could not but break out in his teaching and be shared by the pupil-teachers under him, and, as far as they could understand them, by his scholars. Being a supercilious man, of necessity, in his capacity of a half-educated man and a latitudinarian schoolmaster, he could scarcely fail to become the oracle of the village, and as such to do a great deal to sap its religious life and the foundations of its social and moral well-being. When such men shall have been sent to all our country villages, it will probably be found that a great deal will have to be done by the State to preserve public order that is now done without it. Art. VII.-History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada. By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College. Vols. IX. X. XI. XII. London, 1869. 2. Histoire de Marie Stuart. Par Jules Gauthier. Paris, 1869. 3. Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers. By John Hosack, Barrister-at-Law. Edinburgh, 1869. O those who have made the reign of Queen Elizabeth their study, the year that has just passed away will always be one of importance. The most interesting of all our reigns, and perhaps the most influential on our subsequent history, has just been treated by three writers who will probably leave a mark either in this country or on the Continent, or on both. Two of them indeed profess only to deal with the romantic story of the Queen of Scots, but her history is the key to that of her great rival; and the four volumes of Mr. Froude, which we are now to notice, span that history from the murder of Darnley, with which they commence, to the execution of the alleged murderer, with which they end. Mr. Hosack's and M. Gauthier's books seem to have been suggested by Mr. Froude's volumes as they have during the last few years issued from the press; and now, along with the last instalment of the work, we have, very opportunely, the other side of the question. Mr. Froude's is the most bitter, the most vehement, and at the same time the most circumstantial attack ever made on the memory of Mary Stuart. Mr. Hosack's is certainly the most ingenious, if not the most able defence ever yet set up. M. Gauthier's is one of those neat and fluent narratives for which our neighbours are famous, taking one view alone of the question, as if there could be no other, yet with a full knowledge of that other, and supplied with the latest authorities, very largely quoted, for the support of his work. That That we are not exaggerating the place taken by Mary Stuart's career in enabling us to form an estimate of Elizabeth's reign, and of its treatment by an author, is affirmed by Mr. Froude himself, who truly tells us, that the revolution through which Scotland and England were passing was visibly modified by it (the murder of Darnley); it perplexed the counsels and complicated the policy of the great Catholic Powers of the Continent; while the ultimate verdict of history on the character of the greatest English statesmen of the age must depend upon the opinion which the eventual consent of mankind shall accept on the share of the Queen of Scots herself in that transaction.' (ix. 2.) We are further invited to test Mr. Froude on this cardinal point by the fact that his so-called 'History of England' during this reign is far more a biography of the two Queens than a history of the country; and that he not only omits the last important fifteen years of the reign of Elizabeth in order apparently to bring the deaths of the Queens into the same concluding volume with dramatic effect (it must be either on this ground, or because he was tired of the subject, since the reason he gives for ending where he does is scarcely intelligible), but regards every other question of the period through glasses stained with the colour which he has put upon this particular set of transactions. Not that we mean to insinuate that Mr. Froude has consciously taken up his view of Mary's guilt and hypocrisy with the express purpose of using it as a lever for breaking down any received opinions. We hope, indeed, to show that his treatment of the period has diverged from the true course in consequence of certain hallucinations, but his position as to Mary was necessary for that treatment, and it is evident to us that in the pursuit of his object he has rushed blindfold into more than one trap. Mr. Froude's mastery of a brilliant style is so generally admitted that we need spend no time in praising it, though we cannot honestly say that we think he has escaped the literary dangers which beset sensational and imaginative writers. But such seductions only make it the more necessary that we should rub our eyes, and try to look straight on. It is a great thing indeed. to have, in the modern phrase, a 'readable' book; but it is not all. It is very pleasant to be carried swiftly and easily along; but are we going the right way? We are not presumptuous enough to suppose that we ourselves possess a perfect clue through the most perplexed labyrinth of modern history, but we may at least indicate some grounds for questioning whether even the most positive and eloquent of our professed guides has possession of it. So large a literature has sprung up round the story of Mary Stuart Stuart that until quite lately it has been popularly supposed that the subject had been thoroughly worked out. Experts of course knew better; but these books will in all probability again range the readers of this generation, and especially the younger ones, on either side of two conflicting ranks; for once more we have the wonderful, and still most mysterious story put forth by consummate partisans who seize every point which can make for their own side, and neglect, or are unable to see, the points which make for the other; and still we are nearly as far as ever from the cool and impartial estimate which the course of a long controversy does in the end bring to the front. It is now many years since Hallam,* in despair, summed up the dispute with the wise and pregnant remark that it may be given as the result of fair inquiry that to impeach the character of most of Mary's adversaries would be a far easier task than to exonerate her own.' But he would now, we venture to think, scarcely give the judgment he then pronounced upon the famous Casket Letters, on which so much did really, and on which so much more has been supposed to turn. On these Casket Letters, generally considered the central point of the question, we propose to say a few words; but it will be convenient to notice previously the career of Mary before the murder of Darnley, as given us on either side by the present writers, apologizing to those of our readers who are already sufficiently familiar with the subject to require no such preliminary sketch. The divergence begins very early. On one side we have the picture of an extraordinarily clever and beautiful child, educated up to mature womanhood at the most corrupt and brilliant court of Europe, yet preserved from all taint by, of all people in the world, Catherine de Medicis! So says M. Gauthier.