affront; and, in fact, as an atrocious hoax or swindle, if the rectory happened to be Stanhope, worth in good mining years six thousand per annum, and the bishopric to be Exeter, worth, until lately, not more than two. But the use which Sir James makes of this fact, coming so soon after the king's return, is-that assuredly the doctor must have had some conspicuous merit, when so immediately promoted, and amongst so select a few. That merit, he means to argue, could have been nothing else, or less, than the seasonable authorship of the Icon. It is certain, however, that the service which obtained Exeter, was not this. Worcester, to which G. afterwards obtained a translation, and the fond hope of Winchester, which he never lived to reach, may have been sought for on the argument of the Icon. But Exeter was given on another consideration. This is certain; and, if known to Sir James, would perhaps have arrested his final judgment. 2. Sir James quotes, without noticing their entire inaccuracy, the well-known words of Lord Clarendon-that when the secret (as to the Icon) should cease to be such, "nobody would be gladd of it but Mr. Milton." I notice this only as indicating the carelessness with which people read, and the imperfect knowledge of the facts even amongst persons like Lord Clarendon, having easy access to the details, and contemporary with the case. Why should the disclosure have so special an interest for Milton? The Icon Basiliké, or royal image, having been set up for national worship, Milton, viewing the case as no better than idolatry, applied himself to pull down the idol; and, in allusion to the title of the book, as well as to the ancient Iconoclasts, he called his own exposure of the Icon by the name of Iconoclastes, or the Image-breaker. But Milton had no interest in Lord Clarendon's secret. What he had meant by breaking the image was-not the showing that the king had not written the book, but that whoever had written it, (king or any body else,) had falsely represented the politics and public events of the last seven years, and had falsely coloured the king's opinions, feelings, designs, as expounded by his acts. Not the title to the authorship, was what Milton denied: of that he was comparatively careless: but the king's title to so meek and candid a character as was there portrayed. It is true that laughingly, and in transitu, Milton notices the unlikelihood of a king's finding leisure for such a task, and he notices also the internal marks of some chaplain's hand in the style. That same practice in composition, which suggested to Sir James Mackintosh his objections to the style, as too dressed and precise for a prince writing with a gentleman's negligence, suggested also to Milton his suspicion of a clerical participation in the work. He thought probably, which may, after all, turn out to be true, that the work was a joint cour product of two or more persons. But all that was indifferent to his argument. His purpose was to destroy the authority by exposing the falsehood of the book. And his dilemma is framed to meet either hypothesis that of the king's authorship, or that of an anonymous tier's. Written by the king, the book falsifies facts in a way which must often have contradicted his own official knowledge, and must therefore impeach his veracity: written for the king, the work is still liable to the same charge of material falsehood, though probably not of conscious falsehood; so far the writer's position may seem improved; one who was not in the Cabinet would often utter untruths, without knowing them to be such: yet again this is balanced by the deliberate assumption of a false character for the purpose of public deception. 3. Amongst the passages which most affect the king's character, on the former hypothesis, (viz. that of his own authorship,) is the 12th section of the Icon, relating to his private negotiations with the Irish Roman Catholics. The case stands thus: Charles had been charged with having excited (or permitted his Popish queen to excite) the Irish rebellion and massacre of 1641. To this charge, being factious and false, it was easy for him to reply with the bold front of an innocent mian. There was next a second charge, of having negotiated with the rebels subsequently to their insurrection. To this also there was a reply; not so triumphant, because, as a fact, it could not be blankly denied ; but under the state difficulties of the king, it was capable of defence. Thirdly, however, there was a charge quite separate and much darker, which, if substantiated, would have ruined the royal cause with many of its staunchest adherents. This concerned the secret negotiation with the Popish nuncio through Lord Glamorgan. It may be ninety years since Dr. Birch, amongst his many useful contributions to English history, brought to life this curious correspondence: and since that day there has been no room for doubt as to the truth of the charge. Lord Glamorgan was a personal friend of the king, and a friend so devoted, that he submitted without a murmur to be represented publicly as a poor imbecile creature, this being the sole retreat open to the king's own character. Now, the Icon does not distinguish this last charge, as to which there was no answer, from the two others where there was. In a person situated like Gauden, and superficially acquainted with political facts, this confusion might be perfectly natural. Not so with the king; and it would deeply injure his memory, if we could suppose him to have benefited artfully