The Sun.
London, England, 1855-02-26 00:00:00

THE NUN', LONDON MONDAY EVENING rEBRUAIt V 20, 1056.

M!NES.

- MARKET NEWS-(THIS DAY.)

' INDIAN HEROES.

•

1 all Agna Fria .
1 all. Anglo Austrin. Gold . •••
102. All auglo Californian '
20 6 Australian 1
1 all Australian Cordillera ...
1 all Australian Freehold. ...
1 all •Ave Maria —
1 all Baden (Gd.Dachy of) --
50 all Blmnarvon Iron and
Coal
20 13.5 British Iron 4 6
35 251 Brazilianlmp.(issned
at £5 pm ll 21
30 all Do. Cocaes & Cuiaba 1 11
20 15 1 Do. St. John Del Rey 28 —3O
1 1 Carson's Creek
1 1 Clarendon Cons. Min
• Co. of Jamaica — id
40 all Cobre Copper 46 48
5 1 Colonial Gold —
St. all Copper Min. of Eng 4l 50
25 all Do. Pref. 7/ p. cent ld 1 o
... 16 Copiapo ... . ..
5 all English and Austin
Copper Sineltg 1
2 / Fortuna $ zci
20 all General.
1 all 3t.NuggetVoinßeg. 1
4 all Great Polgooth. — •••
1 all Liberty -
3 all Linares 7 71
5 1 Lusitauian sd Id
1 all Aariquita.
1 - all New Granada d
1 all New Linares Mining
and Smelting Co .
1 all Nouveau Monde K
20 all Pontgibaud Silver
Lead Min. & Smelt 15 16
5 1 Port Philip — I
1 all Quartz Rock
50 all Ithyraney Iron l9 21
15 all Do. New 5 6
30 11/ Santiago de Cuba 3l 4.
1 all South Australian I 11
10 71 Tin Croft 1 2
281 all United Mexican 2l 21
1 all Waller — I
1 all West Mariposa..
1 12s. Worthing Mining of
Australia
1 all Yuba • •••
MISCELLANEOUS.
25 171 Australian Agricult. 201 301
20 . . Australsn .Pcific.
10 all Australn. Royal Mail
10 51 Berlin Water Works 3 —21 d
50 40 Brit. American Land 60 65
5 1 Brit. & Coln. Smeltg.
and Reduction Co . .
LOO 321 Canada ll9 121
St. 100 Canada Gov. 6p. et.
Jan. and July 1971 1071 1071
5 all Crystal Palace — 21 21
4 all Crystal Pal.of France
1 / Duston Tron Ore
20 5 Eastern Steam —
25 22 ElectricTelegraph(A) 15 16
1 all Electric Teleg. of Ir.
15 14 Gen. Steam Navigat.
20 all General Screw Steam 151 /
20 10 Irish Beetroot Sugar
20 10 Magdalena St. Navig.
10 all Mediteran. Elec. Tel.
10 9 Mexicau&S.Amerien. 6 61
1 all Nat. Pat. Steam Fuel „
10 5 Netherlands Land I 11
2 1 N. S. W. Coal &Inter
Steam Navigat. Co.
1 all N. B. Australasian —
20 121 Nrth. of EuropeSte.ant
all Peel Rr. Ld. & Minrl. 21 -- 21 2$
53 all Peninsular& Oriental 53 55
s') all Do. Do. ..
2 all Portland Iron Co ll 21
100 60 Royal Mail Steana'63 65
1 all Scot. Austral. Invest. 1$ 11 'll
1 1 Ditto New I
25 all South Austral. Land :'4l —35 i
1 all Submar. Telegraph.. 1 -- •
1 alt), Regi. t ered 1 -- 1
20 5 Tr"st & Loan Co. of
Upper Canada..,
100 98A Van Diemand s Land 1.2/ 131

The country markets held on Saturday were fairly sup-
plied with wheat, in which only a limited business was
transacted, at drooping prices. The barley trade was
heavy, and malt was much neglected. Oats, beans, peas,
and flour were very dull.

