Waterbury Democrat., 1902-06-10
THE TWO QUEENS.
Communicated by W.)

duu ulStOIy duu lIdSlC Cld LS OfNAJ student that any heightened notice of the present work may be deemed un- necessary. However, the discovery of nearly 800 letters and state papers, the author informs us. since any person, except Agnes Strickland, whose work was not then complete, wrote of her,
 has enabled Mcleod to throw new
 light On the subject of his biography
 and vindicate the memory of the mur- dered queen from the islanders heaped
 upon it by prejudiced and fanatical
 writers whose sources of information were derived from the records of her
 enemies.
 The style is clear and fluent and wig orous. The corelative. contemporane- ous and historical incidents have been
 artistically interwoven in the tale, giv- ing. occasionally, to the narrative
 bright and glowing tints like flashes of sunshine lighting from the clOuded
 heavens upon the darkened landscape.
 1t is at once a tale of romance and stern realities, of joy and sorrow, of loyalty and deceit. love and hatred, of lofty heroism. vindictive cruelty and unexampled endurance. The period
 when Mary was called upon to assume
 the reins of government was one of momentous importance, not only in the
 history of the British Islands, but in
 that of Europe. The daughter of James l V, the poor mans king, who was eighth in descent from Robert Bruce, inherited all the genius and generous
 chivalry of her noble race. James. so celebrated by Walter Scott in his Lady l of the Lake, was of beautiful appear 1 ance and majestic mein, a finished l scholar, q fair poet an accomplished musician. skilled in all the manly ex- ercises, his frame was as 1.-the and agile as q stag from his own wild hills. l He was the most gallant of knights, the first of cheyaliers, the best of mon- archs. the idol of the people and the adored of every court. A romantic in- terest was thrown around him from his l boyhood. from the fact of his father l having fallen in the fatal battle of l Flodden when he was yet child. Dur | ing the regency which followed he was 1 long kept a prisoner by the Douglas, whom he afterwards subdued and ban l ished. Foremost in the tournaments fof Europe, mingling in the festivities of the hall, dazzling with the sparkling of his wit fascinating with harp and song, he won the fair Magdalen of | France, and afterwards the heart and hand of Mary of Lorraine. Henry VIII. of England, who had renounced the i Catholic religion and the authority of the pope, endeavored to induce James to follow his example, but being un- successful in those efforts, he invaded Scotland and the reverses of the Scot tish army under the command of James's fayorite, Oliver Sinclair, so shattered his health and intellect that he sank rapidly and died in his thirty first year, on the 18th day of December, 1542. On his death bed a messenger arrived at his palace at Falkland's with the intelligence that the queen mad borne a child. He ask ed, Hath man or woman been born to me?' The answer was, "'Tis one fine daughter Farewell. then,' said he. 'sto the crown of Scotland; it came with lass, it will pass with lass"
 The world was darkened around Ma- ry's baptismal font, shrouded with the shadows of death-her baptismal font shrouded with the cypress and yew. The days of her childhood passed pleas antly under the fair skies of France, but the celebration of her marriage, like that of her birth was embittered by the grim presence of death the king, her father-in-law, having receiv- ed a fatal wound from lance splinter in the jouSting ring. Her return to Scotland was in the midst of that so- cial Reorganization consequent upon the severing of those religious ties which had hitherto so largely contrib uted to bind together the monarch and the people. While one portion of the Scottish nobility greeted the queen with loyal enthusiasm, the bigoted and fanatical party who favored the de- signs of Elizabeth, were plotting for her dethronement and destruction It was at this inauspicious moment she grasped the scepter, ascended the throne of the Stuarts and yainly tried to reconcile the several conflicting in- terests and parties which had already sapped the foundations of Scotland's independence and made a wide open ing for the tide of English conquest, which had so often been stemmed by Wallace and rolled back by the gal | lant Bruce on the field of Bannock- l burn. Those gloomy, puritanical days of the reformation thus described by Professor Aytoun in Boutwell,, poem ill six parts:
 Gone were the merry times of old
 The masque, and mirth and glee, And wearier was the palace then k Than prison need to be.
 Forbidden were the vesper bells.
 They broke the Sabbath calm.~ " cIo tue uOl0S OI ulInSTrelSY.
 They chimed not with the Psalm. Twas sin to smile, twas sin to laugh,
 Twas sin to sport or play,
 And heavier than hermit's fast
 Was each dull holiday
 Was but the sound of laughter heard,
 Or tinkling of 1ute,
 Or worse than all, in royal hall,
 The tread of dancing foot.
 Then to drove of gaping clowns
 Would Knox with nnction tell
 The vengeance that in days of old
 Had fallen on Jezebel.
 She stood alone without a friend,
 On whom her arm might lean. No true and trusty ,counselors
 Were there to serve their queen. But moody men. with sullen looks,
 And faces hard and keen,
 They who professed the later faith
 Were trembling for their hold Of the broad lands and fertile fields,
 Owned by the church of old Apostates they of easy walk
 No martyrdom or pain
 I.-1