by a defence upon one charge which the reader (as he knew) would apply to another. Yet would it not equally injure him to suppose that he had accepted from another such an equivocating * This "poor imbecile creature" was the original suggester of the Steam-engine. He is known in his earlier life as Lord Herbert son of Lord Worcester, who at that time was an earl, but afterwards raised to a marquisate, and subsequently the son was made Duke of Beaufort. Apart from the negotiations with the nuncio, the king's personal bargain with Lord Herbert (whom he made Earl of Glamorgan as a means of accrediting him for this particular Irish service) was tainted with marks of secret leanings to Popery. Lord Glamorgan's family were Papists; and into this family, the house of Somerset having Plantagenet blood in their veins, the king was pledged to give a daughter in marriage, with a portion of three hundred thousand pounds. Taking leave of the Icon Basiliké, I would express my opinion, that the question is not yet exhausted: the pleadings must be reöpened. But in the mean time no single arguments have been adduced against the king's claim of equal strength with these two of Sir James's: one drawn from external, the other from internal evidence: First, that on the Gauden hypothesis, Lord Clarendon's silence as to the Icon in his history, though not strictly correct, is the venial error of a partisan; but that, on the other, or anti-Gauden hypothesis, his silence is fatal to his own character, as a man decently honest; and yet without an intelligible motive. defence? No for it must be recollected that the | the fundamental laws of the three kingdoms which king, though he had read, could not have had the the king ruled, and with the coronation oaths opportunity (which he anticipated) of revising the which he had sworn. I, that love and pity the proof sheets; consequently we know not what he afflicted prince, whose position blinded him, of might finally have struck out. But, were it other- necessity, to the truth in many things, am the wise, Sir James Mackintosh argues that the dis- last person to speak harshly of his conduct. But honesty would, under all the circumstances, have undoubtedly he committed a great error for his been trivial, when confined to the act of tolerating reputation, that would have proved even a fatal an irrelevant defence, in comparison of that dis- error for his interests, had it succeeded at the mohonesty which could deliberately compose a false ment, and that might have upset the interests of one. So far I fully agree with Sir James: his universal Protestantism, coming at that most critiapology for the defence of the act, supposing that cal moment. This case I notice, as having a large defence to be Gauden's, is sufficient. But his application; for it is too generally true of politiapology for the act itself is, I fear, untenable. cians, arguing the Roman Catholic claims in these He contends, that "it certainly was not more modern days, when the sting of Popery, as a poliunlawful for him," [the king] "to seek the aid of tical power, is extracted, that they forget the very the Irish Catholics, than it was for his opponents different position of Protestantism, when it had to to call in the succour of the Scotch presbyterians." face a vast hostile confederation, always in proHow so? The cases are most different. The cinctu for exterminating war, in case a favourable English and the Scottish Parliaments were on opening should arise. terms of the most brotherly agreement as to all capital points of policy, whether civil or religious. In both senates all were Protestants; and the preponderant body, even in the English senate, up to 1646, were Presbyterians, and, one may say, Scottish Presbyterians; for they had taken the Covenant. Consequently no injury, present or in reversion, to any great European interest, could be charged upon the consciences of the two Parliaments. Whereas the Kilkenny treaty, on Charles's part, went to the direct formal establishment of Popery as the Irish Church, to the restoration of the lands claimed as church lands, to a large confiscation, and to the utter extermination of the Protestant interest in Ireland. The treaty did all this, by its tendency; and if it were to be prevented from doing it, that could only be through prolonged war, in which the king would have found himself ranged in battle against the Protestant faith. The king not only testified his carelessness of the Protestant interest, but he also raised a new and a rancorous cause of civil war. The truth is, that Mackintosh, from the long habit of defending the Roman Catholic pretensions, as applying to our own times, was tempted to overlook the difference which affected those pretensions in 1645-6. Mark the critical point of time. A great anti-Protestant league of kingdoms had existed for a century, to which Spain, Austria, Bavaria, many Italian states, and, intermittingly, even France, were parties. The great agony of this struggle between Popery and the Reformation, came to its crisis, finally and for ever, in the Thirty years' war, which, beginning in 1618, (just one hundred years after Luther's first movement,) terminated in 1648, by the peace of Westphalia. That treaty it was, balancing and readjusting all Christendom, until the French Revolution again unsettled it, that first proclaimed to the Popish interest the hopelessness of further efforts for exterminating the Protestant interest. But this consummation of the strife had not been reached by four