CHAPTER II.
Our chronicle commences in Campania, with the Tyrrhenian Sea (now the southerly waters of the Gulf of Genoa) on a traveller's left hand if he looks north. It was a fair evening in autumn, as we have remarked, during that age and state of the world the broad outlines of which we have briefly given. Along the Appian, or, as it long afterward came to be also called, the Trajan Way, the queen of roads, a conveyance drawn by two horses, a carriage of the common hackney description, not unlike one species of the vettura used by the modern Italians, was rolling swiftly northward between the stage of Minturnæ and the next stage, which was a lonely post-house a few miles south of the interesting town of Formiæ—not Forum Appii, or the Three Taverns, a place more than fifty miles away in the direction of Rome, and upon the same road.
Inside the carriage were a lady in middle life, whose face, once lovely, was still sweet and charming, and a very pale, beautiful female child, each dressed in a black ricinium,[2] or mourning robe, drawn over the top of the head. The girl was about twelve years old, or a little more, and seemed to be suffering much and grievously. She faced the horses, and on her side sat the lady fanning her and watching her with a look which always spoke love, and now and again anguish. Opposite to them, with his back to the horses, wearing a sort of dark lacerna, or thin, light great-coat, of costly material, but of a fashion which was deemed in Italy at that day either foreign or vulgar, as the case might be, sat a youth of about eighteen. The child was leaning back with her eyes closed. The youth, as he watched her, sighed now and then. At last he put both hands to his face, and, leaning his head forward, suffered tears to flow silently through his fingers. The lacerna which he wore was fastened at the breast by two fibulæ, or clasps of silver, and girt round his waist with a broad, brown, sheeny leather belt, stamped and traced after some Asiatic mode. In a loop of this belt, at his left side, was secured within its black scabbard an unfamiliar, outlandish-looking, long, straight, three-edged sword, which he had pulled round so as to rest the point before his feet, bringing the blade between his knees, and the hilt, which was gay with emeralds, in front of his chest.
The Romans still very generally went bare-headed,[3] even out of doors, except that those who continued to wear the toga drew it over their heads as the weather needed, and those who wore the penula used the hood of it in the same way. But upon the hilt of the sword we have described the youth had flung a sort of petasus, or deep-rimmed hat, with a flat top, and one black feather at the side, not stuck perpendicularly into the band, but so trained half round it as to produce a reckless, rakish effect, of which the owner was unconscious.
"Agatha," said the lady, in a low, tender voice, the delicate Greek ring of which was full of persuasion, "look up, beloved child! Your brother and I, at least, are left. Think no more of the past. The gods have taken your father, after men had taken his and your inheritance. But our part in life is not yet over. Did not your parents too, in times past—did not we too, I say, lose ours? Did you not know you were probably to live longer than your poor father? Are you not to survive me also? Perhaps soon."
With a cry of dismay the young girl threw her arms round the lady's neck and sobbed. The other, while she shed tears, exclaimed:
"I thank that unknown power, of whom Dionysius the Athenian, my young countryman, so sublimely speaks, that the child weeps at last! Weep, Agatha, weep; but mourn not mute in the cowardice of despair! Mourn not for your father in a way unbecoming of his child and mine. Mourn not as though indeed you were not ours. My husband is gone for ever, but he went in honor. The courageless grief, that canker without voice or tears, which would slay his child, will not bring back to me the partner of my days, nor to you your father. We must not dishearten but cheer your brother Paulus for the battle which is before him."
"I wish to do so, my mother," said Agatha.
"When I recover my rights," broke in the youth at this point, "my father will come and sit among the lares, round the ever-burning fire in the atrium of our hereditary house, Agatha; and therefore courage! You are ill; but Charicles, the great physician of Tiberius Cæsar, is our countryman, and he will attend you. He can cure almost any thing, they say. And if you feel fatigued, no wonder, so help me! Minime mirum mehercle! Have we not travelled without intermission, by land and by sea, all the way from Thrace? But now, one more change of horses brings us to Formiæ, and then we shall be at our journey's end. Meantime, dear child, look up; see yonder woods, and the garden-like shore."
And having first tried in vain to brighten the horn window at the side of the vehicle, specular corneum, (glass was used only in the private carriages of the rich,) he stood up, and calling over the hide roof of the carriage, which was open in front—the horses being driven from behind—he ordered the rhedarius, or coachman, to open the panels. The man, evidently a former slave of the family, now their freedman, quickly obeyed, and descending from his bench, pushed back into grooves contrived to receive them the coarsely-figured and gaudily colored sides of the travelling carruca.
"Is parvula better?" he then cried, with the privileged freedom of an old and attached domestic, or of one who, in the far more endearing parlance of classic times, was a faithful familiaris—that is, a member of the family. "Is the little one better? The dust is laid now, little one; the evening comes; the light slants; the sun smiles not higher than yourself, instead of burning overhead. See, the beautiful country! See, the sweet land! Let the breeze bring a bloom to your cheeks, as it brings the perfumes to your mouth. Ah! the parvula smiles. Fate is not always angry!"
"Dear old Philip!" said the child; and then, turning to her mother, she added,
"Just now, mother, you waked me from a frightful dream. I thought that the man who has our father's estates was dead; but he came from the dead, and was trying to kill Paulus, my brother there; and for that purpose was striving to wrest the sword from Paulus's hand; and that the man, or lar, laughed in a hideous manner, and cried out, 'It is with his own sword we will slay him! Nothing but his own sword!'"
The old freedman turned pale, and muttered something to himself, as he stood by the side of the vehicle; and while he kept the horses steady, with the long reins in his left hand, glanced awfully toward Paulus.
"Brother," continued the child, "I forget that man's name. What is the name?"
"Never mind the name now," said Paulus; "a dead person cannot kill a living one; and that man is not in Italy who will kill me with my own sword, if I be not asleep. Look at the beautiful land! See, as Philip tells you, the beautiful land where you are going to be so happy."
