own accord, let me depart again with yours: if God permit my cause to succeed, I shall be bound to you for it." Again, she says, "Good sister, be of another mind, when the heart and all shall be yours, and at your commandment. I thought to satisfy you wholly, if I might have seen you. Alas! do not as the serpent that stoppeth his hearing, for I am no enchanter, but your sister and natural cousin.”

For nineteen years Mary continued a pri

soner.

She was frequently removed from place to place, and many were the schemes devised by her friends for securing her escape; they only, however, involved them in ruin, and hastened the consummation of the tragedy.The utmost cruelty was exercised towards her. Elizabeth, who possessed no power over her by right, treated her as a subject prisoner. It was hoped that events might transpire, leading to the death of Mary; an attempt was made to suffocate her; orders were given, that if any noise was heard in her apartments, her life should be immediately sacrificed. Still she retained all the charm and beauty of her mind, and sorrow only lent a more pathetic beauty to her person which, however, was sadly invaded by disease. At last it was determined to put her on her trial; but all her notes and papers

She

were taken from her. She had no advocate, no friend, no adviser; with dignity she refused to submit to a trial,-she was an independent queen, and could only be tried by princes like herself. She would rather perish utterly than answer as Elizabeth's subject and a criminal. Burleigh interrupted her by saying:-" We will, nevertheless, proceed against you to-morrow as absent and contumax.” "Look to your consciences!" was Mary's indignant and impetuous reply. Hatton, however, turned her mind by an attack upon her good name. still cared for her name, and regarded her character in the eyes of the world. Slander and malignity could not wrest from her her selfrespect. "If you are innocent," said Hatton, "you have nothing to fear, but by seeking to avoid a trial, you stain your reputation with an everlasting blot." She advanced to her trial, and for two days she kept at bay the hunters for her life. Of course, it was easy to foresee how a trial like this would terminate; Mary was condemned, and the commissioners who were appointed to try her, left the Castle of Fotheringay, her prison and her Judgment Hall. What now was to be the termination? The parliament besought the queen to condemn her victim to death. She hesitated; it was a

bold step to take, and she knew how vain and groundless were all those pretexts upon which alone her execution could be demanded. Evidence is certain, that before signing the deathwarrant, Elizabeth felt her way, and attempted private assassination; Mary feared this, and accordingly, she addressed her last letter to the in which she says:—

harsh woman,

"Fearing, as I do, the secret tyranny of some persons, I beg you not to permit the sentence to be executed upon me without your knowledge; not from fear of the torment which I am ready to suffer, but on account of the reports which, in the absence of witnesses, above suspicion, might be spread respecting my death, as I know has been done in the case of others of different condition; to avoid which, I desire that my servants shall be spectators and witnesses of my death, in the faith of my Saviour, and in obedience to his Church."

She desired permission for her servants to leave England in peace, for her body to be buried in France. Such were Mary's last requests from her cousin, implored in the name of Christ, by their mutual relationship, by the memory of their common ancestry, and by the royalty of the English Queen. The last details of the closing days and moments of Mary are

very affecting; but all the queen shone around her then. Unfortunate to the last, it took three strokes to separate her head from her body. Yet, cruel as was her death, how noble compared with Elizabeth's! While the Queen of Scotland advanced to her scaffold like a martyr, the Queen of England perished like a punished culprit. No pretexts, save those of relentless, cruel policy, could or can defend the death of Mary. Through all succeeding years romance and poetry have decorated her memory. The probabilities of her guilt become fewer and fewer. All readers have sympathized with her sorrows; they have touched all tender hearts; and stern eyes have melted and wept over them. Many blots darken the fame of Elizabeth, but none like the death of the beautiful Mary. Her beautiful and injured form seems to haunt the neighbourhood of her rival's powerful throne; and an encomium is never passed upon her rival's reign, but the exceptive finger points to prison chambers and the bloody block of Fotheringay Castle.

CHAPTER VII.

SHIPPING AFFAIRS.

BUT what pre-eminently lends an interest, an imperishable interest to the reign of Elizabeth, is the naval achievements which, under Drake, and Frobisher, and Hawkins, were spreading the fame of England round the whole globe. The deeds of these gentlemen were not always very creditable to themselves, to their country, or to the Christianity they professed; but they were fraught with immense consequences to the country to which they belonged; and the impulse they gave to commerce and trade was immensely beneficial. Not that their voyagings were undertaken upon any principle of science; many years were to elapse before the methodical navigators appeared, who would make the ocean a convenient pathway over which to travel; but the ships, of the Age of Elizabeth, brought home enlarged views of the