or five years at the time when Charles entered upon his jesuitical dealings with the Popish council in Ireland; dealings equally at war with the welfare of struggling Europe, with Secondly, that the impersonal character of the Icon is strongly in favour of its being a forgery. All the rhetorical forgeries of the later Greek literature, such as the Letters of Phalaris, of Themistocles, &c. are detected by that mark. These forgeries, applying themselves to ages distant from the writer, are often, indeed, self-exposed by their ignorant anachronisms. That was a flaw which could not exist, in a forgery, applied to contemporary events. But else in the want of facts, of circumstantialities, and of personalities, such as were sure to grow out of love or hatred, there is exactly the same air of vagueness, and of timid dramatic personation, in the Icon, as in the old Greek knaveries. MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS works, Perhaps it would have been an advantageous change for this republication of Sir James Mackintosh's works, if the entire third volume had been flung overboard, so as to lighten the vessel. This volume consists of political papers, that are at any rate imperfect, from the want of many documents that should accompany them, and are otherwise imperfect, laudably imperfect, from their author's station as a political partisan. It was his duty to be partial. These papers are merely contributions to a vast thesaurus, never to be exhausted, of similar papers: dislocated from their general connexion, they are useless; whilst, by compelling a higher price of admission, they obstruct the public access to other articles in the collection, which have an independent value, and sometimes a very high value, upon the very highest subjects. The ethical dissertation is crowded with just views, as regards what is old, and with suggestions brilliant and powerful, as regards all the openings for novelty. Sir James Mackintosh has here done a public service to education and the interests of the age, by setting his face against the selfish schemes of morality, too much favoured by the tendencies of England. He has thrown light upon the mystery of conscience. He has offered a subtle method of harmonizing philosophic liberty with philosophic necessity. He has done justice, when all men were determinately unjust,-to the leading schoolmen, to Aquinas, to Ockham, to Biel, to Scotus, and in more modern times to Soto and Suarez. To his own contemporaries, he is not just only, but generous, as in the spirit of one who wishes to make amends for the past injustice of others. He is full of information and suggestion upon every topic which he treats. Few men have so much combined the power of judging wisely from a stationary position, with the power of changing that station, under changing circumHe moves stances in the age or in the subject. slowly, or with velocity, as he moves amongst breakers, or amongst open seas. And upon every theme which he treats, in proportion as it rises in importance, the reader is sure of finding displayed the accomplishments of a scholar, the philosophic resources of a very original thinker, the elegance of a rhetorician, and the large sagacity of a statesman controlled by the most sceptical caution of a lawyer. THE DESTROYER. On the deep luxury which Fancy brings, Like some fond bird teaching its young to fly! Who dwells where heaven's own cadence can be heard? Or dallying with the winds, who soar'd so far, Or holding converse with the planets bright, Whose silvery lips commune with waves at night? On the calm bosom of immensity? Or looking o'er Creation's boundless way, Or peering through the golden gates of life, And giving ear to songs for ever rife? FANCY. No new-born beams have me delay'd, Nor thronging angels fair and bright, I may not tell the feats sublime, Of him who sways the sphere of Time; I saw him spread his giant wing, To haste where millions brave were found, Upon the tented battle ground. The red sun look'd with eye of fire, I saw him seek a colonnade, A long-drawn aisle which art display'd: And sculptured doves were nestling there. I saw him pass where flowers and trees, I saw him steal where Hope was seen I started! and I cried, Oh, spare! And next I saw the phantom lone Thus have I watch'd, with aching sight, C. C. 425 MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.* THE multitude of documentary collections relating to Mary Queen of Scots, which have been lately published, demand attention by the sheer extent of surface which they cover. A library of these volumes is now lying before us; and the public, who have their railway schemes to attend to, their monthly accounts to pay, and the general business that brings them bread to attend to, demand that we, the miners of literature, should drive a shaft through this great stratified mass, and tell them how far it appears to contain valuable ore. We may state in the first place, and before descending to particulars, that the matter of real interest lately, for the first time, published, is less than we would expect from the extent of the publications. The original incidents, or the new lights thrown on matters already known, are not numerous; and in a couple of cursory articles, which Prince Labanoff's complete collection suggests to us, we certainly shall not confine ourselves to the documents which appear for the first time in his pages. It would be difficult perhaps to adduce better evidence of the magic influence which the name of Mary Stuart has