised for the letter had b en written for the express purpose of inducing Mary to accede to the demission of her regel dignity, telling her, as if in confidence, that it was the queen of England's sisterly advice that she should not irritate those who had her in their power, by refusing the only concession that could save her life; and observing that nothing that was done under her present circumstances could be of any force when she regained her fre dom. Mary, however, resolutely refused to sign the deeds: declaring, with truly royal courage, that she would not make her self a party to the treason of her own subjects, by acceding to their lawless requisition. which, as she truly alleged. proceeded only of the ambition of a few, and was far from the desire of her people.'

The fair-spoken Melville having reported his ill success to his coadjutor Lord Lindsay. Moray's brother-in-law, the bully of the party, who had been selected for the honourable office of extorting by force from the roval captive the concession she denied, that brutal ruffian burst rudely into her presence, and, flinging the deeds violently upon the table before her, told her to sign them without delay, or worse would befall her. What!' exclaimed Mary, shall I set my hand to a deliberate falsehood, and. to gratify the ambition of my nobles, relinquish the office God hath given to me to my son, au infant little more than a year old, incapable of governing the realm. that my brother Moray may reign in his name?' She was proceeding to demonstrate the unreasonableness of what was required of her, but Lindsay con temptuously interrupted her with scornful laughter; then, scowling ferociously upon her, he swore with a de p oath that if she would not sign those instruments, he would do it with her heart's blood, and cast her into the lake to feed the fishes.' Full well did the defenceless woman know how capable he was of performing his threat, having seen his rapier reeking with human blood shed in her presence, when he assisted at the butchery of her unfortunate secretary. The ink was scarcely dry