greatest good fortune for their soul and body that they had been deprived of their abode, mode of life, and property; and with all this, the expelled Monks were prohibited, with equal inconsistency and cruelty, from marrying or availing themselves of any former hereditary right."

So much for the inalienable rights of an established church. The reigns of Edward VI. and Mary do not call for any very particular discussion on the part of Von Raumer. It is not unimportant, however, to observe the motives which, he alleges, prevailed, to secure the safety of Elizabeth during the tyranny and persecutions by her sister; these are referred to Philip's jealousy of the French power, which, in the case of Mary of Scotland succeeding to the English throne, would become dangerous. But it is upon the Virgin Queen's history that he takes most delight to expatiate; and here, he certainly appears to great advantage. He stands up as her strenuous advocate-not merely as regards her moral purity in private life, but upon the gravest and most frequently repeated charges that have ever been levelled against her public conduct, viz., in her treatment of Mary Stuart. The character and education of these two princesses, we think, is happily set forth in the following paragraph:

"The years of youth, which Mary Stuart spent in cheerfulness and pleasure, surrounded by admirers of all kinds, were passed by Elizabeth in solitude and silence. Instead of the royal diadems which adorned the brow of Mary, she saw the axe of the executioner suspended over her head, and the flames of the funeral piles arise, on which her friends and fellow-believers were cruelly sacrificed. A serious, learned education, and so hard a school of adversity, by which even ordinary men are elevated above their original nature, could not fail to have the greatest influence on a mind of such eminent powers-a character of such energy; and this is manifest in the whole history of the reign of Elizabeth.”

Fate, he says, had opposed these two queens to each other" in almost inevitable hostility ;" and yet, when an identity of interest prevailed between them, personal dislike and jealousy gave way.

"As soon as Elizabeth was informed of the rising of the confederated Nobles against Mary, she was extremely angry, and could not be prevailed upon to conceal these sentiments. Every Sovereign, she said, must oppose so dangerous an example; and an English army would probably have been sent to Mary's support, had it not been feared that France would interfere in the same manner, or even that Mary's death might be the consequence. Elizabeth advised her not to take any vengeance of her enemies; to punish Darnley's murderers; to avoid all offensive actions, and to send her son for safety to England. On the other hand, she seriously reprimanded the Barons for their rebellion, which was subversive of all public order, required that Mary should be set at liberty, and gave her opinion of the measures to be taken; which on the whole coincided with the first and most favourable of the above plans, a conditional restoration of Mary to power."

VOL. I. (1837). No. I.

C

Our author argues, with apparent success, that Elizabeth's safety and the prosperity of England imposed upon her the painful duty of watching closely, and counteracting rigorously, the Scottish queen, who from the day that she ascended the throne was probably in league with the most relentless enemies of the former. He also adduces a number of strong grounds for believing Mary to have been an accomplice in the murder of her husband. With regard to Bothwell's share in the crime, there is little room for two opinions. The terms even of his acquittal indicate a great deal, and that some powerful influence procured such a flagrant act of injustice. They are thus given :-"That the production of further proofs could not be allowed, and that it was a sufficient reason for rejecting the application of Lennox, because he had said, in his accusation, that the murder had been committed on the 9th in the evening, whereas the deed was perpetrated on the 10th, two hours after midnight." But what is to be thought of the queen, who

"Three months after the murder of Darnley, three weeks after the pretended rape, fourteen days after the divorce, Mary married Bothwell, the murderer of her husband, both according to the Roman Catholic and the Protestant rites. If any excuse or explanation can he found for this wretched weakness, this indifference to all warnings and facts, this dreadful indiscretion, it can only be in the insanity of passion, which was shown in the sequel in other ways: whereas it is contrary to all the facts, and absolutely absurd, when Mary's advocates say, that the notion of passion is not supported or confirmed by any historical testimony. These infatuated advocates forget that if that motive is reasoned away, there does not remain the remotest inducement for compassionate interest, but only an abyss of vices and crimes."