The river Liris, now the Garigliano, flowed all gold in the western sun; some dozen of meadows behind them, between rows of linden-trees, oleanders, and pomegranates, with laurel, bay, and long bamboo-like reeds of the arundo donax, varying the rich beauty of its banks: "Daphrones, platanones, et aëriæ cyparissi." A thin and irregular forest of great contemplative trees; flowerless and sad beech, cornel, alder, ash, hornbeam, and yew towered over savannahs of scented herbs, and glades of many-tinted grasses. Some clumps of chestnut-trees, hereafter to spread into forests, but then rare, and cultivated as we cultivate oranges and citrons, stood proudly apart. A vegetation, which has partly vanished, gave its own physical aspect to an Italy the social conditions of which have vanished altogether; and were even then passing, and about to pass, through their last appearances. But much also that we in our days have seen, both there and elsewhere, was there then. The flower or blossom of the pomegranate lifted its scarlet light amidst vines and olives; miles of oleander trees waved their masses of flame under the tender green filigree of almond groves, and seemed to laugh in scorn at the mourning groups of yew, and the bowed head of the dark, widow-like, and inconsolable cypress. All over the leaves of the woods autumn had strewn its innumerable hues. In the west, the sky was hung with those glories which no painter ever reproduced and no poet ever sang; it was one of the sunsets which make all persons of sensibility who contemplate them dumb, by making all that can be said of them worse than useless. A magnificent and enormous villa, or castellum, or country mansion—palace it seemed—showed parts of its walls, glass windows, and Ionic columns, through the woods on the banks of the Liris; and upon the roof of this palace a great company of gilt, tinted, and white statues, much larger than life, in various groups and attitudes, as they conversed, lifted their arms, knelt, prayed, stooped, stood up, threatened, and acted, were glittering above the tree-tops in the many-colored lights of the setting sun.
"Ah! let us stop; let us rest a few moments," cried the child, smiling through her tears at the smiles of nature and the enchanting beauty of the scene; "only a few moments under the great trees, mother."
It was a group of chestnuts, a few yards from the side of the road; and beneath them came to join the highway through the meadows, and vineyards, and forest-land, a broad beaten track from the direction of the splendid villa that stood on the Liris.
Paulus instantly sprang from the carruca, and, having first helped his mother to alight, took his sister in his arms and placed her sitting under the green shade. A Thracian woman, a slave, descended meantime from the box, and the driver drew his vehicle to the side of the highway.
While they thus reposed, with no sound about them, as they thought, save the rustle of the leaves, the distant ripple of the waters, and the vehement shrill call of the cicala, hidden in the grass somewhere near, their destinies were coming. The freedman suddenly held up his hand, and drew their attention by that peculiar sound through the teeth, (st,) which in all nations signifies listen!
And, indeed, a distant, dull, vague noise was now heard southward, and seemed to increase and approach along the Appian road. Every eye in our little group of travellers was turned in the direction mentioned, and they could see a white cloud of dust coming swiftly northward. Soon they distinguished the tramp of many horses at the trot. Then, over the top of a hill which had intercepted the view, came the gleam of arms, filling the whole width of the way, and advancing like a torrent of light. The ground trembled; and, headed by a troop or two of Numidian riders, and then a couple of troops or turmæ of Batavian cavalry, a thousand horse, at least, of the Prætorian Guards, arrayed, as usual, magnificently, swept along in a column two hundred deep, with a rattle and ring of metal rising treble upon the ear over the continuous bass of the beating hoofs, as the foam floats above the roll of the waves.
The young girl was at once startled from the sense of sickness and grief, and gazed with big eyes at the pageant. Six hundred yards further on a trumpet-note, clear and long, gave some sudden signal, and the whole body instantly halted. From a detached group in the rear an officer now rode toward the front; a loud word or two of command was heard, a slight movement followed, and then, as if the column were some monstrous yellow-scaled serpent with an elastic neck and a black head, the swarthy troops which had led the advance wheeled slowly backward, two instead of five abreast, while the main column simultaneously stretched itself forward on a narrower face, and with a deeper file, occupying thus less than half the width of the road, which they had before nearly filled, and extending much further onward. Meantime the squadrons which had led it continued to defile to the rear; and when their last rank had passed the last of those fronting in the opposite direction, they suddenly faced to their own right, and, standing like statues, lined the way on the side opposite to that where our travellers were reposing, but some forty or fifty yards higher up the road, or more north.
In front of the line of horsemen, who, after wheeling back, had been thus faced to their own right, or the proper left of the line of march, was now collected a small group of mounted officers. One of them wore a steel corselet, a casque of the same metal, with a few short black feathers in its crest, and the chlamys, or a better sort of sagum, the scarlet mantle of a military tribune, over a black tunic, upon which two broad red stripes or ribbons were diagonally sewn. This costume denoted him one of the Laticlavii, or broad-ribboned tribunes; in other words—although, to judge by the massive gold ring which glittered on the forefinger of his bridle hand, he might have been originally and personally only a knight—he had received either from the emperor, or from one of the two Cæsars then governing with and under Augustus, the senatorial rank.
The chlamys was fastened across the top of his chest with a silver clasp, and the tunic a little lower down with another, both being open below as far as the waist, and disclosing a tight-fitting chain-mail corselet, or shirt of steel rings. The chlamys was otherwise thrown loose over his shoulders, but the tunic was belted round the corselet at his waist by a buff girdle, wherein hung the intricately-figured brass scabbard of a straight, flat, not very long cut-and-thrust sword, which he now held drawn in his right hand. In his belt were stuck a pair of manicæ or chirothecæ, as gloves were called, which seemed to be made of the same material as the girdle; buffalo-skin greaves on his legs and half-boots (the calcei, not the soleæ or sandals) completed his dress. He was a handsome man, about five-and-thirty years old, brown hair, an open but thoughtful face, and an observant eye. He it was who had ridden to the front, and given those orders the execution of which we have noticed. He had now returned, and kept his horse a neck or so behind that of an officer far more splendidly attired, who seemed to pay no attention whatever to the little operation that had occurred, but, shading his eyes with one hand from the rays of the setting sun, gazed over the fields toward the villa or mansion on the Liris.
