The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1882-03-22
Note on the Character of Mary
Queen of Scots.

Of the convent in which Mary Stuart
had passed her novitiate the Lady Su-
perior was Queen Catherine de Medici.
The virgins who shared the vigils of her
maidenhood or frightened the celebra-
ton of her nuptials were such as COM
posed the Queen-mother famous flying
squadron" of high-born harlots, profess
sionally employed in the task of making
the worship of Venus Pandemos subserve
the purposes of Catholic faith or polity,
and occasionally, as on the feast of ST..
Bartholomew, exhilarated by such diver
sion as the jocose examination of naked
and newly murdered corpses with an eye
to the satisfaction of curiosity which
the secular pen of a modern historian
must decline to explain with the frank
ness of q clerical contemporary. The
cloistral precinct which sheltered her
girlhood from such knowledge of evil as
might in after days have been of some
protection to her guileless levity was the
circuit Of a court whose pursuits and re-
creations were divided between the al
coves of Sodom and the playground of
Aceldama. What were the vices of the
society described by Brant6me it is i'm
possible, or at least it would be repul-
sive, to suggest by so much as a hint; but
its virtues were homicide and adultery.
Knox or Ascham would have given
palmer and juster expression, in shorter
terms of speech more purely English, to
the fact that no man was honored who
could not show blood on his hands, no
woman admired who would not boast as
loudly Of the favors she had granted as
her gallants of the favors they had re-
ceived. 1t is but slight matter to add
that the girl who was reared from her
very infancy in this atmosphere-in the
atmosphere of palace which it would
be hattery to call brotnel or slaughter
house had for her mother woman of
the bloodstained house of Guise, and for
her father the gaberlunzie-man or Jolly
beggar of numberless and nameless ira
ditional adventures in promiscuous erotic
intrigue. The question of family is, of
course, very far from conclusive, though
certainly it may help "to thicken other
proofs that do demonstrate thinly." The
calendar of saints includes Borgia or,
to put it, perhaps, more forcibly, the
house of Borgia contains saint. And
some writers among them, who
had little love for the brood-have
averred that the Bonaparte family did
once produce an honest man and equita-
bic ruler-Louis, King of Holland, whose
only son. gave his life in vain for Italy.
1t would certainly have been no greater
miracle than these, no more startling ex-
ceptlon to the general rule, that the
daughter OF James v and Mary of Guise
shnuld have been blameless though
lmoeclIe creature, an innocent in the
least ttattering sense of the word, whose
blood was very snow-broth and whose
brain a very feather But mere innc-
cence, as distinguished from the absolute
ldlocy which even her warmest admirers
would hesitate to ascribe to her, will
hardly suffice to explain her course OIL
conduct In the most critical period of her
lie. A woman who could play the part
assigned to Mary by the Whitakers
Stricklands, Aytouns, and Hosac s
whose laudations have so cruelty libeled
her, must have been either the veriest
imbecile whose craven folly ever betrayed
IN every action in innate and irresp -nsi
BILE Importance of mind, or at least and
at best good girl Of timid temper and
weak intellect, who had been tenderly
sheltered all her life from any possible
knowledge or understanding of evil, from
all apprehension as from all experience
OF wickedness and wrong. Now, it is, Of
course, just barely possible that girl
might come innocent as Shakespeare s
Marina even out of such house of en-.
tertainment as that kept by tie last
Princes OF the race of Valois but it is
absolutely and glaringly impossible thai
she should come forth from it ignorant o.
evil. And it is not jot less impossible
that an innocent woman who was not
annually idiotic or angelically ignorant
a driveling craven or thing enskied
and sainted, the pitifullest or the purest
the most thick-witted or the most un
spotted, of her kind, could have borne
herself as did Mary after the murder Of
her caitif husband Azgermon c. Sa0i7,
bur7ae, IN FOrtnightIy RevieaO.