thing touching in the story of a girl who had the warm affections of a kind heart, and all that we ever associate with human loveliness; whose errors were the result of no native depravity, but which met with so speedy and so dreadful a reckoning.

History and tradition, and impressions which are transmitted from age to age by a medium imperceptible to analysis, have, in one mode or another, done their best to satiate human curiosity. We can follow Mary, step by step, from the first outburst of admiration of the cavaliers of France,

"In life's morning march when her spirit was young,"

to her melancholy end. We know her life as thoroughly as we can ever know the past; her story sinks into the mind and nestles there, like some of the nursery tales of early childhood that come rising up from their long hiding place, when, amid the rugged scenes of life, the chord is struck that sends us back upon reminiscences.

When as we read this strange history, each stirring incident appears, one can scarce imagine himself engaged in the study of things

that once agitated human hearts, and had been productive of real destinies. Genius has contrived to weave out of it a tale; but how tame has even Schiller made the copy, and how vapid is Scott's narrative beside the truth! Her own letters tell her history, with a dreadful sincerity and mournful pathos that have never been surpassed by the best passages of the masters who have pourtrayed the workings of a wounded and distempered heart. Not so, however, with our manufacturers of memoirs, biographies, and dissertations. The endeavour with them has been, not to expiscate the truth. That would have been an idle and a useless task. Theory here makes sad ravage with history, under the guidance of a logic which stalks to its conclusions with an irresistible contempt of facts. ordinary sources of past history are too narrow for their warm and enthusiastic imaginations. We have now to deal with writers who fly extra flammantia monia mundi, into the regions of conjecture. Laden with the stores acquired by imagination in its travels, they are positive and decided even on unattainable knowledge, and can develop at once the glories that are fallen, and invest with a superior pomp the

The

beings they exalt, or correspondingly depress the villains, conspirators, and fanatical desperados they condemn.

It is not one point that these writers and their predecessors have involved in doubt. They compel controversy to attend Mary from her cradle to her grave, and render her story one of those unhappy subjects that can only be looked at from the extremes of human feeling. We scarce leave with moistened eyes the tale of suffering unmerited, and the good points of character exaggerated to falsehood, when our hearts are turned to stone at the narrative of crime unpunished, humanity trampled on, and the decencies of life outraged and despised, in the wild gratification of flagitious passion.

The Letters of Queen Mary, with which Miss Strickland has favoured us, are a selection from several tomes, put together by the industry of Alexander Labanoff, a Russian prince. Those that are new are of no great importance. Aware of this, Miss Strickland has interweaved with them a number of the interesting letters long ago published by Robertson and Keith, and has endeavoured to render her story connected by

a short abridgment of Mary's history. To the whole she has prefixed a long introduction, and added many pages of appendix; and, by writing several times of her intentions in regard to "future editions," she indicates her opinion, that her own high estimate of her labours will only be in unison with that of the public.

The public are sometimes blind, and often capricious; but, in the present instance, we are afraid that such sanguine anticipations will be disappointed. We would wish to speak with all gentleness of a lady, and to pass over in silence, if we could not approve, the productions of her genius. But Miss Strickland's is a special case. She is a practised authoress, who favours the public, as each revolving lustrum passes, with thick volumes of history, which have a certain circulation, and necessarily exercise a little influence. She is, moreover, not unaccustomed to criticism; and in the present case, by her assumption of excellence, and by the tone and temper in which she writes, she has resigned the privileges which we would otherwise be the first willingly to concede.

Speaking of the accusers of the Queen, Miss Strickland has well observed, that "they would

have been wonderfully improved by the castigation of our present periodical press,”—(vol. iii. p. 255,)—an observation which we cite here with the view of justifying ourselves in giving a few specimens of her capacity for historical investigation, and in assisting her in the labour of revisal for those numerous editions that will be called for by an anxious public. Some of the points we have noticed, in the cursory glance we have given to her volumes, may be considered unimportant; but in a work destined to such a wide popularity, it is best to be correct in regard to the minutest details.

Thus we are informed very early, that "the divorce of Bothwell from Jane Gordon, sister of the Earl of Huntly, was declared at the same time in the Consistory and Archiepiscopal Court," (vol. i. p. 33.) Both were Consistory Courts; and Miss Strickland means to say, that the divorce was carried through in the Consistory Court of the Archbishop, and in the Consistory Court of the Commissaries. In the next page, she writes of something having been done "in presence of the Lords of Sessions," (p. 34.) A strange use is made of Parliament in another place, for "the Queen convokes a Parliament