He was clad in the paludamentum, the long scarlet cloak of a legatus or general, the borders being deeply fringed with twice-dyed Tyrian purple, (Tyria bis tincta, or dibapha, as it is called by Pliny;) the long folds of which flowed over his charger's haunches. This magnificent mantle was buckled round the wearer's neck with a jewel. His corselet, unlike that of the colonel or tribune already mentioned, was of plate-steel, (instead of rings,) and shone like a looking-glass, except where it was inlaid with broad lines of gold. He wore a chain of twisted gold round his neck, and his belt as well as the hilt of his sword, which remained undrawn by his side in a silver scabbard, glittered with sardonyx and jasper stones. He had no tunic. His gloves happening, like those of his subordinate, to be thrust into the belt round his waist, left visible a pair of hands so white and delicate as to be almost effeminate. His helmet was thin steel, and the crest was surmounted by a profuse plume of scarlet cock's feathers. But perhaps the most curious particular of his costume was a pair of shoes or half-boots of red leather, the points of the toes turned upward. These boots were encrusted with gems, which formed the patrician crescent, or letter C, on the top of each foot, and then wandered into a fanciful tracery of sparkles up the leg. The stapedæ, or stirrups, in which his feet rested, were either of gold or gilt.
The countenance of the evidently important personage whose dress has been stated was remarkable. He had regular features, a handsome straight nose, eyes half closed with what seemed at first a languid look, but yet a look which, if observed more closely, was almost startling from the extreme attention it evinced, and from the contrast between such an expression and the indolent indifference or superciliousness upon the surface, if I may so say, of the physiognomy. There was something sinister and cruel about the mouth. He wore no whiskers or beard, but a black, carefully-trimmed moustache.
After a steady gaze across the fields in the direction we have already more than once mentioned, he half turned his head toward the tribune, and at the same time, pointing to our travellers, said something. The tribune, in his turn, addressed the first centurion, (dux legionis,) an officer whose sword, like that of the legatus, was undrawn, but who carried in his right hand a thin wand made of vine-wood. In an instant this officer turned his horse's head and trotted smartly toward our travellers, upon reaching whom he addressed Paulus thus:
"Tell me, I pray you, have you been long here?"
"Not a quarter of an hour," answered Paulus, wondering why such a question was asked.
"And have any persons passed into the road by this pathway?" the centurion then inquired.
"Not since we came," said Paulus.
The officer thanked him and trotted back.
Meanwhile, Paulus and his mother and the freedman Philip had not been so absorbed in watching the occurrence and scene just described as to remove their eyes for more than a moment at a time from their dearly-loved charge, the interesting little mourner who had begged to be allowed to rest under the chestnut-trees. It was not so with Agatha herself. The child was at once astonished, bewildered, and enraptured. Had the spectacle and review before her been commanded by some monarch, or rather some magician, on purpose to snatch her from the possibility of dwelling longer amidst the gloom, the regrets, and the terrors under which she had appeared to be sinking, neither the wonder of the spectacle, nor the amenity of the evening when it occurred, nor the loveliness of the landscape which formed its theatre, could have been more opportunely combined. She had not only never beheld any thing so magnificent, but her curiosity was violently aroused.
Paulus exchanged with his mother and the old freedman a glance of intelligence and of intense satisfaction, as they both noted the parted lips and dilated eyes with which the child, half an hour ago so alarmingly ill, contemplated the drama at which she was accidentally assisting.
"That's a rare doctor," whispered Philip, pointing to the general of the Prætorian Guards.
"No doctor," replied Paulus in the same low tones, "could have prescribed for our darling better."
"Paulus," said Agatha, "what are these mighty beings? Are these the genii, and the demons of the mistress-land, the gods of Italy?"
"They are a handful of Italy's troops, dear," he said.
She looked from her brother to the lady, and then to the freedman, and this last, with a healing instinct which would have done honor to Hippocrates, began to stimulate her interest by the agency of suspense and mystery.
"Master Paulus, and Lady Aglais, and my little one too," he said, in a most impressive and solemn voice, "these be the genii and these be the demons indeed; but I tell you that you have not yet seen all the secret. Something is going to happen. Attend to me well! You behold a most singular thing! Are you aware of what you behold? Yonder, Master Paulus, is the allotted portion of horse for more than three legions: the justus equitatus, I say, for a Roman army of twenty thousand men. Yes, I attest all the gods," continued Philip in a low voice, but with great earnestness, and glancing from the brother to the sister as if his prospects in life were contingent upon his being believed in this. "I was at the battle of Philippi, and I aver that yonder is more than the right allotment of horse for three legions. Observe the squadrons, the turmæ; they do not consist of the same arm; and instead of being distributed in bodies of three or four hundred each to a legion, they are all together before you without their legions. Why is that, Master Paulus?"
"I know not," said Paulus.
"Ah!" resumed the freedman, "you know not, but you will know presently. Mark that, little Mistress Agatha, and bear in mind that Philip the freedman has said to your brother that he will know all presently."
The child gazed wonderingly at the troops as she heard these mysterious words. "Who are those?" asked she, pointing to the squadrons of those still in column. "Who are those in leather jerkins, covered with the iron scales, and riding the large, heavy horses?"
"Batavians from the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt," answered the freedman, with a mysterious shake of the head.
"And those," pursued she, with increasing interest; "who are those whose faces shine like dusky copper, and whose eyes glitter like the eyes of the wild animals in the arena, when the proconsul of Greece gives the shows? I mean those who ride the small, long-tailed horses without any ephippia (saddle-cloths,) and even without bridles—the soldiers in flowing dress, with rolls of linen round their heads?"
"They are the Numidians," replied Philip. "Ah! Rome dreaded those horsemen once, when Hannibal the Carthaginian and his motley hordes had their will in these fair plains."