exercised over the reading public of Europe, than this full flowing continuation of the stream of literature, which, for three hundred years, has borne her strange eventful history on its bosom. Will it ever be exhausted? Surely never, so long as there are Prince Labanoffs in the world. Here is pure literary chivalry -a great book that can have neither readers nor purchasers, the fruit of the labour of fourteen years' research, in all parts of Europe, offered up as a sacrifice to the manes of "an injured Queen." Imagine the occupations, other than rummaging through dusty records, in which a Prince might have occupied himself for fourteen years. Picture the sojourn in courts-the lionism-the literary reputation he might have attained as a Puckler Muskau, and we can form a faint conception of his sacrifices. Wo to the youthful enthusiast, male or female, that, having read the "Abbot," or the translation of Schiller's drama, shall expect to revel in the romantic delights of these seven scarlet volumes. The disappointment will be as egregious as that of the managers of the Juvenile Circulating Library, who ordered Tooke's Diversions of Purley. The zeal of the prince is beyond our praise, as it is beyond our power to estimate it. He is the true knight-errant, to whom his mistress's word is law, however little meaning there may be in her commands. If a document but bear Mary's signature, it is entitled to admission, however unworthy the object. Hence the fine collection of letters of safe-conduct which we possess in these volumes, by all of which, sundry worthy burgesses, intent on their own business, are permitted, " in deu and competent form, to cum within the realme to ony toun, porte, havin, or pasaige therof, be sey, land, or fresche watter, thair to remane and do his leful errands and bissines, &c. And in sic sort to pas and repas at his pleasure, alsoft as he sall think expedient, on horse or on fute, with his horsses alswele stanyt as geldingis, bulgettis, fardellis, pacquettis, cofferis, money, jewellis, gold, silver, cunyeit and uncunyeit, letteris, clois and patent; with all and sindrie his utheris guidis lefull, but stop, trouble, injuirie, impeschement, arreist, or serche, to be maid, done, or gevin to him." To find a series of such documents, in their honest broad Scotch, printed with Parisian types, under the auspices of a Russian prince, with a French analysis prefixed to each of them, is not a little curious, and suggests the hope, that if any future Russian prince shall publish the letters of Queen Victoria, he will not omit whatsoever commissions to military and naval officers, or patents of baronetcy, he is so fortunate as to lay hands on. We must not forget, however, in speaking of Prince Labanoff's seven volumes, that they are printed for the continent of Europe, rather than the British Isles. It is true that the copy before us bears the imprint Londres; but the typography is foreign, and intended to supply French, German, Spanish, and perhaps a few Russian readers, with a general recueil of the letters of Mary Queen of Scots. The editor may therefore be excused for having included a few documents which would hardly in this country be admitted to have either historical or biographical value. Apart from the value of his documents, it is due to the prince, and the sort of reputation he appears to court, to say that his work is edited with wonderful labour, minuteness, and critical intelligence. With regard to the letters in the French language, our testimony will not go for much: but, for the many specimens in our own Scottish dialect, we can safely say, that we never knew like documents so correctly published by a native of England. The tragedy of Mary Queen of Scots, consists naturally of three acts,the murder of Rizzio, the assassination of Henry Darnley, and her own ignominious death. They are all connected together by that dark chain of causes and effects, whereby crime begets crime. They are events deeply impressed on the mind of the world—traditions of horror that have their local range over the whole European mind; and when the time shall come in which they shall be forgotten, let him predict, who can foresee the day when the written tablets of the most memorable events in the world's history shall be effaced. In the Hague *Lettres, Instructions, et Mémoires, de Marie Stuart, Reine d'Écosse; Publiés sur les originaux et les Manuscrits du State Paper Office de Londres, et des Principales Archives et Bibliothèques de L'Europe, et accompagnés d'un Résumé chronologique. Par Le Prince Alexandre Labanoff. 7 tomes. Londres: Dolman. Letters of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland. Translated from the Recueil, &c. by Prince Alexander Labanoff. With Notes and Introductions, by William Turnbull, Esq. Advocate. Dolman. VOL. XIII.-NO. CLI. 2 L against the said lord. 