the panther thirsting for blood. Her revengeful cruelty was such that it alienated her truest friends, and even Mr. Froude, her apologist, admits that anger and avarice had for a time overclouded her character.

Thus had the rising of the north collapsed, and thus had it been cruelly avenged, but the captive queen remained a serious difficulty on the hands of Elizabeth. She could not be longer detained without an accusation, and it was arranged that the Regent Murray and his party on the one side should meet the representatives of Mary on the other, first before a commission at York, and afterwards before Elizabeth herself. This conference had not the constitution of a court of law empowered to try a criminal accusation, but was in effect assembled for the purpose of enabling Mary's subjects to bring forward their accusations against her. Murray now accused the dethroned queen, his sister, of complicity in Darnley's murder, while she, by her commissioner, protested that the conference could not entertain a criminal accusation against her, and demanded the arrest of the conspirators themselves. It was at this conference that Murray relied on the famous letters purporting to have been written by Mary to Bothwell, and said to have been discovered in the casket at Holyrood-those impassioned letters, the genuineness of which can never now be proved, yet cannot be conclusively denied, and which, while they force upon the mind, assuming them to be authentic, a conviction that she did consent to Darnley's murder, move to pity and compassion by presenting in all their tragic force her wedded misery and her fatal love for Bothwell. That she was surrounded by enemies who were capable of resorting to forgery is unquestionable; and that the letters were forgeries is believed by some historians; but no one has been pointed out who had the genius to accomplish such a feat, nor do they seem attributable to Buchanan, who was the first to draw attention to them. The question of their authenticity is one which cannot be entered into here; but let any readers who may not have studied the question be warned that they must not mistake the passionate invectives of a recent and hostile biographer (Mr. Froude) for historical proofs. As the majority of the commissioners at the conference repudiated any right to sit in judgment on Mary Stuart, the question was not settled in one way or the other, and the inquiry had no other result than to create an impression in England that she was the victim of a conspiracy, and had been falsely accused by those who were depriving her of her queenly right, and that Elizabeth, who of course had nothing to do with the question of Mary's guilt or innocence, was herself guilty of broken faith, and was actuated by motives which she dared not avow. No satisfactory reason has yet been advanced by her apologists for her refusal to allow Mary to be confronted with her accusers, and to see the originals of the letters which formed the principal if not the sole ground of accusation, and upon which, whether genuine or not, the ruffianly and unscrupulous men who ruled Scotland founded their justification for treating her as a murderess. The great Catholic party might well be indignant when they saw a princess who was gifted with wondrous graces of mind and person, who had been unlawfully dethroned by rebels, who owed no allegiance to the English queen, and was not her subject, detained in rigorous imprisonment, mocked by promises which were never meant to be performed, and treated as a culprit, although neither found guilty nor legally tried.

It was represented to Philip that Cecil had urged Elizabeth to put her captive secretly to death, that her life was in danger, and that a revolution in her favour would still succeed if he would but raise a finger. He was willing to interfere if assured that the English peers would act together; and the Duke of Norfolk-who had been liberated from imprisonment, but was still under surveillance on account of Mary Stuart was induced to consent that he would place himself at their head. Elizabeth had no right to complain if Mary availed herself of the aid of the King of Spain to restore her to freedom and her realm; but it is impossible to justify legally the conduct of the duke in entering into a conspiracy for the invasion of his country. His chivalrous devotion to the captive queen, and his wish to secure to his countrymen the rightful succession of the crown, cannot, however, be doubted; and there was no treason in his readiness to sacrifice a Protestantism that was certainly not hereditary and clung very loosely to him. Mary had thrown over him a sort of glamour, in which conspiracy came to him in the disguise of chivalry; and so the plot was formed, and the noble allies of Norfolk, had they been counselled wisely, would have struck the first blow by seizing Elizabeth, as they might have done at the opening of the parliament, which she was obliged, by her want of money, to assemble in April,

1571.