As he spoke, a strange movement occurred. The general or legatus dismounted, and, giving the bridle of his horse to a soldier, began to walk slowly up and down the side of the road. No sooner had his foot touched the ground than the whole of the Numidian squadron seemed to rise like a covey out of a stubble field; with little clang of arms, but with one short, sharp cry, or whoop, it burst from the high road into the meadow land. There the evolutions which they performed seemed at first to be all confusion, only for the fact that, although the horsemen had the air of riding capriciously in every direction, crossing, intermingling, separating, galloping upon opposite curves, and tracing every figure which the whim and fancy of each might dictate, yet no two of them ever came into collision. Indeed, fantastic and wild as that rhapsody of manœuvres into which they had broken appeared to be, some principle which was thoroughly understood by every one of them governed their mazy gallop. It was as accurate and exact as some stately dance of slaves at the imperial court. It was, in short, itself a wild dance of the Numidian cavalry, in which their reinless horses, guided only by the flashing blades and the voices of their riders, manifested the most vehement spirit and a sort of sympathetic frenzy. These steeds, which never knew the bridle, and went thus mouth-free even into battle—these horses, which their masters turned loose at night into the fields, and which came back bounding and neighing at the first call, were now madly plunging, wheeling, racing, and charging, like gigantic dogs at sport. Presently they began to play a strange species of leap-frog. A Numidian boy, who carried a trumpet and rode a pony, or at least a horse smaller and lower than the rest of the barbs, ("Berber horses,") suddenly halted upon the outside of the mad cavalry whirlpool which had been formed, and flung himself flat at full length upon the back of the diminutive animal. Instantly the whirl, as it circled toward him, straightened itself into a column, and every horseman rode full upon the stationary pony, and cleared both steed and rider at a bound, a torrent of cavalry rushing over the obstruction with wild shouts.
"That is Numidian sport, Master Paulus," said the freedman; "but there is not a rider among them to be compared to yourself."
"Certainly I can ride," said the youth; "but I pretend not to be superior to these Centaurs."
"Be these, then, the Centaurs I have heard of?" asked Agatha; "be these the wild powers?"
The hubbub had prevented her, and all with her, from noticing something. Before an answer could be given, the Numidians had returned to the highway as suddenly as they had quitted it, and the noise of their dance was succeeded by a pause of attention. The general was again on horseback, and our travellers perceived that two litters, one of carved ivory and gold, the other of sculptured bronze, borne on the shoulders of slaves, were beside them.
Two gentlemen on foot had arrived with the litters along the broad pathway already noticed, and a group of attendants at a little distance were following.
This new party were now halting with our travellers beneath the far-spreading shade of the same trees. In the ivory litter reclined a girl of about seventeen, dressed in a long palla of blue silk, a material then only just introduced from India, through Arabia and Egypt, and so expensive as to be beyond the reach of any but the richest class. Her hair, which was of a bright gold color, was dressed in the fashionable form of a helmet, (galerus,) and was inclosed behind in a gauze net. She wore large inaures, or ear-rings, of some jewel, a gold chain, in every ring of which was set a gem, and scarlet shoes embroidered with pearls. The lady in the bronze litter was attired in the stola of a matron, with a cyclas, or circular robe, thrown back from the neck, and a tunic of dark purple which descended to her feet. Her brown hair was restrained by bands, vittæ, which had an honorable significance among the Roman ladies, ("Nil mihi cum vitta," says the profligate author of the Ars Amandi.) She seemed somewhat past thirty years of age; she had a very sweet, calm, and matronly air; her countenance was as beautiful in features and general effect as it was modest in its tone and character.
Her companion,[4] in the litter of ivory and gold, was not more than half her age, was even more beautiful, with an immense wreath of golden hair, and with large blue eyes, darkening to the likeness of black as she gazed earnestly upon any object. But she had a less gentle physiognomical expression. Frequently her look was penetrating, brief, impatient, sarcastic, disdainful. She had a bewitching smile, however, and her numerous admirers made Italy echo with their ravings.
Lucius Varius, said the fashionable world, was at that very time engaged upon a kind of sapphic ode, of which she was to be the subject.
Scarcely had these litters or palanquins arrived and halted, when the general officer dismounted once more, and walked quickly toward the spot with his helmet in his hand. At a few yards' distance he stopped, and first bowed low to the elder of the two gentlemen who had accompanied the litters on foot, and then, almost entirely disregarding the other gentleman, made an obeisance not quite so long or so deep to the ladies. The man whom so splendid a personage as the legatus, wearing his flaming paludamentum, and at the head of his troops, thus treated with so obsequious a veneration, did not return the salute except by a slight nod and a momentary, absent-minded smile. His gaze had been riveted upon our travellers, and chiefly upon the youth and his young, suffering sister, upon both of whom, after it had quickly taken in Philip the freedman, the Thracian woman, and the Athenian lady, it rested long—longest and last upon Agatha.
"Sejanus," said he finally, "who are these?"
"I never saw them until just now, my commander and Cæsar; they were here when we halted, and while we waited for our master, the favorite of the gods, these travellers seemed to be resting where you behold them."
"As those gods favor me," said the other, "this is a fine youth. Can we not edit[5] him? And yonder girl—have you ever seen, my Sejanus, such eyes? But she is deadly pale. Are you always thus pale, pretty one, or are you merely ill? If but ill, as I guess, Charicles, my Greek physician, shall cure you."
Before this man had even spoken, the moment, indeed, when first his eyes fell upon her, Agatha had sidled close to her mother; and while he was expressing himself in that way to Sejanus, she returned his gaze with panic-stricken, dilated eyes, as the South American bird returns that of the reptile; but when he directly questioned her, she, reaching out her hand to Paulus, clutched his arm with a woman's grasp, and said in an affrighted voice,
"My brother, let us go."
Paulus, in a manner naturally easy, and marked by the elegance and grace which the athletic training of Athens had given to one so well endowed physically, first, merely saying to the stranger, "I crave your pardon," (veniam posco,) lifted Agatha with one arm, and placed her in the travelling carriage. Then, while the freedman and the Thracian slave mounted to their bench, he returned to where his mother stood, signed to her to follow Agatha, and, seeing her move calmly but quickly toward the vehicle, he took the broad-rimmed petasus from his head, and bowing slowly and lowly to the stranger, said,
"Powerful sir, for I observe you are a man of great authority, my sister is too ill to converse. You rightly guessed this; permit us to take her to her destination."