'Is this your sickness, Lord Ruthven?' The said lord answered, 'God forbid that your majesty had such a sickness; for I had rather give all the moveable goods that I have.' Then, said her majesty, if she died, or her bairn, or commonweal perished, she should leave the revenge thereof to her friends, to revenge the same upon the said Lord Ruthven, and his posterity; for she had the king of Spain her great friend, the emperor likewise, and the King of France her good brother, the Cardinal of Lorrain, and her unkels in France, besides the Pope's holiness, with many other princes in Italy. The said lord answered, that these noble princes were over-great to meddle with such a poor man as he was, being her majesty's own subject. And when her majesty said, that if either she, her bairn, or the commonweal perished, the said Lord Ruthven should have the weight thereof; the said lord answered, that if either of the three perished, her majesty's self, or her particular counsel, should have the weight thereof, and should be accused as well before God as the world." There are some good-natured exchanges of courtesy described on the occasion, thus, "And because there was some enmity unreconciled betwixt the Earls of Huntly and Bothwell, and the Earls of Argyle and Murray, and their colleagues, the said lords promised in their names, that it should be mended at the sight of two or three of the nobility, they doing such like to them; whereupon the said Earls of Huntly and Bothwell gave the Lord Ruthven their hands, and received his for the other part; and after they had drunken, the said Lord Ruthven took his leave of them." they show one the doublet worn by William of Nassau, when he was shot by Balthazar Gerards, pierced and blood-stained; in Berne, they proudly exhibit the accoutrements of Charles the Bold, worn on the fatal field of Grandsom. But such relics are mute memorials in comparison with that foul stain, that, in the dark corner of the room in Holyrood, close to the mouldering fragments of the contemporary furniture, marks the spot where the miserable Rizzio lay bleeding from fifty-six wounds. The stain may be an exhibitionist's trick after all: but if it be so, surely never was drama of still life better devised than its juxtaposition in that grim old chamber, with the mouldering bed of state, and the ghastly tapestry hiding the little doorway of the secret passage, by which the murderers entered from Darnley's apartments. He would be firm nerved or unimaginative, who would sleep soundly on that memorable bed. Among all the narratives of this butchery, we know none that can compete with that of the "Relation" by Lord Ruthven, one of the principal actors. The charm of this narrative is in the utter brazen effrontery-the obdurate calmness, with which the whole scene of violence is described, as the performance of an act rather commendable than otherwise-something which had excited absurd prejudices, yet was substantially a useful piece of public service. "The said Lord Ruthven passed in through the king's chamber, and up through the privy way to the queen's chamber, as the king had learned him, and through the chamber to the cabinet, where he found the queen's majesty sitting at her supper at the middes of a little table; the lady Argyle sitting at one end, and Davie at the head of the table, with his cap on his head; the king speaking with the queen's majesty, and his hand upon her waist. The said Lord Ruthven, at his coming in, said to the queen's majesty, 'It would please your majestie to let yonder man Davie come forth of your presence, for he hath been over-long here.' Her majesty answered,-What offence hath he made? The said lord replied again, that he had made great offence to her majestie's honour, the king her husband, the nobility, and commonweal of the realm. And how?' saith she. 'It will please your majesty,' said the said lord, he hath offended your majesty's honour, which I dare not be so bold to speak of." And so he proceeds, as methodically as a quaker, lecturing her after such a fashion, as, were it at this day employed by a London policeman to a prostitute, would elicit cries of "Shame, shame," from an audience in St. Giles'. After "Signior Davie" had been despatched in the outer chamber, we have a fine scene of honest familiarity. Back goes Ruthven to the queen's apartment, whether with his dagger sheathed or The leaving of the whiniard or dagger sticking still reeking in his hand, he saith not. "The in the body, was a neat and emphatic method of said lord being so feebled with his sickness, and notifying that the affair was one of Darnley's own. weary of his travel, [. e. the trouble of driving There is no doubt that Queen Mary fiercely rehis dagger into Signior Davie,] that he desired sented this cowardly, brutal, and insulting act; her majestie's pardon to sit down upon a coffer, and if she had any blood in her, could it have and called for a drink for God's sake; so a French- failed to boil at such a moment? For some time man brought him a cup of wine; and after that he after the deed, she was held a prisoner in her had drunken, the queen's majesty began to rail | palace. In a letter to Beaton archbishop of Glas This, with some equally cordial social scenes, passes while the body of the murdered man lies in the passage. The description of the removal of the body does some credit to the old ruffian's power of picturesque description : "The gates being locked, the king being in bed, the queen's majesty walking in her chamber, the said Lord Ruthven took air upon the lower gate, and at the privy passages. And at the king's command, in the mean time, Davie was hurled down the steps of the stairs from the place where he was slain, and brought to the porter's lodge; where the porter's servant taking off his clothes, said, 'This hath been his destiny; for upon this chest was his first bed since he entered this place, and now here he lieth again, a very ingrate and misknowing knave.' The king's whiniard was found sticking in Davie's side, after he was dead; but always the queen inquired of the king where his whiniard was; who answered, that he wit not well. Well,' said she, it will be known afterwards."" |