The usual answer given to any appeal for the consoli-
dation of the Indian and the Queen's services is, "Name
your men." If British India is so prolific in crops of
heroes, it cannot be very difficult to furnish the public
with the names of a few officers whose past achievements
can readily enough be inquired into and appreciated. If
we could not do better, we would accept the challenge
as delivered, and would undertake, from our past ex-
perience of military operations in British India, and from
our knowledge of the condition of the Indian army list,
to furnish in the space of half an hour a treble and qua-
druple list of officers who have proved themselves com-
petent for situations of higlr command. We care not
what arm of the service it may regard—Artillery,
Cavalry, Infantry—the Transport or the Commissariat
departments—we have in British India officers who have
spent their lives in successfully practising the duties of
each. We apprehend, however, that were we to adopt
such a course, and to publish a list of names compara-
tively unknown—to their greater shame—to English-
men at home, we should fail in producing the result
we most desire. We prefer the simpler and more
effective system of bringing now ore name, and now
another, before the notice of the public, lest the
merit of any one should be obscured, as it were, by the..
combined services of his brother officers. Among the
names of Indian officers those of Outram and Ed-
wardes are perhaps the most conspicuous in England ;
how many Englishmen who are presumed to have
attended to the course of public affairs have even heard
of the services of Brigadier William Mayne ? And yet
in the military records of any nation there is scarce men-
tion to be found of any officer more daring in execution,
more uniform in !success. With small means he has
achieved great results. Nor has his ability simply
been displayed in placing squadrons in the field and
heading their impetuous charge, amidst the wild hurrahs
of the troopers and the stern circumstances of battle.
The officer of whom we speak has not only fought well
himself—he has not only shown others how to fight well
—but he has proved himself to be possessed of that
strange and unusual power of bending the wills of wild
tribes and nations into subordination to his own. In
the Queen's service, as at present cribbed and confined,
it would be in vain to seek for evidence of such qualities.
What can a❑ officer do who is proved by no higher or-
deal than that of presiding over a recruiting party at
Ballymacrush, or of aiding the civil power on some
torrid islet in the sugarless Antilles ? We entreat of all
officers who wear the Queen's uniform to believe that
when we seek for a consolidation between the Royal and
the Indian services their interests are as much at stake
as those of their gallant brethren and companions in arms.
The history of this young officer—for a young man he
is still—reads more like a page out of the romance of
war than a dry record of services actually performed as a
mere matter of course. Ensign Mayne, of the 37th Na-
tive Infantry, lost no time in displaying what manner
of man he was so far back as 1839 at Jellalabad.
Again and again he was thanked by the officers under
whose immediate eye he fought, now for infantry, and
now for cavalry service. As civilians, net very pro-
foundly versed in military tactics, we have a kind of
weakness for an officer who is uniformly successful, and
such an officer was Ensign or Lieutenant William Mayne
throughout the Affghan war. For four years-1839-40-
41-42—his fame increased. "It is only," writes Sir
Jasper Nicholls, "in such a region, and with such an
enemy, that it can fall to the lot of a subaltern officer to
distinguish himself so often, and it redounded greatly to
Captain Mayne's honour that he seized every opportunity
which presented itself, and. contributed so often to the
success of our arms." Lords Ellenborough, and Har-
dingo, and Dalhousie, and the Indian Generals, in what-
ever other respect they may differ, at least agree in a
hearty recognition of the services of this most efficient
officer. Finally, we find him placed in 1851, despite of
his youth, despite of the absence of any claims save those
of his merits, in command of the Nizam's Horse, "said
to be the finest body of native cavalry in India." In
this responsible situation—called upon, as it were, to
make war on his own account, and to exercise his judg-
ment upon every detail of military operations, and upon
their effective combination, we find him over and over
again successful in all his undertakings, and receiving
the thanks of residents and of the Governor-General in
Council. Now, if our friends who are disposed to deal
cavalierly with our recommendations of Indian officers
seek for particulars and names, here is one name for
them—that of Brigadier William Mayne. Up to this
point he appears to have walked in the steps of Clive
and Arthur Wellesley. Let him have a trial.—Times.