But Von Raumer does not rest contented with the strong presumptions of her guilt to be drawn from her infatuated conduct in the matter of her marriage with Bothwell; for he endeavours to prove that the sonnets and letters, regarding which so much has been written, were genuine, and that Mary was fully convinced of their authenticity. Even at the present day there are many persons to be met with, who go warmly and almost passionately into the discussion which has been so much handled concerning these documents; and, for the consideration of all such, we introduce a long extract from the work before us on the precise subject.

"The following questions deserve to be once more accurately examined; are the letters and sonnets which were produced, genuine or forged? What and how much do they prove? Was Mary or Murray the author of the murder of the King? On these points many bulky volumes have been written, both in former and in modern times, with such sophistry and acrimony, that they rather confuse than enlighten the judgment. Even a short extract from them would be out of its place here, and it may therefore suffice to annex to the preceding narrative a few observations.

Thuanus, Robertson, and Hume, three of the most acute and eminent historions, are of the same opinion in all essential particulars, and we too, after repeated and scrupulous examination, even of the most recent works, are compelled entirely to agree with them. They considered the letters and sonnets to be genuine, Mary's participation proved, and Murray innocent of the murder of the King. When Camden (whose annals James I. corrected throughout in favour of his mother), wrote by the King's desire to Thuanus, requesting him to change his narrative, the latter gave a masterly view of the state of the case, (as Hume in a note and Robertson in a separate Essay), and concludes his refusal, by saying that he cannot and dare not change black to white for the benefit of anybody. And another passage of his history, which is wanting in most of the editions of his works, but is found in the original, is to the following effect: Those who write that Mary is innocent of the death of her husband, and compelled by her enemies to this shameful marriage with Bothwell, who veil her crimes under the pretext of piety, act, in my opinion, very injudiciously, as they endeavour to defend a good cause, (that is, the religion of their fathers, which is strong enough by its own truth,) by foreign aid, in this place by a barefaced falsehood, Buchanan, too, whom James desired to change his account, when he was on his deathbed refused, adding that he was on the point of going to a place where probably few Kings would come.'

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"The contents and form of these letters agree with the sonnets, and the credibility of both is again confirmed by the depositions of those who, after the fall of Mary, were called to account, and executed for their par ticipation in the King's murder, as well as by the whole course of the events. Some allusions, which are in themselves unintelligible, were explained a century afterwards by Mary's correspondence with her Ambassador in Paris. Forgers could not be acquainted with the subject of these allusions, they would certainly not have gone so much into detail. on a number of things which were not connected with the main point, and must necessarily make the deception so much easier to be discovered; least of all would they have ventured into the domain of lyric poetry, and would have expressed the participation and guilt of Mary in much plainer and positive terms. Both the letters as well as the sonnets give evidence of a mind entirely under the dominion of the passion of love; they prove, not in plain words, but sufficiently for every impartial person, that Mary lived on a footing of improper intimacy with Bothwell, and was aware of his plans to murder her husband. Between her hatred of him and her wish to get rid of him, traces of fear, scruples of conscience, and remorse, do indeed intervene; but they were entirely overcome by the violence of that criminal passion; they never amounted to a resolution to save Darnley, though (as the letters do not conceal,) he sought a reconcilia tion in the most affecting manner, nay, implored his hypocritical conso: t to grant it. One thing only may remain doubtful: whether Mary gave her consent to Bothwell's plans generally, or whether she was personally made fully acquainted with the manner in which the murder was at length perpetrated.

"It is evident, from the preceding account, that Mary was fully convinced of the authenticity of the letters and sonnets, and greatly dreaded

their being produced; and even Chalmers, the most passionate advocate of Mary, confesses that it was most injudicious not to answer to such an accusation as soon as possible, and it was still more foolish to refuse to make any reply, after Mary (to say nothing of the partiality of the mode of proceeding,) had assented to the investigation. Even the manner in which those papers disappeared in the time of James I. is a proof of their importance, whereas a pretended will of Bothwell, wholly acquitting Mary, is a forgery; and, even were it genuine, would not weaken the force of the proofs on the other side. The fact that James, who resided for a long time in Denmark and Norway, published nothing in favour of his mother, is a tolerable proof that nothing could be found."