The plot, however, came to Cecil's knowledge, and the unlucky suspicions of a country carrier, who was conveying a bag of gold sent by the Duke of Norfolk for the aid of Mary's cause, betrayed to the government that he was corresponding with her friends in Scotland, and he was sent from his palace to the Tower. When Mary-then a prisoner at Chatsworth, and treated by Shrewsbury, her stern gaoler, with unmanly rigour-was told that her concurrence in the plot was known, she forcibly replied that she had come to England in reliance upon the queen's promises of friendship and hospitality, but, instead of it, had found a prison; that it was true she had, therefore, sought the aid of the King of Spain to replace her on the throne, and that those who said she had done more spoke falsely; that the duke was the Queen of England's subject; but that, for herself, she was a free princess, the equal of the queen, and not answerable to her or any other person for her conduct. One discovery now fast succeeded to another. The Bishop of Ross, who had been allowed to remain as Mary's representative at Elizabeth's court, was found to have been the arch-contriver of the conspiracy, but he had not the constancy to be a martyr, and, in fear of torture, confessed to all he knew; and thenceforth, during many weeks, wretched prisoners were yielding their secrets to the rack. At length the Duke of Norfolk-head of "an ancient house to which the Tudors were but a mushroom growth"-was arraigned for treason. The court was constituted exclusively of peers on whose loyalty Elizabeth could depend, with the Earl of Shrewsbury for high steward. Significantly coincident with this precaution for securing the condemnation of Norfolk, was the cowardly act of hiring Buchanan to compose for circulation a narrative of the events which had led to the dethronement of Mary Stuart, with versions of the casket-letters, and a vehement denunciation of the queen. The charges on which Norfolk was arraigned were, that he had conspired for the death of Elizabeth, had endeavoured to bring in a foreign

army to change the established government, and had sought to marry the Queen of Scots, knowing her to lay claim to the English crown. The only witness produced in person on the trial spoke to the knowledge which the duke had beforehand of the intended rising of the north; the rest of the so-called evidence consisted of the confessions that had been extorted from his secretaries as to the more recent plot, and of the Bishop of Ross; but none of them were confronted with him. The duke, of course, was not allowed counsel, and could but controvert his accusers on the complicated details of those confessions. It was late in the wintry evening when the murky torchlight, which hardly revealed the roof or pierced the gloom of Westminster Hall, shone upon the peers as they rose one by one to pronounce the fatal verdict, and gleamed upon the axe that was borne before the noble prisoner as he went forth into the dark"face to face with death." Elizabeth's habitual indecision delayed the execution of his sentence, and it was not until five months had elapsed that she signed the fatal warrant.

ness

Another noble victim for the cause of Mary Stuart was soon to follow. When the Earl of Northumberland had taken refuge in Lochleven, Elizabeth demanded his surrender; but the Regent Murray-the only adherent of the Scottish lords of congregation who seems to have been capable of honourable or chivalrous feeling-refused to comply. When Elizabeth found that it would be cheaper to employ treachery than force, she engaged Sir Robert Constable to betray the noble Percy (much as her father had employed Rich to betray Sir Thomas More); but before the meditated treachery could be successful, "a darker treason struck a more powerful victim." In January, 1570, at Linlithgow, by a strange fatality the birthplace of his dethroned sister and sovereign, Murray was assassinated as he rode up the long street; and in his death Elizabeth thought she saw the beginning of her own ruin. In the anarchy which followed Murray's assassination the English fugitives were undisturbed, and Percy continued at Lochleven until June, 1572, when Douglas infamously sold his noble prisoner to Elizabeth for 2000. His previous attainder rendered it needless to bring him to trial, and Elizabeth ordered him to be executed at York. He had been given up at Coldingham, and was brought by what had been the route of the fatal northern rising, to die when his broad woodlands lay in their summer glory, and the harvest of the new-mown hay was fragrant; and so, in the old royal and metropolitan city, where his ancestors had swayed parliaments, represented kings, and headed armies, the Percy crescent again set in blood.

MODERN SPECULATION;

OR, WHO BIDS?

A TALE OF THE DAY.

CHAPTER I.

DESCRIBES A MODERN MILLIONNAIRE AND HIS FAMILY.