In the Continental markets there has been rather more
business doing in wheat for spring shipment. The latest
advices from New York are to the effect that very little
business was doing in flour on English account.
Very little English grain came fresh to hand last week.
The arrivals from abroad were only 1,196 quarters t f
wheat, 380 barley, 500 oats, 10 beans, 14 peas, 67 tares,
604 linseed, 381 rapeseed, 45 sundry seeds, and 127 sacks of
flour.

A very limited supply of English wheat was receited
fresh up to our market to-dity. Although the show of
samples of both red and white was limited, there was no
inclination shown on the part of buyers to purchase, aris-
ing from the stoppage of most of the mills, and the dif•
culties of nal, igation. The few sales effected in fine wheats
were at prices about equal to those obtained last week.
Low and inferior parcels were very dull, and, is some in-
stances, the quotations were rather easier. _

The show of foreign wheat ex granary was limited, and
there were no fresh samples on offer. Most descriptions
met a dull inquiry, yet we have scarcely any change to
notice in the quotations.

Floating cargoes were dull, but not cheaper.
There was a slow inquiry for all kinds of barley ; the
supply was limited—on former terms.

The malt trade was depressed, and in some instances
prices rather lower.
We had a moderate inquiry for oats, the prices of which
were well supported.
Beans moved off heavily, at barely stationary figures.
The sale for peas was dull, on former terms.
We had very little business doing in flour, at late rates.

CURRENCY PER IMPERIAL MEASURE.

Wheat—Essex & Kent,
Red •• .• new 61 s to 783
Ditto • • old 65s 72a
UM°, White new 76s 81s
Ditt0........ old 78s 848
Norfolk and Lin-
coln, Red, old 66s 78a
Ditto new .• •• •• 66s 78s
Bye—Old •• •• •• •• •• • • —3
New . •. •• •••• •• 42s 44s
Barley—Grinding .• • 29s 31a
Malting ••••• •• 32s :431
Chevalier•• •• • •• 35s 368
stalt—Saffolkand Nor-
folk..
Brown .•• . •• 58s COs
Kingston and Ware Gas 70s

Malt—Chevalier •• .• 71s to 72s
Oats Yorkshire and
Lincolnsk..Feed 26s 28s
Potato ......• 281iW
rough* and Cork
Black. •• .. 25s 29s

Cork,White ..... 26s 30s

Scotch,Feed.•.•. 28s 31s
Beans—Tick ......... 37s 393
Pigeons .... 431 46s
Peas—Grey..•. 335 37s
Map1e........... 398 42s
White........... 39s 425

Boilers •• 425 44s
Flour—Town-made... 65s 73s
Suffolk .......... 545 60s
Btocktn & Norfolk 53s S4s

SMITHFIELD.

In consequence of the great severity of the weather,
scarcely any foreign stock arrived in tho port of London
last week—the total supply being only 289 head. In the
corresponding week in 1854 w• received 2,775; in 1853,
3,590 ; in 1852, 1,824 ; in 1851, 1,994 ; in 1850, 1,228; in
1849, 2, 616 ; and in 1848, 1,020 head.

IMPORTS INTO LONDON LAST WINE.

Beasts.

Sheep.

Lambs. Calves. rigs.
. ... 110 ...

- ...

.00)28,

LLOYD'S SIIIPPIIVG-(THIS DI 1.