The man whom he had thus balked, and to whom he now thus spoke, merits a word of description. He appeared to be more than fifty years old. The mask of his face and the frame of his head were large, but not fat. His complexion was vivid brick-red all over the cheeks, with a deeper flush in one spot on each side, just below the outer corners of the eyes. The eyes were bloodshot, large, rather prominent, and were closely set together. The nose was large, long, bony, somewhat aquiline. The forehead was not high, not low; it was much developed above the eyes, and it was broad. A deep and perpetual dint just over the nose reached half-way up the forehead. His hair was grizzled and close cut. His lips were full and fleshy, and the mouth was wide; the jaws were large and massive. His face was shaven of all hair. The chin was very handsome and large, and the whole head was set upon a thick, strong throat, not stunted, however, of its proper length. In person this man was far from ungainly, nor yet was he handsome. In carriage and bearing, without much majesty, he had nevertheless something steadfast, weighty, unshrinking, and commanding. His outer garment, not a toga, was all one color and material; it was a long, thick wadded silk mantle, of that purple dye which is nearly black—the hue, indeed, of clotted gore under a strong light. He wore gloves, and instead of the usual short sword of the Romans, had a long steel stylus[6] for writing on wax thrust into a black leathern belt. This instrument seemed to show that he lived much in Rome, where it was not the custom, when otherwise in civilian dress, to go armed.
As the reader will have guessed, this man was to be the next emperor of the Roman world.
"Permit you to take her to her destination?" he repeated slowly. "My Greek physician, I tell you, shall cure her. I will give directions about your destination." A slight pause; then, "Are you a Roman citizen?"
"I am a Roman knight as well as citizen," answered Paulus proudly; "and my family is not only equestrian, but patrician."
"What is your name?"
"Paulus Æmilius Lepidus."
The man in the black or gore-colored purple glanced at Sejanus, who, still unconcerned, stood with his splendid helmet in the left hand, while he smoothed his moustache with the right; otherwise perfectly still, his handsome face, cruel mouth, and intelligent eyes all alive with the keenest attention.
"And the destination to which you allude is—?" pursued the man in black purple.
"Formiæ," said Paulus.
"What relation or kinship exists between you and Marcus Æmilius Lepidus, formerly the triumvir, who still enjoys the life which he owes to the clemency of Augustus?"
Paulus hesitated. When he had given his name, the younger of the two ladies had raised herself suddenly in the litter of ivory and gold, and fastened upon him a searching gaze, which she had not since removed. The other lady had also at that instant looked at him fixedly. We have already stated that, when Sejanus approached the group, he had not deigned in any very cordial manner to salute or notice the second of the two gentlemen who had accompanied the litters on foot. This gentleman was very sallow, had hollow eyes, and a habit of gnawing his under lip between his teeth. He had unbuckled his sword, and had given it, calling out, "Lygdus, carry this," to a man with an exceedingly sinister and repulsive countenance. The man in question had now taken a step or two forward, and was standing on the left of Paulus, fronting the Cæsar, his shoulders stooping, his neck bent forward, his eyes without any motion of the head rolling incessantly from person to person, and face to face, but at once falling before and avoiding any glance which happened to meet his. He looked askant and furtively at every object with an eager, unhappy, and malign expression. Paulus did not need to turn his head to feel that this man was now intently peering at him. Behind the two courtly palanquins, and beyond the shade of the trees, was a third litter still more costly, being covered in parts with plate gold. Here sat a woman with a face as white as alabaster, and large prominent black eyes, watching the scene, and apparently trying to catch every word that was said.
Paulus, as we have observed, hesitated. The training of youth in the days of classic antiquity soon obliterated the inferiority of unreasoning, nervous shyness. But the strange catechism which Paulus was now undergoing, with all this gaze upon him from so many eyes, began to be a nuisance, and to tell upon a spirit singularly high.
"Have you heard my question?" inquired Tiberius.
"I have heard it," replied Paulus; "and have heard and answered several others, without knowing who he is that asks them. However, the former triumvir, now living at Circæi, about forty thousand paces from here, is my father's brother." (Circæi, as the reader knows, is now called Monte Circello, a promontory just opposite Gaeta.)
When Paulus had given his last answer, the ladies glanced at each other, and the younger looked long and hard at Tiberius. Getting some momentary signal from him, she threw herself back in her palanquin and smiled meaningly at the stooping, sinister-faced man, who had stationed himself in the manner already mentioned near Paulus's left hand.
"Your father," rejoined Tiberius, after a pause, "was a very distinguished soldier, and, as I always heard when a boy, he contributed eminently to the victory of Philippi. But I knew not that he had children; and, moreover, was he not slain, pray, at Philippi, toward the end of the battle, which he certainly helped to gain?"
"I hope," said Paulus, somewhat softened by the praise of his father, "I hope that Augustus supposed him to have died of his wounds, and that it was only under this delusion he gave our estates—which were situated somewhere in this very province of Campania, with a noble mansion like the castellum upon the river yonder—to that brave and able soldier Agrippa Vespasianus."
At this name a deep red flush over-spread the brow of Tiberius, and Paulus innocently proceeded.
"Certainly, the noble Agrippa, who was to have been Cæsar, had he lived, never would have accepted so unfair a bounty had he known that my father really survived his wounds, but that—despairing of the generosity, or rather despairing of the equity of Augustus—he was living a melancholy, exheridated exile, near that very battle-field of Philippi, in Thrace, where he had fought so well and had been left for dead."
"You dare to term the act of Augustus," slowly said the man in the gore-colored purple cloak, "so unfair a bounty, and Augustus himself ungenerous, or rather unjust?"
At this terrible rejoinder from such a man, the down-looking person whom we have mentioned passed his right hand stealthily to the hilt of the sword which he was carrying for his master, and half drew it. Paulus, who for some time had had this person standing at his left, could observe the action without turning his head. He was perfectly aware, moreover, that, should the other draw his weapon upon him, the very act of drawing it would itself become a blow, on account of their respective places, whereas to escape it required more distance between them, and to parry it in a regular way would demand quite a different position, besides the needful moment or two for disengaging his own rather long blade. Yet the youth stood completely still; he never even turned his head. However, he just shifted the wide-rimmed hat from his left to his right hand (the hand for the sword) and thereby seemed to be only more encumbered, unprepared, and defenceless than before. His left hand, with the back inward, fell also meantime in an easy and natural way upon the emerald haft of the outlandish-looking three-edged rapier, which, as he played with it, became loose in the scabbard, and came and went some fraction of an inch.
