THE romantic and tragic story of the beautiful Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, has called forth abundant controversy among the many historians who have especially treated the subject. Religious and national prepossessions have swayed the judgment of many, and in regard to some of the most critical events of her career the evidence is so nearly balanced that

honest and impartial biographers may take either side. Mary Stuart was the only daughter of James V., King of Scotland, and of Marie de Lorraine, daughter of the Duke of Guise. Her father was one of those adventurous, romantic, gallant and poetic characters, who leave behind them popular traditions of bravery and of licentiousness in the imagination of their country, like Francis I. and Henry IV., of France. Her mother possessed that genius, at once grave, ambitious and fanatical, which distinguished the princes of the House of Guise. The day of her birth, like the more important events of her history, has been a matter of controversy; but it takes no wider range than between the 7th and 12th of December, 1542. James V., who died on the 13th, just heard of his daughter's birth ere he expired, heart-broken by the defeat of his troops at Solway Moss. "The kingdom came with a lass," said he, "and it will go with a lass." The time was a gloomy and critical one for royalty in Scotland; but the frail infant survived contests and convulsions, in which one strong enough to take part in them might have been sacrificed.

While Mary was yet a babe, it was part of the policy of Henry VIII., King of England, to unite the kingdoms by marrying her to his son Edward. He set about the accomplishment of this scheme with a characteristic rash haste, which raised the spirit of the Scots against it. The young Queen's mother strengthened an alliance with the French court, which political events had created in Scotland, and the Scottish statesmen settled the difficulty with England by concluding a treaty of marriage between her and the Dauphin Francis. By the terms of this agreement it was resolved that she should be sent to France to be educated until the nuptials could be solemnized. In her sixth year the child-queen sailed from Dumbarton on board the French fleet, and arrived at Brest on the 14th of August, 1548. She was educated with the King's own daughters in one of the principal convents of the realm. She did not, however, remain long here. Perceiving the bent of her mind to the society and occupations of a nunnery, which did not accord with the ambitious projects entertained by her uncles of Lorraine, they soon brought her to the court, which was perhaps the politest but most corrupt in Europe. Hence her education now was essentially that of the French court, and it affords a general solution of some of the moral difficulties connected with her career, to gather from the notorious history of the times the principles which she must have then imbibed. On the 24th of April, 1558, she was married to the Dauphin. Mary became the envy of her sex, surpassing the most accomplished in the elegance and fluency of her language, the grace and liveliness of her movements, and the charm of her whole manner and behavior. Catherine de Medici said of her, "Our little Scottish queenling has only to smile in order to turn all the heads in France!" Mary herself did not love the Italian Queen, whom, in her childish scorn for the low-born house of Medici, she called "that Florentine market-woman."

Henry II. died in July, 1559, and in September of the same year Francis was solemnly crowned at Rheims. As the wife of King Francis II., Mary thus became Queen of France as well as of Scotland. Nay, more, on the ground of the illegitimacy of Queen Elizabeth of England, the powerful

family of the Guises made further claim for the young Queen of France to the sovereignty of that country as a descendant of the sister of Henry VIII. The union of the French and Scottish crowns in her person made the claim formidable. Mary was now at the height of her splendor; it was doomed, however, to be of short continuance. Her mother died in June, 1560; and the death of her husband in the following December broke the main element of strength in her pretensions to the throne of England. She was now only Queen of Scotland, a country poor and turbulent. By the death of Francis, Catherine de Medici rose again into power in the French court, and Mary, who did not relish being second where she had been the first, immediately determined on quitting France and returning to her native country.

Leaving with bitter regret the brilliant court of France, she landed at Leith on the 19th of August, 1561, in the nineteenth year of her age, after an absence from Scotland of nearly thirteen years. She was received with a rude joy scarcely calculated to reconcile her to the change to the sordid and dreary chambers of Holyrood. Nor even were important national affairs in a condition to gratify her, for in the previous year the Reformed religion having been established, the Roman Catholic faith to which she was devoted with all her soul had been suppressed, and its profession rendered a crime. Mary knew little of the struggle through which Scotland had passed; her habits and sentiments were therefore utterly at variance with those of her subjects. On the first Sunday after her arrival she commanded a solemn Mass to be celebrated in the chapel of the palace; and as might have been expected, an uproar ensued, the servants of the chapel were insulted and abused, and had not some of the lay nobility of the Protestant party interposed, the riot might have become general. The next Sunday the sturdy Reformer, John Knox, who had himself suffered persecution for his faith in France, preached a thundering discourse against idolatry, and in his sermon he took occasion to say that a single Mass was, in his estimation, more to be feared than ten thousand armed men. Upon this Mary sent for the bold outspoken Reformer, desiring to have an interview with him. She had many contests with Knox

