LADY'S

THE

MAGAZINE

AND

MUSEUM

OF THE BELLES LETTRES, FINE ARTS, MUSIC, DRAMA, FASHIONS, &c.

IMPROVED SERIES, ENLARGED.

MAY, 1834.

MEMOIR OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

To illustrate a beautiful coloured whole-length Portrait of her as Dauphiness, Queen of France.

Could valour aught avail, or people's love,

France had not mourned Navarre's brave Henry slain ;
If wit or beauty could compassion move,
The rose of Scotland had

To rush into the lists of controversy, as the champion of the hapless Mary, is not the intention of the author of the present memoir; neither time nor space would allow of it.

The plan adopted in giving information respecting her, will be to pursue a brief chronological account of her eventful life, illustrated, at different eras, by the choicest poetry of which she has been the subject and Mary, unfortunate Mary, with all her feminine errors, and woes, and charms, has been the theme of song, and of the genuine unbought adoration of the poet, from the hour that her youthful loveliness inspired the grim pedant, Buchanan, her future calumniator, with

not wept in vain.-M. Lewis.

that fine Latin poem,
that fine Latin poem, "Nymph of Cale-
donia," to the times when the minstrel
Chatelar died a martyr to his mad pas-
sion for this "bright particular star;"
and the youthful George Douglas met an
ignominious death with joy for love of

her.

1543. Mary Stuart, the unfortunate heiress of James V., and Mary of Guise, was born while her father lay on his death-bed, expiring from the most agonising of all maladies-a broken heart and wounded spirit. His mind was

crushed with the loss of the battle of Solway, being deserted by the feudal forces who owed military duty to the Scottish

crown.

Of Scotland's stubborn barons, none
Would move to southern wars.

After Solway fight, or rather flight, the monarch betook himself to his bed; he had not spoken for days, while the fearful workings of a noble but misdirected pride were consuming the springs of life. When on the third day previous to his death, his attendants ventured to rouse him with the important tidings that a living child, his successor, was born to him, "Is my bairn a child, or a maid?" asked James, eagerly, in the phraseology of the day. They told him it was a prin

cess.

"Then," sighed the king, "the crown came by a woman, and will go by woman." VOL. IV.-No. 5.

Mary succeeded to that inheritance of woe, the Scottish crown, a few hours after.

1548. This beautiful infant had many wooers even in her cradle; and the courtship of the young King Edward VI., on whom, in childhood, the southern crown of her island had likewise devolved, was carried on so rudely at swords' point by his uncle Somerset, that after the battle of Musselburgh, it was judged advisable by the council of her mother Mary of Guise, the queen-regent of Scotland, to place the person of the heiress (by sending her to France) out of the reach

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of her foes. Mary was educated at the corrupt court of Catherine de Medicis, with the purpose of uniting her to the Dauphin Francis, who, by the sudden death of Henry II., became king in his minority.

And here it must be pleaded in Mary's favour that the breath of slander never for a moment injured her good name, though every one was eloquent in praise of her early talents, her beauty, and that charm of fascination of manners which never deserted her even in her severest trials, and without which beauty and talents are indeed dross.

1558. Mary was married to Francis, heir of Henry II. They had been betrothed during the lifetime of his father, and she had long been called the dauphiness queen, and he the dauphin king.

Francis II., though plain and puny in person, bore a heart loving and true to his young spouse, who seems to have regarded his memory with great affection, He died of a decline just before he came of age, leaving his lovely wife, in her

eighteenth year, a widow. The slightest stigma was not cast on the character of Mary, either as the wife or widow of Francis, left as she was to her own guidance, at an age when the most discreet of human beings have very little self-command, if passion or temptation happen to assail them.

Catherine de Medicis, who retained the reins of government as regent-mother for another minor king, dreading the influence of Mary's talents and charms in the royal family of France, sent her back to Scotland. That she went most unwillingly, every one knows; for there are few that have not heard the anecdote, that she watched the receding shores of France till they faded from her streaming eyes, exclaiming, "Ah, France! ah, dear country! that I shall never behold again." But every one has not heard that she embodied these feelings in a little French poem, that is one of the easiest and most graceful in that most unmetrical, we will not say unpoetical, language, for French prose abounds in poetry.

Adieu, plaisant pays de France!
O ma patrie la plus cherie,
Qui as nourri ma jeune enfance :
Adieu France, adieu mes beaux jours.

La nef (the north) qui de-joint nos amours,
N'a cy de moi que la moitie,

Une part te reste, elle est tienne;
Je la fie a ton amitie,

Pour que de l'autre il te sourienne.*

Holingshed describes Queen Mary's landing in Scotland thus: She arrived at Leith, the 20th of August, in the year 1561, where she was honourably received by the Earl of Argyle, the Lord Erskine, the Prior of St. Andrew's, and the burgesses of Edinburgh, and conveyed to the Abbie of Holierood,-for, says Buchanan, when some had spread abroad her

landing in Scotland, the nobility and others assembled out of all parts of the realme, as it were to a common spectacle. But the old chronicler, graphic as his descriptions generally are, is not more faithfully minute in his sketch of this scene than Hogg in his Queen's Wake, who tells the story historically as well as poetically.

Scotland, involved in factious broils,
Groaned deep beneath her woes and toils,
And looked o'er meadow, dale, and lea,
For many a day her Queen to see.
The Spring was past, the Summer gone,
Still vacant stood the Scottish throne.
But scarce had Autumn's mellow hand
Waved her rich banner o'er the land,
When rang the shouts from tower and tree,
That Scotland's Queen was on the sea.