"I never termed him so," said Paulus. "I said not this of Augustus. I am at this moment on my way to Augustus himself, who is, I am told, to be at Formiæ with his court for a week or two. I must, therefore, again ask your leave, mighty office-bearer, to continue my journey. I know not so much as who you are."
"I am Tiberius Cæsar," said the other, bending upon him those closely-set, prominent, bloodshot eyes with no very assuring expression. "I am Tiberius Cæsar, and you will be pleased to wait one moment before you continue the journey in question. The accusation against your father was this: that, after Philippi, he labored for the interests first of Sextus, the son of Pompey, and afterward of Mark Antony, in their respective impious and parricidal struggles; and the answer to this charge (a charge to which witnesses neither were nor are wanting) has always been, that it was simply impossible, seeing that Paulus Lepidus, your father, perished at Philippi before the alleged treasons had occurred. Wherefore, as your father had done good service, especially in the great battle where he was thus supposed to have fallen, not only was his innocence declared certain, but, for his memory's sake, Marcus Lepidus, the triumvir, your uncle, was forgiven. Yet now we learn from you, the son of the accused, that the only defence ever made for him is positively false; that your father, were he still living, would probably merit to be put to death; and that your uncle, at the same time, is stripped of the one protecting circumstance which has preserved his head. I must order your arrest, and that of all your party, in order that these things may be at least fully investigated."
As this was said, the lady in the litter of ivory and gold contemplated Paulus with that bewitching smile which she was accustomed to bestow upon dying gladiators in the hippodrome; while the other lady gazed at him with a compassionate, forecasting and muse-like look.
"I mean no disrespect whatever to so great a man as you, sir; but I will," said Paulus, "appeal from Tiberius Cæsar to Cæsar Augustus; to whom, I again remind you, I am on my way."
No sooner had he uttered the words, "I appeal from Tiberius," than, before he could finish the sentence, the malign-faced man on his left with great suddenness drew the sword hew as carrying for Cneius Piso, and, availing himself of the first natural sweep of the weapon as it left the scabbard, sought to bring the edge of it backward across the face of Paulus, exclaiming, while he did so, "Speak you thus to Cæsar?"
Had this man, who was the future assassin of Drusus, and slave to Cneius Piso, who was the future assassin of Germanicus, succeeded in delivering that well-meant stroke, the sentence which our hero was addressing to Tiberius could never have been said out; but said out, as we see, it was, and said, too, with due propriety of emphasis, although with a singular accompanying delivery. In fact, though not deigning to look round toward this man, Paulus had been vividly aware of his movements, and, swift as was the attack, the defence was truly electrical. Paulus's rapier, the hilt of which, as we have remarked, had been for some time in his left hand, leapt from its sheath, and being first held almost perpendicularly for one moment, the point down and the hilt a little higher than his forehead, met the murderous blow at right angles; after which the delicate long blade flashed upward, with graceful ease but irresistible violence, bearing the assassin's weapon backward upon a small semi-circle, and remaining inside of it, or, in other words, nearer to Lygdus's body than Piso's own sword, which he carried, was. It looked like a mere continuation of this dazzling parry, but was, in truth, a vigorous deviation from it, which none but a very pliant and powerful wrist could have executed; when the emerald pommel fell like a hammer upon the forehead of Lygdus the slave, whom that disdainful blow stretched at his length upon the ground, motionless, and to all appearance dead. As Piso was standing close, the steel guard of the hilt, in passing, tore open his brow and cheek.
The whole occurrence occupied only five or seven seconds, and meanwhile the youth finished his sentence with the words already recorded, "From Tiberius Cæsar to Cæsar Augustus, to whom, I again remind you, I am on my way."
An exclamation of astonishment, and perhaps some other feeling, escaped from Tiberius. Sejanus smiled; the woman with the pale face and black eyes, who sat in the unadorned plate-of-gold palanquin, screamed; and the other ladies laughed loudly. Among the prætorian guards, who from the road were watching with attention the group where they saw their general and the Cæsar, a long, low murmur of approbation ran. At this, Tiberius turned and looked steadily and musingly toward them. Paulus, instantly sheathing his weapon, said,
"I ask Cæsar's pardon, but there was no time to obtain his permission for what I have just done. My head must have been in two pieces had I waited but one moment."
"Just half a moment for each piece," said Tiberius; "but your left hand seems well able to keep your head. Are you left-handed?"
"No, great Cæsar," said Paulus; "I am what my Greek teacher of fence used to call two-handed, dimachærus; he tried to make all his pupils so, but my right remains far better than my left."
"Then I should like to see your right thoroughly exercised," said Tiberius.
Paulus heard a sweet voice here say, "As a favor to me, do not order the arrest of this brave youth;" and, turning, he beheld the beautiful creature in the litter of ivory and gold plead for him with Tiberius. The large blue eyes, darkening as she supplicated, smote the youth, and he could hardly take away his gaze.
"Young man, go forward with your mother and sister to Formiæ, under the charge of Velleius Paterculus, the military tribune whom you see yonder upon the road. Remain in Formiæ till I give you leave to quit it. Report your place of residence to the tribune. Go!"
The last word was pronounced harshly. Tiberius made a signal with his hand to Paterculus. Then passing his arm through that of Sejanus, and speaking to him in a low tone, he led the general aside into the fields to a little distance; while—with the exception of two mounted troopers, (each leading a horse,) who remained behind, but considerably out of hearing—the prætorian guards, the three litters, and the travelling biga began to move toward Formiæ, leaving the road to silence, and the evening landscape to peace.
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.[7]
There is, after all, but slight exaggeration in the old saying, that a lie travels leagues while truth is putting on boots to pursue and overtake it. And even when overtaken, caught, and choked, how hard it dies! In our daily experience, how often does truthful exposure utterly extinguish false and evil report? Certainly not always, and probably but very seldom. In the intercourse of society, one may partially crush out a calumny by going straight to those who should know the truth and compelling them to listen to it.