and "the Lords of the Congregation," in which earnestness, zeal and rugged determination on the one side, were met by feminine wit and the overawing influence of royal rank on the other. Her youth, however, her beauty and accomplishments, and her affability, interested many in her favor.

A remarkable proof of the popular favor which she had won appeared in the circumstances attending her new marriage. Various proposals had been made to her from different quarters; but at length she gave up all thoughts of a foreign alliance, and her affections became fixed on her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, the youthful heir of the noble house of Lennox. On Sunday, the 29th of July, 1565, the ceremony of marriage was performed in the chapel of "ancient Holyrood," according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church. This union was particularly obnoxious to Queen Elizabeth of England, whose jealous eye had never been withdrawn from her rival. Knox also did not look favorably on it. Nevertheless, the current of opinion among the nobility and higher classes ran decidedly in Mary's favor. There existed, however, no real sympathy of opinion between Mary and the great body of her people. The love of such gayety as she had enjoyed in the French court, and the imprudent lightness of her conduct, to use no harsher term, tended further to estrange them. Pierre De Chastelard, a young French poet, sailed in Mary's retinue when she came over from the Continent, and having gained the Queen's attention by his poetical effusions, proceeded, in the indulgence of a foolish attachment for her, to a boldness and audacity of behavior which called down on him the extremest penalty of the law. Ascending the scaffold erected before the windows of Holyrood Palace, the theatre of his madness and the dwelling of the Queen, he faced death like a hero and a poet. "If," said he, "I die not without reproach, like the Chevalier Bayard, iny ancestor, like him I die, at least, without fear." Casting his last looks and thoughts towards the window of the palace, inhabited by the charm of his life and the cause of his death, "Farewell!" he cried, "thou who art so beautiful and so cruel; who killest me, and whom I cannot cease to love!" This event occurred previous to her marriage with Darnley,

and was followed by a still more reprehensible tragedy, the murder in her presence of her humble friend, David Rizzio, the musician. Rizzio was a Piedmontese by birth, and came to Edinburgh in the train of the ambassador of Savoy. Engaged as court musician, Mary soon made him her French secretary. In this situation he was conceived to possess an influence over the Queen which was hateful to the boisterous Darnley and to others of the nobility, some of whom accompanied him when he rudely burst into the Queen's private apartments and assassinated the Italian. Mary never forgave Darnley. Turning to him after the murder, she exclaimed: “Ah, traitor, and son of a traitor! is this the reward you reserved for him who has done so much good and for your honor? Is this my reward for having, by his advice, elevated you to so high a dignity? Ah! no more tears, but revenge! No more joy for me till your heart shall be as desolate as mine is this day!" Mary had been pregnant for seven months, and her emotions were so powerful that the infant she afterwards bore, and who became James I. of England, could never look upon a naked sword without a shudder of fear.

Still another domestic tragedy followed on the 10th of February, 1567, when Darnley himself was murdered. The King had been suffering from smallpox, or some dangerous illness, at Glasgow; when sufficiently recovered, he returned to Edinburgh and was lodged, not in the palace of Holyrood, as heretofore, but in the house of the Kirk o' Field, a mansion standing by itself in an open and solitary part of the town. Ten days after, the house was blown up by gunpowder, and the bodies of Darnley and his attendant were found buried in the ruins, covered with stabs. Whether Mary actually knew of this murder is a matter of controversy between historians. The author of this terrible deed was James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. He was tried on the charge of murdering the King, but acquitted. Mary, however, with infatuated passion and indecent haste, gave her hand in marriage to the murderer of her second husband, three months only after the crime was committed. The ceremony took place on the 15th of May, 1567. Public indignation could no longer be restrained. The nobles rose against Bothwell and Mary, who