† On the other side, writers like Mignet have traced the subsequent crimes and follies of the Queen of Scots to the horrible atmosphere which she had breathed in France. We have little hesitation in this matter. It is indeed no slight point in her favour that, in such a court, no scandal had tainted her character till she came to Scotland; but it is hard to disconnect that training of thirteen years with such incidents as the tragical story of Chatelard, the contempt of appearances-to say the least, which she showed in the case of Rizzio, and the shocking marriage with Bothwell. In the first of these cases we hold Mr. Froude to be right in attaching great blame to the beautiful woman who could play with the passions of an over-wrought, crack-brained gentleman, and then have him executed when he concealed himself in her room. *Constitutional History,' iii. 315. † i. 26. Even Mr. Hosack admits her cruelty, though not her previous fault; but M. Gauthier sees neither. * In the case of Rizzio again, we have on one side a wellmeaning, noble-minded young Queen, ill-treated by a vicious husband, struggling against a turbulent nobility who are resolved to make her power bend to theirs, and in the extremity of the conflict falling back on the one faithful servant she could trust," with whom it is ridiculous to suppose there could be a shadow of scandalous intrigue. On the other side we have a selfish, ambitious princess, violently quarrelling with and separating from her foolish boy-husband, and chasing away the counsellors whom she ought to have respected, while she gave colour to the worst suppositions by sitting up half the night alone with the subtle Italian who was using the besotted favour of the Queen to make himself master of Scotland and supreme over its ancient nobility. We may acquit her indeed of the most serious part of the charge made against her in this case; but how could such a Queen be respected? How can historians mistake the significance of the offence she gave? Here again we believe Mr. Froude (in a former volume) to have been right, though he might have spared his readers the repetition of scandalous reports which he does not profess to believe. Of course we do not mean to justify the assassination, So with Mary's share in Darnley's murder, and the connection of that event with her attachment to Bothwell. On one side we have Mr. Froude's 'panther,' a beautiful monster of wickedness, in close conspiracy with her paramour (whom, when wounded, she flies to visit in his castle, a distance of fifty miles, on horseback), luring her, now at last penitent, husband to his destruction; going to attend him in his sickness for the express purpose of taking him off his guard; writing the most prurient letters to her guilty partner from his bedside, carrying him off with her to the fatal Kirk o' Field prepared and furnished for the death-scene, with gunpowder placed in her own room underneath his; removing the smallest scrap of furniture which it might be worth while to save from the explosion; sitting up with him, to prevent suspicion, till it was time for him to be blown up, and then, having made an excuse for her absence, going comfortably to bed, and pretending to know nothing of what was going on till her paramour, the murderer, comes quite familiarly to her bedroom and tells her in the morning. We are then introduced to her eating a good breakfast in bed with the most perfect composure, and making only the least possible parade of her loss *Hosack, 122; Gauthier, vol. i., cl ap. v. Vol. 128.-No. 256. and and very barefaced pretences to pursue the guilty. She buries her husband with all privacy; and finding the usual mourning too irksome, solaces herself with Bothwell and other lords, 'riding and shooting' at Seton, a pleasant country house. A 'general instinct' points her out as the murderess; but she writes cool letters to the various Courts, begging the sovereigns of Europe not to believe the charge. Urged by Queen Elizabeth, she at last consents to try Bothwell, but giving only fifteen days' notice instead of forty, the legal time. She had assisted him in obtaining a divorce from his wife before Darnley's death, and the trial was now the merest mockery, attended by the most flagrant coercion of his enemies, and the most open sympathy on her own part. We then have her clever arrangements with Bothwell for her elopement; the preconcerted seizure on the road, to save appearances; the living with him as his wife at Dunbar Castle; the subsequent marriage, and the passionate clinging to him up to the last scene at Carberry Hill. A dreadful story indeed! and one with the main outlines of which we have been long familiar; but Mr. Froude has clothed it with such a marvellous splendour of diction, and brought it before us in so graphic a manner, filling it up with so many minute details, that it has become almost a fresh discovery. It will certainly cost very many of his readers a positive wrench to give up what they have been so forcibly persuaded into believing. But now hear the other side. When we listen to Mary's defenders, we find that it is she herself who is the victim of a brutal nobility and a subtlety of plotting, brought to such a perfection in that age as has never been witnessed before or since. Her connection with Bothwell was simply the innocent refuge of a hunted sovereign from her pursuers. He shows greater zeal for her service than others, and is rewarded with her peculiar favour. The visit to him at Hermitage was but an eight miles' ride; a stay of two hours, not immediately, but a week after he was wounded in her service, and she was accompanied by no less a person than her brother, Murray himself. Her visit to Darnley was at his own request, and is divested of all the sinister incidents attached to it by the other side. She is utterly unacquainted with the conspiracy to murder him. The story about her saving the furniture is a myth. Her leaving him on the fatal night was pre-arranged for the express purpose of attending the wedding of her two servants, was known to the conspirators, and the occasion chosen by them on that account. The gunpowder was not placed in her room with her knowledge, but underneath, unknown to her. Her reception of the news of the murder was much more natural than if she had filled the palace |