LONDON, Feb. 26.—Wind and weather this day at
noon, N.B. ; light breeze, and dull, hazy weather. The
thaw has been very rapid during the last 36 hours; and
the weather is now very mild. The river is almost en-
tirely free from ice.
DOVER, Feb. 25. The Scud, of and for London, was
stranded near the Potter C. G. station, has since bilged,
and it is expected will become a total wrack.
FALMOUTH, Feb. 25.—Wind, W.S.W. Arrived—Ame-
rica Packet, from Moulmein, for Hamburgh ; Elizabeth,
Buenos Ayres, for Antwerp ; King William, Mazatlan,
for Antwerp ; Westbrook, Moulmein, with part of cargo
thrown overboard.
PLYMOUTH, Feb. 25.—Wind, W.S.W. Arrived—Sir T.
Gresham, from Calcutta ; Pl.intagenet, Sydney, with 2,000
oz. of gold. Sailed—Candace (s.s.), for the Coast of Africa ;
and a large fleet of the outward bound.
D..--”uounr, Feb. 25.—Wind, W.S.W. Arrived—
Her Majesty's snip,. , , „
George, Malta ; Calcutta, Plymouth ; and Airigl; Mira Clie
westward. The Result, from China to London, put in
here yesterday, leaky, and she touched the ground in com-
ing in.
HOLYHEAD, Feb. 25.—The Wave, from London to
Liverpool, has put into the Old Harbour, leaky, having
struck on a sunken rock in Caernarvon Bay during a fog.

(rm.. rameTivic TELEGRAVIL)
LIVERPOOL, Monday, 11.5 a.m.

Wind, IL
Arrived—Queen of the Isles, from St. Michael's ; F. P.
Sage, New York; Northern Belle, New Orleans; Coosa
Wattee, Savannah ; Jno. Bayonet, Charleston ; Arabian,
Prince Edward's Island ; Lady Elizabeth, China.
QUEENSTOWN, Feb. 24.

Wind, S.
Arrived—lnn Livingston, from Algiers ; Nugget,
Prince Edward's Island ; Ada Mary, West Coast of
Africa; Viking, Alexandria; Amity, Salonica.

(BY SUBMARINE AND BRITISH TELEGRAPH.)
GRAVESEND, Monday, 10.13 a.m.
Wind, W.S.W. ; tide, 1a hour's ebb ; weather, hazy
and moderate.
Arrived, 25th—Esmond Waburnen, from Egmond ;
Medemblik, Seville; Welcome, Rouen; King Philip, Bois.
ton ; Spirit of the Age, Shanghai.

DEAL, Monday, 9.30 s.m.
Wind, N.W. ; light. with thick fog.
Passed, 25th—American Congress, from New York, for
London.
Anchored—Agnes Taylor, from Demerara, for London ;
Argo, Catania, for Ipswich ; Richard Alsop, from New
York for Antwerp ; Merchantman, Bombay, for London.