But the lie historical cannot be so met. People in this busy world have no time to spend in reading long documents in vindication of men or women long since dead. But they have read the calumny? Certainly. The calumny is not so long as the refutation, and is more readable. It is attractive; it is piquant. Mary Stuart as an adulteress and a murderess is an interesting character. People never tire of hearing of her. But Mary Stuart, the upright queen, the noble and true woman, the faithful spouse and affectionate mother, has but slight attractions for the mass of readers. To hear her so proven must be dull reading. Nevertheless, with time comes truth; for although
"The mills of the gods grind slowly,
They grind exceedingly fine;"
which we take to be only a modern, heathenish way of saying, as we chant every Sunday at vespers,
"Et justitia ejus manet in seculum seculi."
Look at the Galileo story. Galileo died more than two hundred years ago. Yet it is only within a lifetime that the truth concerning him began to dawn upon the English mind.
Mary Queen of Scots surrendered her soul to God and her head to Elizabeth nearly three centuries ago, and the combat over her reputation to-day rages as hot as ever. In the case of the Florentine astronomer, there has been no strongly decided hereditary transmission of the falsehood. In that of the Queen of Scotland every inch of ground is obstinately fought, because her innocence means the shame of England, the disgrace of Knox, the condemnation of the ornaments of the Anglican and Puritan churches, and the infamy of Elizabeth.
These enemies of Mary yet live in transmitted prejudices and powerful hereditary interests. The very existence of all the boasting, pride, false reputation, hypocritical piety, and national vanity represented by the familiar catchwords of "Our Noble Harry," "Glorious Queen Bess," "The Virgin Queen," "Our Sainted Reformers," has its inspiration and life-breath in the maintenance of every calumny against Mary Stuart and the Catholic Church of that day; and we must do these supporters the credit of admitting that they are instant in season and out of season, and never weary in their work.
But their case was long since made up. They have said their last word, and shot all the arrows of their quiver. With each succeeding year Elizabeth's reputation fails, and is rapidly passing into disgrace. With the same rapidity Mary's fame grows brighter.
The books and pamphlets written in attack or defence of Mary would of themselves form a library. For the attack, the key-note is to be found in Cecil's avowed principle concerning the treatment of the dethroned queen, that their purpose could not be obtained without disgracing her. Hence, the silver-casket letters, and the so-called confessions of Paris. Hence, the issue, during every year of her long imprisonment of eighteen years, of some vile pamphlet, under Cecil's instructions, calculated to blast her character. Two men in particular powerfully contributed to defame the Queen of Scots—John Knox and George Buchanan. Knox by his sermons, in which, says Russel, (History of the Reformation, vol. i. p. 292,) "lying strives with rage;" Buchanan, by his writings, which have been made by Mary's enemies one of the sources of history. Buchanan was an apostate monk, saved from the gallows by Mary, and loaded with her favors. An eye-witness of her dignity, her goodness, and her purity, he afterward described her as the vilest of women. He sold his pen to Elizabeth, and has been properly described as "unrivalled in baseness, peerless in falsehood, supreme in ingratitude." His Detection was published (1570) in Latin, and copies were immediately sent by Cecil to Elizabeth's ambassador in Paris with instructions to circulate them; "for they will come to good effect to disgrace her, which must be done before other purposes can be obtained."
This shameful work has been the inspiration of most of the portraits drawn of Mary. De Thou in France, Spotiswoode, Jebb, and many others in England, have all followed him. Holinshed too was deceived by Buchanan; but it is doubtful if he dared write otherwise than he did, between the terrors of Cecil's spies and Elizabeth's mace.
An English translation of Buchanan was first published in 1690, being called forth by the revolution of 1688. Jebb's two folio volumes appeared in 1725.
Two additional lives of Mary, by Heywood (1725) and Freebairn, were little more than translations from the French. In 1726, Edward Simmons published Mary's forged letters as genuine. Anderson's voluminous collection of papers (four large volumes) appeared in 1727 and 1728. Meantime, from the accession of a new dynasty and the rebellion of 1715, there arose in Edinburgh a sort of society having for its principal object the work of supporting Buchanan's credit and vilifying the Scottish queen. Later came the well-known and widely published histories of Scotland and of England by Robertson and Hume, which, read wherever the English language was known, may be said to have popularized the culpability of Mary. Until within comparatively few years, Hume's work was the only history of England generally read in the United States. Then came Malcolm Laing, who imagined he had closed the controversy against Mary in his bitter Dissertation. Mignet, in France, went further than Laing, while Froude, in his history of England, distancing all previous writers, portrays Mary in the blackest colors as one of the most criminal and devilish of women. For his material there is no statement so absurd, no invention so gross, no lie so palpable, no calumny so vile, provided only that it be to the prejudice of Mary Stuart, that does not find favor in his eyes. In his blind hatred of the Catholic queen, forgetting all historic dignity and even personal decency, he showers upon her such epithets as "panther," "ferocious animal," "wild-cat," "brute;" her persecutors being white-robed saints, such as "the pious Cecil," and "the noble and stainless Murray," and the virgin Queen Elizabeth appearing "as a beneficent fairy coming out of the clouds to rescue an erring sister."
But Mary's cause has not wanted defenders. Among the best known are, John Leslie, Bishop of Ross; Camden and Carte, the English historians; Herrera, the Spanish bishop; Robert Keith; Goodall, (1754,) who made the first searching analysis of the silver-casket letters, showing that the French text of the pretended Bothwell love-letters, until then supposed to be original, was a poor translation from the Latin or Scotch. William Tytler (1759) and John Whitaker (1788) proved that the letters were forged by those who produced them. Stuart, in his history of Scotland, (1762,) and Mademoiselle Keraglio, in her Life of Elizabeth, (1786,) both protested against the conclusions of Hume and Robertson. In 1818, George Chalmers took up Laing's book, and proved conclusively, with a mass of newly-discovered testimony, that the accusers of Mary were themselves the murderers of Darnley. Then followed the learned Dr. Lingard, Guthrie, and H. Glassford Bell. But all these works were either too heavy and cumbrous for popular reading, or too narrow in their scope; most of them being better prepared for reference than for reading, and of but slight effective service in the field occupied by Hume and Robertson. Miss Strickland's work is well known to all our readers, and has done much good. In 1866, Mr. McNeel Caird published Mary Stuart, her Guilt or Innocence, in which he effectively defends Mary and seriously damages Mr. Froude's veracity.
