"but traft weil and ze send one to zour wiff że

may afur her fchu wald a bin weilcome to a pur stranger hua nocht bien aquanted with her "wil notcht bi over bald to wreit bot for the aquantans betwix ous, y wil fend zou litle tokne "to rember zou of the gud hop y hauu in zou ques ze fend a met meffager y wald wyfh ze "bestouded it reder upon her nor ain uder. thus efter my commendations y prey God hauu zou « in his kipin.

"Your afured gud frind

Eucuf my ivel wretein

the furft time."

"MARIE R.

Ronfard, the celebrated French Poet, addreffed. fome verses to Mary. She prefented him with a filver cup emboffed, reprefenting Apollo and the Nine Mufes, thus infcribed:

A Ronfard l'Apollon de la fource des Mufes.'

- One of Mary's MS. letters ends with these melancholy words, « Car je fuis preffée de «mourir."

The following copy of verfes, written by this beautiful and unfortunate Princess during her confinement in Fotheringay Caftle, is prefented to the Public by the kindness of a very eminent and liberal Collector:

Que

Que fuis-je, belas? et de quoi fert la vie?
F'en fuis fors qu'un corps privé de cueur;
Un ombre vayn, un objet de malheur,›
Qui n'a plus rien que de mourir en vie.
Plus ne me portez, O enemys, d'envie
Qui n'a plus l'efprit à la grandeur :
J'ai confommé d'excessive douleur,
Voltre ire en bref de voir affouvie.
Et vous amys qui m'avez tenu chere,
Souvenez-vous que fans cueur, et fans fantey,
Je ne fcaurois auqun bon œuvre faire.
Souhaitez donc fin de calamitey,
Et que fus bas etant affez punie,
F'aie ma part en la joie înfinie.

1

The verses are written on a sheet of paper by Mary herself, in a large rambling hand. The following literal tranflation of them was made by a country woman of Mary's, a Lady in beauty of perfon and elegance of mind by no means inferior to that accomplished and unfortunate Princefs:

Alas, what am I? and in what estate?

A wretched corse bereaved of its heart;
An empty fhadow, loft, unfortunate:

To die is now in life my only part.

Foes to my greatness, let your envy reft,

In me no tafte for grandeur now is found:

Confum'd by grief, with heavy ills opprefs'd,

Your wishes and defires will foon be crown'd,

And

And you, my friends, who still have held me dear,
Bethink you, that when health and heart are fled,
And ev'ry hope of future good is dead,

'Tis time to wish our forrows ended here;
And that this punishment on earth is given,

That my pure foul may rise to endless bliss in Heaven.

In her way to Fotheringay Castle, Mary stopped a few hours at Buxton, and with her diamond ring wrote on a pane of glass at the inn of that place,

Buxtona, quæ tepidæ celebrabere numine lymphæ,
Buxtona, fortè iterum non adeunda, vale!
Uncertain, in the womb of Fate,

What ills on wretched Mary wait!
Buxton, my tribute (whilft I may)
To thy fam'd tepid fount I pay;
That fount, the cure of ills and pain,
Which I shall never see again!

Many curious MS. papers relative to Mary

Queen of Scots are to be met

with in the Library

The last time that

of the Scots College at Paris. David Hume was in that city, the learned and excellent Principal of the College fhewed them to him, and asked him, why he had pretended to write her history in an unfavourable light without confulting them. David, on being told this, looked over fome letters which the Principal put into his hands, and, though not much used to the melting mood, burst into tears. Had Mary

written

ג

written the Memoirs of her own Life, how interesting must they have been! A Queen, a Beauty, a Wit, a Scholar, in distress, must have laid hold on the heart of every reader: and there is all the reason in the world to fuppofe that he would have been candid and impartial. Mary, indeed, completely contradicted the observation made by the learned Selden in his Table-Talk," that men "are not troubled to hear men difpraised, be"cause they know that though one be naught, "there is ftill worth in others: but women are

mightily troubled to hear themselves spoken "against, as if the sex itself were guilty of fome " unworthinefs:" for when one of the Cecil' family, Minister to Scotland from England in Mary's reign, was fpeaking of the wisdom of his Sovereign Queen Elizabeth, Mary stopped him fhort by saying, Seigneur Chevalier, ne me parlez jamais de la fagesse d'un femme; je connois bien "mon fexe; la plus fage de nous toutes n'eft qu'un peu moins fotte que les autres."

"

The pictures in general fuppofed to be those of this unfortunate Princefs differ very much from one another, and all of them from the gold medal ftruck of her with her husband Francis the Second at Paris, and which is now in the late Dr. Hunter's Museum in Windmill-ftreet. This medal reprefents her as having a turned-up nofe. Mary, however, was fo graceful in her figure, that when,

at

at one of the proceffions of the Hoft at Paris, the was carrying the wafer in the pix, á woman burst through the crowd to touch her, to convince herfelf that she was not an angel. She was fo learned, that at the age of fifteen years the pronounced a Latin oration of her own compofition before the whole Court of France at the Louvre.

: Mary, wearied with misfortunes, and tired of confinement, received with great firmness and refignation the fentence of death that was pronounced against her by her rival. Death," faid the," which will put an end to my misfor"tunes, will be very welcome to me. I look

:

upon a foul too weak to support the body in its paffage to the habitations of the bleffed, as "unworthy of the happiness that is to be enjoyed

"there."

The original of the following fupplicatory letter of Mary Queen of Scots, to Queen Elizabeth, is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford:

26. MADAME,

"Pencant felon le commandement donney, que "tous ceulx non compris en ung certeinge me"moyre, deuffent aller ou leur affayres les con"duirefoient j'avois choifi Monfieur de Leving"ton pur eftre porteur de la prefente, ce que "m'eftant refusay a lui retenu, j'ai ete contraynte, "nayant autre libertay, mettre la prefente aux

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