DRURY-LANE TREATRIL—This evening the long-pro-
mised opera by Meyerbeer, entitled L'Etoile de Nord,
will be performed for the first time. The arrangements
for the representation of the opera are of the most ex-
tensive character, and, in addition to the celebrated
Jenny Baur, Mr. H. Drayton and Mr. Leffler have been
engaged. The chorus has been augmented to upwards
of eighty voice-e and a like increase has been made to
the orchestra. The appointments are, it is said, of the
most elegant description, and everything that the most
lavish expenditure could procure has been done to give
due effect to this celebrated dramatic opera. Some idea
may be formed of the splendour of the scenery, dresses,
and other etc.'s, from the fact that upwards of a thou-
sand pounds have been expended in order to give gran-
deur to the work. Renowned as Old Drury has ever
been for spectacle, this opera bids fair to outrival all
previous productions.
HAYMARKET THEATRE.—This evening the fascinating
Perea Nena again appears at "the little theatree in
hthas
e
' Haymarket," in two new ballets. Mr.
alsr, secured
Spanish b
the servicesallet, ofm aSenormay
b e AplraordcuosceDdiaizn,
first-rate
that the
style. Report speaks very highly of the two ballets
announced for representation this evening, viz., The Bull
Fighter, and a Gallician Pet'.
CARLISLE, FEB. 23.—THE MURDER AT LLMPLUON.
—Thomas Munroe, miner, aged 18, imperfectly in-
structed, was indicted for the wilful murder of Isaac
Turner, at Lamplugh, on the 4th November last. The
trial has already lasted two days, and on Saturday when
the poet left, the jury had not returned their verdict.
MELANCHOLY DEATH OF AN OFFICER.—Major C.
Colville Young, of the Royal Horse Artillery, just re-
turned from the Crimea en route from Turkey to the
Isle of Wight, where his wife and family reside, was
killed on Saturday morning by falling from the top storey
front window of one of the bedrooms of the Fountain
Hotel, High-street, Plymouth. An inquest was held,
and the jury, after a short consultation, found that the
deceased was killed by accidentally falling from a
window.
SOUTH AMERICAN MAILS.--LISBON, Feb. 19.—The
Portuguese steamer Dona Maria, 11. arrived here on
Saturday. Ad'vices from Rio de Janeiro state that the
stock of coffee had been very much reduced by shipments
for Europe ; but large supplies were expected upon the
cessation of the heavy rains which bad stopped the tran-
sit. At Bahia Burgers were very firm and even scarce.
At Pernambuco, sugar receipts bad been heavy.
A letter from Helsingfors, in the Borsenhalle of Ham-
burg, says :—" In a speech delivered by General de
Berg, the new Governor of Finland, at a grand dinner
given in his honour by the town, was the following
phrase :---‘ Gentlemen, my return within your walls does
not announce to you any favourable change in circum-
' stances ; it proves, on the contrary, that the trials to
which you (were subjected last year, are likely to be
renewed.'"
Accounts have reached the French Government of the
total destruction of a transport in the Black Sea, laden
with troops and ammunition. The ship is said to have
foundered, and every soul on board, amounting to 700
persons, perished.
FATAL ACCIDENT IN ST. JAMES'S rast:e.--Yesterday a
lad named John Harper, 25, Tower-street, Seven Dials,
who, in spite of cautions to the contrary, was amusing
himself with two companions close to a channel which
had been made for the water fowl in St. James's-park,
near the island facing the Horse Guards, slipped off the
edge of the ice into deep water. The other lads ran
away, saying nothing to the Humane Society's men, so
that the accident was not discovered for seine time after-
wards, and when the lad was at length taken from the
water life was extinct.
Tim PATRIOTIC FUND.--The subscription to this
fund obtained in the city of York and the neighbour-
li )od amounts to nearly 3,0001. The list will be closed
on Wednesday next. The sum collected at Rotherham
in aid of the same object is 1,1001. At Nether Pepple-
ton, Yorkshire, 22/. 15s. 6d. has been subscribed. The
inhabitants of the parish of Tottenham have most libe-
rally contributed towards this fund. The total amount
forwarded to head-quarters en Thursday last amounted
to 5451. 15s. The sum subscribed in the borough of
Leicester to this fund now amounts to 2,619/. ' • the sum
for the same object from the county is upwards of 600 e.

LIT E 1 AT

Lives of the Queens of Scotland. By Agnes
Strickland. Vol. V. Blackwood.
Our authoress, in this latest instalment of her
new historic composition, has narrated, and
that, moreover, with all befitting pathos and
solemnity, some among the more tragic and roman-
tic incidents in the reign of perhaps the most beau-
tiful, as she was certainly the most unfortunate, of
Princesses. Happily for the fair fame of Mary
Queen of Scots, the memory of that otherwise
luckless monarch has found at last s not unworthy
celebrant in Agnes Strickland. From the earlier
chapters of the biography here continued we
had anticipated largely as to the success of even
this tardy investigation. The expectations
we then formed are not only in a great
measure already realised, but in several particulars
very considerably surpassed. Notwithstanding the
lapse of three centuries since the period when the
events recounted by Miss Strickland originally
transpired—notwithstanding the difficulties in the
way of research, which have necessarily, from the
mere circumstance of that protracted interval, be-
come at once wonderfully, expanded, strengthened,
and multiplied—notwithstanding the accumulation
of authoritative influence upon the heads of old
partisan writers, who have all the while, so to
speak, been ripening and mellowing into classics,
as in -the instance of the renowned Buchanan—
the gentle hand of a candid woman, armed
with the Pen of Truth, that weapon keener
and more pointed than the mythic Sword of
Justice, has hero swept calumny after calumny
into nothingness, and vindicated from many a foul
slur and evil imputation one of the fairest of her
sex, as she was indubitably one of the unhappiest
of sovereigns.
It was admirably said of Mr. Macaulay by a
contemporary critic and annalist, no less eminent
than Sir Archibald Alison, that his genius, as
revealed through the initial volumes of his Con-
tinuation to Hume and Smollett, proved him
to have been called rather to the Bar than
to the Bench of History. Not thus has it
been with Miss Strickland. Her writings, on
the contrary, breathe rather of the summing up of
a judicial authority, than of the subtle and wire-
drawn sophistries of a special pleader. It is the blend-
ing thus in her narratives of an alluring lucidity
and a most persuasive frankness, which has won for
her the guerdon of her really enviable and distin-
guished reputation. The honours gained by her
" Lives of the Queens of England" are now being at
once confirmed and enhanced by those inevitably
arising out of her " Lives of the Queens of Scotland"
—the pendant of its more ambitious predecessor—its
kindred sequel, or rather fitting companion. As
in the earlier of those remarkable productions,
the elaborately-drawn biography of Queen Eliza-
beth was the portion to which the surrounding
narrative became necessarily subordinated—so has
it come to pass, no less necessarily, in the pre-
sent undertaking, the very heart, and jewel,
and dominant charm of which is the memoir penned
by our authoress with equal care and discrimi-
nation, the narrative of the existence and suffer-
ings of Elizabeth's Scottish cousin and rival, and
one who, though in all else her rival, was in every-
thing but genius her peerless contemporary. The
volume here submitted to our consideration pos-
sesses more than the attractions usually inseparable
from any ordinary record of the life of Mary Queen
of Scots, especially of that portion of her most sor-
rowful career which involves the recital of the more
romantic, and yet, at the same time, more homely,
because purely home-drawn, of her misfortunes.
Continually, throughout the narrative, we are, as
so repeatedly happens with us in the perusal of
the writings of our authoress, reminded, again and
yet again, of her favourite motto from Beaumont,
that motto which has come at last to be perma-
nently emblazoned upon her literary escutcheon—
" The treasures of antiquity laid up
In old historic scrolls I opened."
Treasures of mouldering parchment, and scarcely
legible manuscript, which, on passing into the
hands of Miss Strickland, have become transformed
either into amulets of extenuation, or into talismans
of complete and triumphant vindication. Let the
dozen chapters comprised in this fifth volume of
the " Lives of the Queens of Scotland" be taken in
testimony : and, judiciously examined, we doubt
not but that they will be accepted readily enough
as corroborative to the full of our somewhat earnest
but entirely merited panegyric.
Within the compass of these twelve additional chap-
innteithel ifirranhy of Mary Stuart how many of the
history" have been recoulatf-r-fatrauge, eventful
touchingly I From the melancholy date of
lying ill at Jedburgh, when she, awfully, prepares
for death, and when at her unlooked-for convales-
cence her attendants bring for her parched lips the
solace of divers cooling citrons and pomegranates—
to the yet more melancholy period of her incar-
ceration in Lochleven Castle, whore sue is in-
humanly insulted by Lady Douglas almost on the
first instant of her arrival, and whore for so many
months the young Queen was left to pine among
the petty splendours of her prison—at night under
the shadow of her green velvet bed with the stitched
taffety counterpane—by day under the gloomier
shade of her regal canopy or crimson satin cloth-of-
estate. Throughout the chequered alternation of
the vicissitudes comprised in the interval between
which occurrences—the arrival at Jedburgh and
the arrival at Lochleven—the reader has perpe-
tually looming before his imagination the on-
coming passage of eighteen dreadful years of
imprisonment over the head of the unfor-
tunate Queen of Scots within the princely palace
walls of the fatal Fotheringay. Tracing the career
of Mary Stuart from her royal assize at Jedburgh
' up to the time of her sorrowful domestication in
the Castle of Lochleven, her historian, and, as we
have already intimated, her sympathising and suc-
cessful vindicator from the calumnies of so many
traducer; and chief among all from those of the
unpitying and unscrupulous Buchanan, relates the
pathetic fluctuation of the young Queen's joys and
griefs, her fleeting happiness and her prolonged
sufferings. Whoever may question the practica-
bility in Mary Stuart's regard of any vindication
as successful as that which we have already de-
clared Agnes Strickland's to be—let them turn
wonderingly to the noteworthy pages of this simple,
eloquent, veracious, and, above all, most womanly
biography. They will there learn, doubtless for
the first time, the truth as to the horrid murder of
Darnley, and further on, likewise, in reference to the
yet more horrid marriage with Bothwell. They will
at last be enabled to appreciate more accurately than 1
hitherto the merits of the former in spite of his
many weaknesses, no less than the double-dyed
ruffianism of the latter, a ruffianism befitting less
a Scottish Thane than a Tyrolese Brigand. They
—the readers of Miss Strickland, who have hitherto
dreamed over the "criminality" of Mary Queen of
Scots—may see fit thereafter to muse only with
pitying tenderness over the recollection of her
unparalleled and appalling miseries. The gentler
evidences of her affectionate nature will then be
borne sometimes at least extenuatively in the Lis-
tonic student's remembrance. Her fondness for the
gay and graceful stripling—the beloved Darnley,
will be found to contrast somewhat strikingly with
her repugnance for the dreaded and detested Both-
well. Let our readers, we say, examine this tragic
and remarkable narrative for themselves. They will
find the work eminently repay the time requisite for
its minute investigation. And what attractive scenes
and incidents to scrutinise, under the guidance of
one as frank and impartia). as Agnes Strickland !
The midnight catastrophe at the Provost's house,
in Kirk-of-Field I The Masked Ball in the pala-
tial Abbey of Holyrood 1 Mary glittering in jewels
in the dance, and the beloved Darnley stark dead
in the orchard, under the gloom of the suburban
garden wall—his fur pelisse by his side, the ruins
of the fated dwelling strewn around in the grim
chaos caused by the explosion of gunpowder.
The melancholy particulars of the murder of Darn-
ley have been preserved to us with singular com-
pleteness. A rathersurprising eircu
mstanyceeawrshheiaili,et
is remembered that nearly three hundred
now elapsed since the date of this appalling catas-
trophe. It was about midnight, between Sunday
the 9th and Monday the 10th of February, in the
year of Grace, 1567, that the conspiracy against
the life of the young King Consort of Scotland
was consummated, and that, moreover, with inci-
dents of peculiar atrocity—incidents both by way
of preliminary and accompaniment. Upon the
morning of the day thus deplorably terminated for
Darnley by a death of violence, we are informed
that " he heard mass devoutly" in his temporary
residence at the Provost's house in Kirk-of-Field.
Scarcely recovered from his severe illness, the
youthful prince appears to have marked the pro-
gress of his gradual approach towards convalescence
by a course of devotional exercises designated in
his Church a "retreat," after the manner of devout
Catholics. It was very possibly the knowledge of
this religious fervour on the part of Darnley, coming
as it did with the then notorious fact of his perfect
reconciliation with the Queen—which incited the
rebel Lairds to precipitate their design for the sud-
den removal of the King Consort of Scotland.
They were doubtless goaded on to the commission
of this dark crime there and then by the reflection
that not only were Queen Mary and King Henry
enthusiastic votaries of Catholicism, but that the
education of their infant son in the tenets of their
own creed would in all likelihood be insured by
the accession of fresh zeal to the softened hearte
of
Darnley, by the revival of his influencc%o forcetlm
imagination of Mary, and by the animating
r
of their mutual tenderness. For all which reasons
the gunpowder plot against the " Papist" father of