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THE ABBOT.
No. 19. — MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.
"Her name is a note of the nightingale." What the troubadour minstrel said of his mistress may be also said of Mary Stuart. Beauty, and all the prestige that birth gives to beauty, the far deeper interest that attends misfortune, and the abiding terror of a violent death; all these invest the memory of the ill-fated queen with a sad charm, felt to the present hour. "No man," says Brantome, "ever beheld her without love and admiration, or thought of her fate without sorrow and pity." From the cradle an evil fortune attended upon her. The birth of a first and royal child, which should have awakened joy and hope, only added keener anxiety to the death-bed of her father. "The kingdom came with a woman," said the dying monarch, dying beneath the pressure of defeat and despair, "and it will go with a woman." He knew the strong hand that was needed to curb the turbulent spirit of the time; if it had been too much for himself, who wore spur and sword, what
