"It is a joy
To think the best we can of human kind."
it must be one to think the "best we can" of a creature so gifted. Where we cannot excuse, we may at least extenuate; palliating the faults of others is a different thing from palliating our own. Mary was brought up in a bad school. History has no darker period than the annals of the era over which Catherine presided; it combined the fiercer crimes with the meaner vices; craft and cruelty went hand in hand. From her cradle, Mary was taught to dissemble, and taught it as a science wherein superiority was matter of mental triumph. As the author of "Devereux" truly says, "it is through our weaknesses that our vices punish us." Now the great evil of Mary's life was her choice of Darnley as a husband—a choice solely dictated by his personal appearance. Had she chosen more wisely, how different might her career have been! She was too clever herself not to have felt superiority, and she had too much of the yielding natural to woman, not to have been influenced by one who had possessed that moral strength which is the secret of supremacy. Scott's picture is but a fragment—yet how finished—how excellently in keeping with our previous historical conception! We are taken in the "strong toil of grace"—we feel how surpassingly lovely was the ill-fated queen—we do not wonder at the fascina-