"You see, Monsieur Ariel, dat you have two très-charmantes daughters-yes, very charmantes; they are fit for the highest rank in the beau monde, and if you give them some part, some small part, of the grande fortune you possess, they will be sure, with the advantage of the beauty, the manners, the virtues, the accomplishments, the education perfect, which I have been the humble instrument in bestowing on them, to make matches every way desirable, and such as will afford you unlimited gratification; but pardonnez-moi, monsieur, if I declare that they yet want something that je ne sais quoi, that little polish, which-again I demand your pardon-this country, this metropolis, cannot bestow, and which, in my humble opinion, car only be found in perfection in Paris. A year's residence there will work wonders. You will consent, monsieur-I know you will. You love your charmantes daughters too much to deny them this moderate, this important advantage."

Madame Dupont ran on for some time much in the same strain. She was a Frenchwoman, engaged at a high salary by old Ariel for the purpose of finishing the education of his two very attractive young daughters, Sophy and Julia Ariel. They would have been attractive under any circumstances, even had they not possessed a millionnaire for a father, without any obnoxious brothers to interfere with their prospects.

Old Ariel had made his money by the very same speculations which had ruined hundreds-simply by buying and selling at the right time. He was fond of money, and he delighted in making it, though he was not destitute of human feelings and sympathies. He was ready to give advice on money matters at all times. If his interest did not stand in the way, the person who asked it discovered that the advice was sound. If, however, he thought that any advantage might accrue to himself by the advice he might give, he gave it accordingly. One day an old friend came to him.

"Ariel, do you advise me to purchase that stock now in the market? I have just ten thousand pounds to invest."

"It is a business transaction-a purely business transaction, you understand," answered Mr. Ariel. "You ask me whether I advise you to purchase that stock. By all means-by all means do so. I shall be very glad if you do."

The friend purchased the stock; but what was his vexation and

VOL. LXI.

20

anger to find, a few days afterwards, that it had become greatly depreciated in the market. He hurried to Ariel to complain.

"You asked me if I advised you to purchase that stock. I told you that it was a purely business transaction. I had the stock to sell," answered old Ariel, buttoning up his pockets and turning on his heel with a chuckle.

Such was John Ariel when he was in the world making money. Money was his god, and seldom has there been a more devout and humble worshipper. No trouble, no perseverance, no cringing, no daring, no meanness, was too great for him in the service of his divinity.

"I'll make money-honestly if I can; but I'll make money," had been his motto from his earliest days. Not that there was anything of the money usurer in John Ariel's manners or appearance. He was a gentleman by birth and education; he looked one, and his manners were polished in the extreme-rather too soft, and what is generally called insinuating. Strangers accustomed to straightforward dealing might have mistaken him for a Jesuit in disguise, or a modern High Churchman out of uniform. His dress had a somewhat clerical cut about it. He had been in the army in his youth, and had seen service. His money transactions, however, with his brother-officers were such that he became somewhat unpopular. While others became poor, he grew rich; and at length, when once more the regiment was ordered on foreign service, he was induced to sell out. He had, in the mean time, won the heart of a beautiful girl, Sophy Manners. He really loved her; he loved her money also, for she was an heiress-her father's only child. Mr. Manners did not altogether like Captain Ariel. He had heard something about him from his brother-officers. Sophy, however, with many charming qualities, was a spoilt child, and insisted on having her own way, and pouted and fretted, and declared that she should die if she did not marry Captain Ariel. At length her father yielded, with a foreboding heart, resolving to settle all her property on herself and children. Sophy was, however, more happy than might have been expected. Captain Ariel sold out, and took a house in London. The domestic expenditure was more limited than she had been accustomed to, and she would have liked to have had more amusements than he declared he could afford. She now and then ventured to expostulate on that subject. He answered her always in his blandest

manner:

“You see, my dearest Sophy, how much better off you are than if I was a spendthrift. You have everything that you require for comfort. You have a good house, attentive servants, the tradesmen's bills are paid punctually. I get the discount off by so doing, and they give you the best of everything. Such a thing as a dun never approaches our doors, and you have not a moment's anxiety about pecuniary matters. Look at the Lorrimers there, our next-door neighbours. They are continually in trouble-outstanding debts in all directions-duns constantly at their doors-have to pay nearly double what we do for everything they buy, and get inferior things into the bargain. When our income increases, we will increase our expenditure; wait till then, dearest, to complain