Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

to have been, of all the places visited, her majesty's most favourite spot, as it was the home of her most favoured servant. Glancing through the History of the reign of Elizabeth, we cannot but be struck with the important suitableness of her great minister, both to herself and the emergencies and difficulties of the age. Calm, sagacious, cautious, there can be no doubt he carried to the grave secrets which the courtiers of the time would have given piles of wealth to discover. A rare combination he developed of real homely English cheerfulness, with shrewd State cunning. Reflecting now upon the policy of that time, of the queen's haughty precipitancy, of the demand for retrenchment of national expenditure; for peace, superseding the rough and reckless purposes of war; of a calm, mild, equable commercial policy, when the forces of counter cunning playing around the island from foreign realms are borne in mind; that all the princes of Europe were longing for the dismay and ruin of England; and that the most considerable were, by public daring, or by private machination, attempting it; and that Burleigh, by his keenness and caution balanced the precipitancy of the monarch. It may not be too much to say that a large share fell to his lot of the glories of the bright days of Queen Bess.

CHAPTER VI.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

THE most tragic circumstances of the reign of Elizabeth are those in which her name is associated with her cousin Mary of Scotland, the daughter of Margaret, the sister of Henry VIII. The reader will immediately see the grounds which Elizabeth had for fear; Elizabeth was a Protestant, the daughter of a queen who also professed to be Protestant. By the Romish Church she was not only excommunicated, but she was illegitimate; her claims to the Throne of England set aside, Mary remained the undoubted queen, and in her virtue of her claims to the throne, her son James I., succeeded Elizabeth. Very early in life Mary was married to the Dauphin of France, and on every occasion, both she and her husband took occasion to proclaim themselves sovereigns of England. Mary was eminently beautiful, emi

nently talented, and the memory of her beauties, her talents, and her sorrows, has ever since fired young and enthusiastic hearts for her. The Historian has softened the severity of History, and Poets have delighted to linger over her name. Sir Walter Scott, Schiller, Burns, have deplored and delineated her sufferings; nothing can be easier than for the intellect to make out a case against her, but it is wanting in moral consistency and proportion; and Elizabeth, in every particular, shrinks into the coquette, the schemer, the traitress, almost the murderess upon the mention of the name of Mary. The husband of Mary died young, and left her a very youthful widow, and she returned to Scotland-to Scotland, but how different to "La Belle France"-the beautiful Southern France, how different to cold, dreary, bleak Scotland; the people of France so far advanced in politeness, the people of Scotland so far behind; the court of France so refined, so gay, and that of Scotland so coarse, so austere; France, where all was Popish, Scotland where all were ultra Protestant. Mary returned, too, at a time when the debate between the two creeds was warm and fiery in the land. The Scottish Reformers linked themselves and their interests with Elizabeth.

James Stuart, Mary's half brother, led them on; while against these, Mary's Scottish adherents invoked to their aid the persecuting stake, and rack, and thus endangered their own interest and that of the mistress they so dearly loved.

"At the coming over of the widowed Mary from France, where she had dwelt since her fifth year, where she had shared in the polite education of the French king's own daughters, in one of the first convents of the kingdom, and been the idol of the whole French court and people, it is said that, as the coast of the happy land of her youth faded from her view, she continued to exclaim, "Farewell, France! farewell, dear France! I shall never see thee more!" and her first view of Scotland only increased the poignancy of these touching regrets; so little pains had been taken to "cover over the nakedness and poverty of the land." Tears sprang into her eyes when, fresh from the elegant and luxurious court of Paris, she saw the wretched ponies, with bare wooden saddles, or dirty and ragged trappings, which had been provided to carry her and her ladies from the water-side to Holyrood. And then the palace itself: how different from the palaces in which she had lived in France! It was

dismal and small, consisting only of what is now the north wing. The state-room and the bed-chamber which were used by her yet remain with the old furniture; and much of the needlework there is said to have been the work of her own hands. Then the melody with which they greeted her her poor rude Scottish subjects" Two or three hundred violinists, apparently amateur performers, held a concert all night below her windows, and prevented her getting an hour's sleep after the fatigues of the sea. Mary, though suffering under the effects of this dire serenade, received the compliment of these 'honest men of the town of Edinburgh' as it was intended, and even ventured to hint a wish that the concert might be repeated."* Such graceful good humour had not been deserved, for with something worse than the bad taste that had dictated the 'dire serenade,' she had been ushered into Edinburgh by pageants so contrived as to cast derision on the faith to which it was known she was strongly attached. All this was but a foretaste of the bitterness to come. She had been promised that she should exercise her own religion in her own establishment; but John

Sir Walter Scott.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »