The Sun.
London, England, 1856-11-26 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Lives of the Queens of Scotland. By Agnes Strick-
land. Vol. VI. Wm. Blackwood and Sons.
So abundant have been the materials newly
brought to light by the researches of Miss Agnes
Strickland among the " treasures of antiquity! laid
up with dust and cobwebs among the old archives
of Scotland, relating to Mary Stuart, that -the
original design of this very remarkable serial work
has appreciably expanded under its author's hand
, —insomuch so that it still requires another (a
seventh) volume for its ultimate completion., A
circumstance this rather matter for exultation than
for disappointment. It signalises, we cannot but
conceive rather siL nificantry, the importance, -and
elaboration, and general completeness of this, the
latest and greatest of all the many biographies of
the beautiful and unfortunate Queen of Scots—the
heroine as we may call her of what lights pp as
with the glamour of some tragical fairy tale the
stern and grim iy annals of Caledonia. Already, with
these last two or three volumes of the "Lives of the
Queens of Scotland" before us—we recognise in
Agnes Strickland the most genial and appreciative,
and yet, at the same time, the most truthful and
uncompromising, among all the historians of tl e
reign of this lovely, love-lore, love-lost Sovereign.
Mary Stuart as queen, as wife, as mother, as wo-
man—Mary, in all her weakness of will and in
all her strength of endurance—Miry, as she shone
forth in her short-lived pomp, and as she appeared
afterwards in her protracted sufferings—in all her
various characters, in all her awful and doubly
awful, because sudden and rapid, alternations of
fortune—is here, in the masterly memorial of her
career, pourtrayed so vividly and so touchingly
that it is impossible for this most phlegmatic to do
otherwise thee hang over the narrative, carrioil on-
ward with it in, its flow by the strong force of a
scarcely resistable fascination. Miss Strick-
land " bath her will "—for she fairly " holds
us with her glittering eye" spell-bound,
like the marriage guest
abefore the " Ancient
Marinere." Already, up to the close of the last
(the fifth) volume, she had recounted to us most of
Mary Stuart's memorable and pathetic viscissitudes.
She had related how the auspicious marriage of
the young Princess with the Dauphin on the 24th
of April, 1558, and her elevation to the Gallic
throne on the 10th of July in the year following,
as the spouse of Francis IL, had been followed up
by the calamitous event of her early widowhood on
the 10th of December, 1560, when her Scottish
lords thronged over to her to lay at her feet the
homage of their loyal sympathy—when, as Aytoun
has recently sung so charmingly, they saw her in
those—

. . . . " Bygone days
A widow, yet a child,
Within the fields of sunny France
When Heaven and fortune smiled."

Later on, has she not been revealed to us most
vividly flitting across this historic camera of Agnes
Strickland—the wife of Henry the Lord
Darnley, on the 27th of July, 1565
his widow on the 10th of February, 1567—the wife
of Bothwell a very little more than three months
afterwards, namely, ou the 15th of the ensuing
month of May—outraged on the 9th of March,
1566, by the murder of Rizzio by Darnley, and,
on the 10th of February, 1567, already mentioned,
by the murder of Darnley by Bothwell—carried off
by the latter assassin to Dunbar on the 24th April,
1567, and ultimately, after his downfall and flight
at Carbury, incarcerated on the 16th of June, 1567,
in the romantic and insulated castle of Lochleven.
Volume the sixth, in continuation of this most
sorrowful and changeful history, carries the narra-
tive onwards from the period of that famcati impri-
sonment down to the time when her fourth mar-
riage (her projected nuptials with the Duke of Nor-
folk) appeared for a while to have been successfully
negotiated. Tenderly betrothed to Norfolk—that
final claimant of the hand won successively to
such disastrous ends by Francis, by Darnley, by
Bothwell—Mary Stuart passes again from our view
for an interval, at the 388th page of this 7th volume
of the " Lives of the Queens of Scotland"-r-only
to appear again before us for another and fatal
interval in the seventh and last instalment of
..he work, in which we shall hear told in due course
that sorrowful tale of tears and blood, the tale of
her mock trial and of her cruel execution. As a
frontispiece to the present volume we have4re-
duced by Gourlay Steell) an engraved copy of
the lovely original portrait of Mary Stuart, Queen
of Scotland, presented by herself to her deliverer,
George Douglas, and the veritable original of which
is to this day preserved in the collection of the Earl
of Morton at Dal mahoy ! As the picturesque vignette,
we hare a sketch designed by the same living artist,
representing the romantic incident of Queen Mary's
Escape from Lochleven. While a very curious
woodcut at p. 32 (also taken, like the frontispiece,
from a reduced drawing by Gourlay Steell) gives us
the ingeniously elaborated "Pictorial Tapestry"
worked by Queen Mary and her companions—a
historic piece of needlework originally produced at
Lochleven and still preserved at Dalinahoy. Apart
from these most acceptable glimpses of the original
" Portrait" and the original "Tapestry"—glimpses
afforded to Miss Strickland, and through Miss
Strickland to her readers, by the generous courtesy
of George Sholto Douglas, 18th Earl of Morton—
the descendant of the chivalrous deliverer of Mary
Queen of Scots from her island prison has permitted
these remarkable annals of Mary Stuart's reign to
be further " glorified" and " illuminated" by the
now and hitherto undreamt-of materials placed at
he disposal of Agnes Strickland, the latest, and,
as we hero very earnestly reiterate, incomparably
the greatest, of all Mary Stuart's biographers.
Materials hitherto lying perdu among the family
archives of the Douglases in their ancient domain
in Midlothian. Conspicuous, of course, among the
events recounted by Miss Strickland in her 'narra-
tive of the notable interval embraced between
Mary's imprisonment at Lochleven and her, formal
betrothal to the Duke of Norfolk—namely, from
the summer of 1567 to that of 1569—are those of
the infant James Vl.'s Coronation ; of Moray's Re-
gency ; of Bothwell's escape to Norway ; of Mary's
dangerous illness ; of her flight from Lochleven,
and of her triumphal entry into the Castle of Ha-
milton. Followed by the defeat of her troops at
Langside, by her perverse courting of danger when,
quitting Scotland for ever, she embarked on board
a common fishing boat for England, to land at
Workington, to be carried to Cockermouth, thence
to Carlisle, thence to Lowther, thence to Bolton,
thence to Tutbury, and thence again to Wingfield.
Preparatory to the last "scene of all in this event-
fulr
o i io
"to
when,hrne sanspower, sales pomp, sans
w sariy,5,
sans everything, she reached
crown, t
at length the climax of her prolonged miseries upon
the scaffold, where she "died tile death" with the
calmness, if not with the angelic purity, of a saint,
by the cruel blow of a pitiless and brutal decapita-
tion. The record of which deed of blood--the
foulest stain upon the magnificent escutcheon of
Elizabeth—remains yet to be given to the world,
as we doubt not it will be given to the world, in
words of fire and accents of pathos befitting such
tragic annals, words and accents such as have
already rained down upon the historic scrolls of
England and Scotland from the lips of Agnes
Strickland—as with the pearls and precious stones
dropping in spoken showers from the mouth of the
magical Arabian Princess.

Law Magazime and Revietv.

The Code Napoleon and the laws of England are
the principle subject of an interesting and some-
what humiliating comparison, England being quite
iu the rear of the French and other nations of
the continent in the expression of our scientific
7inciples, and the orderly
n and systematic arrange-
unA2t of details. A paper 9` On Reform the Law
present i
perhaps
the
Government
of Smiings Banks," another " On thee
of Doctois' Commons," and a third,
most ambitious in the num!aerr,eloanti
to L9gisla-
by Party, or Organisation (in on
/' are well worthy of perusal by lay-
ton and Law), nybe found articles
men. Besides the above Will
i House of Lords,"
etindgueation, of the National
" " The
it"
eOfoartmhaetoFriyrsut 1
lion,Provincial',,,le;e
E
Appellate Jurisdiction f 1 4 i' Papers of the
the Amendment of the
Society for Promotie__
CC Dismissals from the ArmY,
n Extract of a Letter from Lord.
Law," and ",,LAoErdarl
together with jockburn's Reminiscences,"
of Radnor" (ou the slow
Brougham tonale
reform), and the usual variety of
progress -leg
professional nature.
of a
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informationof