of men are frequently rendered callous or inoperative, by their perpetual collision or jarring interests. More-over, the wars in which men are engaged stifle the generous sympathies of nature, and too often harden their hearts, by subjecting them to witness and even glory in the sufferings of their fellow-men.

The beautiful and touching tribute to the superiority of the female character, by Ledyard the celebrated traveller, is the more to be valued as coming from one whose sphere of observation and experience had been such as to enable him to speak with confidence, and whose sincerity cannot be suspected. 'I have observed (says Ledyard) among all nations that women do not hesitate like men to perform a hospitable or generous action, not haughtily, nor arrogantly, nor superciliously, but are full of courtesy and fond of society, industrious, economical, and ingenuous; more liable to err in general than man, but also more virtuous and performing more good actions than he. I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship to a woman, whether civilized or savage, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. With man it has often been otherwise. In wandering over the barren plains of inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland,. unprincipled Russia, and the wide-spread regions of the wandering Tartar, if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, woman has ever been friendly to me, and uniformly so; and to add to this virtue, so worthy the appellation of benevolence, these actions have been performed in so free and so kind a manner, that, if I was dry, I

drank the sweet draught, and if hungry, ate the coarse morsel with a double relish.'

This testimony in favor of the humanity and generous sympathy of women, attests their high endowments and God-like attributes; nor can the invidious remarks of the sordid and selfish invalidate the testimony. No attribute of the Almighty so powerfully attracts the human mind and heart as loving kindness and tender mercy.

NOTE.

In briefly relating the charges brought against the queen of Scots, which she took little pains to deny, or rather she seemed to acknowledge, the only part which she positively denied was her concurrence in the design of assassinating Elizabeth. This article was indeed the only one which could justify the queen in proceeding to extremities against her. In order to prove the accusation there were produced the following evidences :

'Copies taken in secretary Walsingham's office of the intercepted letters between her and Babington, in which her approbation of the murder was clearly expressed. The evidence of her two secretaries Nau and Curle, who had confessed without being put to the torture both that she received these letters from Babington and that they had written the answers by her orders. The confession of Babington that he had written these letters and received the answers; and the confession of Ballard and Savage that Babington

had showed them these letters of Mary written in the cipher which had been settled between them.

It is evident that this complication of evidence, though every circumstance corroborates the general conclusion, resolves itself finally into the testimony of the two secretaries, who alone were certainly acquainted with their mistress's concurrence in Babington's conspiracy.

'The sole circumstance of her defence, which to us may appear to have some force, was her requiring that Nau and Curle should be confronted with her, and affirming that they never would to her face persist in their evidence. But that demand was not then supported by law in trials where the crown was prosecutor. *The clause, contained in an act of the 13th of the queen, was a novelty; that the species of treason there enumerated must be proved by two witnesses, confronted with the criminal. But Mary was not tried upon that act; and the ministers and crown lawyers were sure to refuse every indulgence beyond what the strict letter of the law required. Not to mention that these secretaries were not at Fotheringay castle, and could not upon Mary's demand be produced, queen Elizabeth was however willing to have allowed Nau and Curle to have been produced; but the testimony of two witnesses, even though men of character, ought to be supported by strong probabilities, in order to remove all suspicion of tyranny and injustice.

'The proof against Mary, it must be confessed, is not destitute of this advantage, and it is difficult, if not im

* This act of Elizabeth, which it is said was then a novelty, is highly honorable to the character of that queen.

possible, to account for Babington's receiving an answer written in her name and in the cipher concerted between them, without allowing that the matter had been communicated to that princess. Such is the light in which this matter appears, even after time has discovered every thing which could guide our judgment with regard to it. Mary's reply consisted chiefly in her own denial. Whatever force may be in that denial, was much weakened by her positively affirming that she never had any correspondence of any kind with Babington, a fact however of which there remains not the least doubt.'

But above all, what confidence can be had in the declarations of Mary, who, when on the scaffold, 'bade her steward Melvil to commend her to her son and tell him that she had done nothing injurious to his rights or honor; though she was actually in treaty to disinherit him, and evidence was produced to prove that Allen and Parsons were, at that very time, negotiating by her orders, at Rome, the conditions of transferring her English crown to the king of Spain, and of disinheriting her heretical son? Mary had even entered into a conspiracy against him, and had appointed Lord Claud Hamilton regent of Scotland, and had instigated her adherents to seize James's person and deliver him into the hands of the pope or the king of Spain, whence he was never to be delivered, but on condition of his becoming catholic.'

That Mary, from the earliest period of the reign of Elizabeth, had been engaged in plotting her destruction, cannot be controverted, from the publicity given. to these transactions. In the several bulls issued by

the pope against Elizabeth, wherein the title of Mary to the crown of England was constantly had in view, Elizabeth was denounced as a heretic,-she was declared illegitimate,-incapable of reigning, and her subjects were absolved from their oaths of allegiance.

'Mary as the heir, had assumed the title and arms of England, which she appeared resolved never to forego. The conspiracy to destroy all the protestants, of which the Guises, Mary's uncles, were the chief instigators, with the intent to gratify their ambition by placing their neice on the throne of England, is notorious. This horrid conspiracy, which excited the utmost terror among the protestants, commenced by the massacre of the Huguenots at Paris and in other parts of France, where thousands of innocent victims were sacrificed at the shrine of superstition, and to the lust of power.

With all this evidence against Mary and her partisans, who can wonder at the people's extreme fear and dread of the power of the king of Spain, that ruthless tyrant, who had perpetrated such appalling cruelties on the protestants of the Low Countries. Thus situated, it is altogether useless and futile to represent the reluctance of Elizabeth as feigned, to have the sentence passed against Mary executed, when it was manifest that the lives and liberties of all her protestant subjects were believed to depend on that event.'

Both the parliament and courtiers earnestly solicited the queen to carry into execution the sentence against Mary; and when the queen begged the parliament to think once again whether it were possible to find any