Still all that is quoted above and much more could never entitle Elizabeth to use deceit with the view of obtaining power over the person of Mary, and much less to imprison her for an indefinite time. But Von Raumer produces a curious document containing instructions from the Queen to her ambassador at the French court, to prove that she of Scotland hoped, by a marriage with the Duke of Norfolk, both to regain her former throne, and to drive Elizabeth from that of England. It is well known that many of the Catholics insisted on the justice of Mary's claim to the latter kingdom, and the author quotes a letter publicly produced at Trent, in May 1563, by Mary's uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, in which she recognized the Council, and promised all obedience to the Papal See, not only for Scotland, but for England, as soon as she should inherit that kingdom. But the document to which we first referred, is particularly curious, not merely as breathing the masculine spirit of Elizabeth, but on account of its appeal to Catherine de Medicis, who had been at one time Mary's jealous rival.

"And in this sort you may say, we have willed you briefly to declare her dealing to abuse us, and to aspire to that state from the which we, by God's goodness, doubt not during our life to keep her. And you may say to the Queen mother, because her experience by years serveth her to judge of such matters better than her son; she can well enough think that in this, so long a practice, tending so high a matter, begun in October, and not to us known before August, being the space almost of ten months; there were many particular devices, which now are to us sufficiently known, tending to the consummation of no small enterprise; for we find that this device of marriage was, in the meaning of her and hers, but an entry to her greater designs; and surely right sorry we are, yea, half ashamed, to have been thus misused by her whom we have so benefited by saving of her life; to whom also we have shewed otherwise great favours, having been heretofore our mortal enemy, as is well known to the world.""

If the protracted imprisonment of Mary can be justified, perhaps her trial and execution may, by the same arguments, and for the same reasons, be regarded with less indignation and abhorrence than the world has hitherto done. Our author, however, does not exculpate his favourite queen from these enormities, though he palliates

her conduct. Mary's accession to Babington's conspiracy is brought home to her, by him, in a manner that perhaps cannot be gainsaid; while he endeavours to make it equally manifest that Elizabeth never intended to go to the utmost extremity with her unfortunate and frail cousin, excepting in the case of a rebellion, or invasion for the purpose of dethroning herself, and establishing the other in her stead; and he quotes a passage, in proof of this, from an important report containing the French ambassador Chateauneuf's account of the Queen's discourse to him, soon after the termination of the sorrowful tragedy. The ambassador says

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"I did not intend to write anything respecting the queen of Scotland, but queen Elizabeth took me by the hand, led me to a corner of the room, and said, since I last saw you, the greatest vexation and the greatest misfortune of my whole life has befallen me, I mean the death of my cousin.' She swore by God, and with many oaths, that she was innocent of it. It was true the warrant had been signed by her, but only with a view to satisfy her subjects, and for the same reason, she had not listened to the intercessions of the French and Scotch ambassadors. But in truth, continued she, ' I never entertained the design of having her executed. Only if a foreign army had landed in England, or a great insurrection in favour of Mary had broken out, in such a case I confess, I might, perhaps, have ordered her death; but never in any other. My counsellors, among whom are four now here present, played me a trick, for which I cannot yet console myself. As true as God lives, if they had not served me so long, if they had not acted on a conviction that it was for the good of their country and their Queen, they should have lost their heads. Do not think that I am so wicked as to throw the blame upon a petty secretary, if such were not the fact. But this death will, for many reasons, be a weight upon my heart as long as I live.'"

Still it is a hopeless task, we suspect, to attempt convincing the generality of readers that Elizabeth was not, in all such protestations on this melancholy subject, acting a duplicit part; and, on the other hand, Mary's misfortunes, and even her errors, her beauty, and the romantic turns in her history, will ever preserve attached to her name, a species of tenderness and extenuating construction which the talents and the magnanimity of the English Queen will never command.

James the First of England cuts but a poor figure in Von Raumer's hands. His dread lest his mother should recover her throne, and, indeed, the callous nature of his filial piety, are here represented in colours that offer as little that is favourable to his private feelings as does the following picture of his public conduct; and with this account of a trifling, vain, and useless character, we close these volumes. It is our pleasant duty to add, that Mr. Lloyd, as in the case of every translation from the German language which we have seen of his, has here acquitted himself in a superior manner. He certainly has few equals in this country for the performance of such a task.