After a youth by woes o'ercast,

After a thousand sorrows past,

The lovely Mary once again

Set foot upon her native plain;

This is extracted from Ellis's admirable letters of English History.

Kneeled on the pier with modest grace,
And turned to heaven her beauteous face;
Then every tongue gave thanks to Heaven,
That Mary to their hopes was given.

Her comely form and graceful mien,
Bespoke the Lady and the Queen ;
The woes of one so fair and young,
Moved every heart and every tongue.
Driven from her home, a helpless child,
To brave the winds and billows wild;
An exile bred in realms afar,

Amid commotion, broil, and war;

In one short year her hopes were crossed-
A parent, husband, kingdom, lost!
And all ere eighteen years had shed
Their honours o'er her royal head.
For such a Queen, the Stuarts' heir,
A Queen so courteous, young and fair,
Who would not every foe defy?

Who would not stand? who would not die?

Light on her airy steed she sprung,
Around with golden tassels hung;
No chieftain there rode half so free,
Or half so light and gracefully.
How sweet to see her ringlets pale,
Wide waving in the southern gale,

Which through the broomwood blossoms flew,

To fan her cheeks of rosy hue;

Whene'er it heaved her bosom's screen,
What beauties in her form were seen!

A sight so fair on Scottish plain,
A Scot shall never see again

When Mary turned her wondering eyes
On rocks that seemed to prop the skies,
On palace, park, and battled pile,
On lake, on river, sea and isle;
O'er woods and meadows, bathed in dew,
To distant mountains, dim and blue,
She thought the isle that gave her birth,
The sweetest, wildest land on earth.

Slowly she ambled on her way,

Amid her lords and ladies gay;

Priest, abbot, layman, all were there,

And presbyter, with look severe.

There rode the lords of France and Spain,
Of England, Flanders, and Lorraine ;

While serried thousands round them stood,

From shore of Leith to Holyrood.

Though Mary's heart was light as air,

To find a home so wild and fair;

To see a gathered nation by,
And rays of joy from every eye:

An absent look they oft could trace,

Deep settled on her lovely face.
Was it the thought that all alone,
She must support a rocking throne,

That Caledonia's rugged land

Might scorn a lady's weak command,
And the red lion's haughty eye

Scowl at a maiden's feet to lie?

This doubt so elegantly expressed by the Ettrick Shepherd, was set at rest by the wisdom and excellence of Mary's government during the years of her widowhood; her most vituperant detractors cannot deny that she governed her kingdom during these days of independence in a manner that alarmed Elizabeth, who began to imagine that Mary would, as a female sovereign in the same island, surpass her as much in mental powers and royal energy as she did in beauty and truly feminine accomplishments. Very

soon Elizabeth began to sow mischief
and dissensions in the Scottish govern-
ment, by her impertinent interference
on the subject of the marriage of the
royal beauty, the disposal of whose
hand she affected to assume,
as she
chose at that time to consider Mary as
her heiress.

But we have not yet completed Mary's portrait in these early days, so admirably drawn by the Ettrick Shepherd, whose scattered traces we are weaving into one whole.

Queen Mary lighted in the court,
Queen Mary joined the evening's sport;
There such a scene entranced the view,
As heart of poet never knew.
"Twas not the flash of golden gear,
Nor blaze of silver chandelier;
Nor Scotland's chiefs of noble air;
Nor dazzling rows of ladies fair:
"Twas one enthroned the rest above,

Sure, 'twas the Queen of grace and love.
Taper the form, and fair the breast,

Yon radiant golden zones invest,

Where the vexed rubies blench in death,
Beneath yon lips, and balmy breath,
Coronal gems of every dye,

Look dim above that beaming eye.

Those cheeks outvie the dawning's glow,
Red, shadowed on a wreath of snow.

Oft the rapt bard had thought alone
Of charms by mankind never known;
Of virgins pure as opening day,
Or bosom of the flower of May.
But not in earth, the sea, the sky,
In fairy dream, nor fancy's eye,
Vision his soul had never seen,
Like Mary Stuart, Scotland's Queen.

The landing at Leith, and the welcome that awaited Queen Mary, were not, it seems, much to the taste of her French attendants. One of them gives a very sorry account of it, and above all, speaks most disparagingly of Scottish minstrelsy.

"We landed at Leith," says he, "and went from thence to Edinburgh, which is but a short league distant. The queen went there on horseback, and her lords and ladies who accompanied her were forced to ride the little wretched hackneys of the country, as wretchedly caparisoned, at sight of which the queen began to weep, and to compare them with the pompous and superb palfreys of France; yet there was no remedy but patience. The worst of all was, being arrived at Edinburgh, and retired to rest, in the Abbey, (which is really a fine building, and not at all partaking of the

rudeness of that country,) there came under her window a crew of five or six hundred scoundrels, from the city, who gave her a serenade with wretched violins and little rebecks, of which there are enough in that country, and began to sing and howl psalms so miserably mistimed and mistuned, that nothing could be worse. Alas! what music, what a night's rest!"

This Frenchman has certainly no taste for Scottish music: such another concert is not on record.

During her childhood, and afterwards during her widowhood, Mary received proposals of marriage from the following distinguished personages :

Edward VI., both as Prince of Wales and King of England; the unfortunate Don Carlos, son of Philip II. of Spain; the Archduke Charles, son of Ferdinand,