A most valuable historical contribution is the late work (1869) of M. Jules Gauthier. The first volume is out and the second will be issued in a few months. M. Gauthier says that after reading the work of M. Mignet, he had no doubt that Queen Mary had assassinated her husband in order to avenge the death of Riccio. "I was, therefore, surprised," he continues, "on arriving at Edinburgh, in 1861, to hear Mary warmly defended, and reference made to documents recently discovered that were strongly in her favor. I then formed the resolution to study for myself this historical problem and to discover the truth. I had no idea of writing a book, and no motive but that of satisfying my own curiosity. I have devoted several years solely to this object in Scotland, England, and Spain." M. Gauthier then gives a formidable list of authorities and manuscripts not usually quoted, acknowledges the aid of the librarians of the legal library at Edinburgh, the learned Mr. Robertson of the Register House, Robert Chambers, and the archivist of Simancas, Don Emanuel Gonzalez, and announces the result to be a complete change of opinion. He goes on to say that, before examining all the documents of the trial, he had no doubt of the guilt of Mary Stuart; but after having scrutinized and compared them, he remained and still remains convinced that it was solely to assure the fruit of their shameful victory that the barons, who had dethroned their queen with England's help, sought to throw upon her the crimes of which they themselves were the authors or the accomplices, and in which their auxiliaries were Elizabeth and her ministers.
But what is of far greater importance, M. Gauthier announces the discovery among the Simancas MSS. of documents that prove beyond all question that the silver-casket letters were forgeries. This important revelation he promises for the second volume. Preceding M. Gauthier in time, M. Wiesener, another French writer, had, in an admirable critique, demolished the foundations on which rest most of the calumnies against Mary Stuart.
And now we have Mr. Hosack's work. There is a beautiful poetic justice in the fact that the most effective defences of Mary Stuart, in the English language, come from Protestant pens, and that in Scotland among the sons of the Puritans are found her most enthusiastic advocates. Mr. Hosack is an Edinburgh lawyer, and a Protestant.
His book, written in a tone of legal calmness and dignity, stands in refreshing contrast with Mr. Froude's savage bitterness and repulsive violence, and seriously damages any credit that may be claimed for the latter as a historian. Entirely at home in the customs, localities, laws, and history of Scotland, he throws unexpected light on a hundred interesting points heretofore left in obscurity by foreign, and even English historians. Mr. Hosack also produces many valuable documents never before published. Among these are the specific charges preferred against Mary at the conference at Westminster in 1568. The "Articles" produced by Mary's accusers before they exhibited their proofs to the commissioners of Queen Elizabeth, although constantly referred to by historians, are nowhere to be found among all the voluminous collections heretofore published on the subject. Mr. Hosack discovered this valuable paper in the collection known as the Hopetoun Manuscripts, which are now in the custody of the lord clerk register. Another most interesting document presented by Mr. Hosack is one long supposed to be lost, namely, the journal of the proceedings at Westminster on the day upon which the silver casket containing the alleged letters of Queen Mary to Bothwell was produced. Then comes the inventory of the jewels of the Queen of Scots, attached to her last will and testament, made in 1566, when Mary was supposed to be dying. This paper has been but recently discovered in the Register House, Edinburgh. It is of high importance, as throwing light on a disputed point concerning Darnley. Finally, with the aid of Professor Schiern, of Copenhagen, Mr. Hosack has succeeded in ascertaining the date of the capture of Nicholas Hubert, commonly called "French Paris." This point is also weighty in connection with the question of the authenticity of the deposition ascribed to him. The English critics of Mr. Hosack's book—many of them partisans of Froude, and armed in the triple steel of their national prejudice—are unanimous in praise of his research, and the able presentation of his argument. Mr. Hosack distinctly charges Mr. Froude with "inventing fictions," and, moreover, sustains the charge. The aim of Mr. Hosack's work is not so much to write the life of Mary Stuart as to demonstrate that her accusers were guilty of the very crime (the murder of Darnley) of which they charge her, and that she was innocent, not only of that, but of any intrigue with Bothwell. Passing over in silence the period of Mary's residence in France, our author rapidly glances at the salient points in the administration of Mary of Lorraine, the mother of Mary Stuart, an admirable character, whose energy, integrity, resolution, and fortitude would have adorned the character of the greatest sovereign that ever reigned. Mr. Hosack thus speaks of her death:
"The words of the dying princess, at once so magnanimous and gentle, were listened to with deep emotion by the Protestant chiefs, who, though in arms against her authority, all acknowledged and admired her private virtues. Amidst the tears of her enemies, thus died the best and wisest woman of the age."
Knox alone, adds Mr. Hosack, sought by means of the most loathsome slanders to vilify the character of this excellent princess; and it was no doubt at his instigation that the rites of Christian burial were denied to her remains in Scotland. Mr. Hosack then takes up the history of Mary from the period of her arrival in Scotland, and ends with the commencement of her imprisonment in England.
Mary came to reign over a country virtually in the power of a band of violent and rapacious lords, long in rebellion against their king. Of the five royal Jameses, three had perished, victims of their aristocratic anarchy. The personal piety of these rebellious lords was infinitesimal; but they had an enormous appreciation of Henry VIII.'s plunder of the monasteries and division of the church lands among the nobles, and desired to see Scotland submitted to the same regimen—they, of course, becoming ardent reformers. The young queen soon won the hearts of the people of Edinburgh by her sweetness and grace. One of her first experiences was the remarkable interview with Knox, in which he bore himself as properly became "the ruffian of the Reformation," while Mary, a girl of nineteen, utterly overcame him in self-possession, logic, and command of citation from the Old Testament. The man was brimful of vanity. The wound rankled, and from that moment he was Mary Stuart's personal enemy.
Long before Mary's arrival, Knox and his friends had obtained full sway. The reformers had destroyed the monastic establishments in the central counties, and, under the influence of Knox, had an "act" passed for the total destruction of what they called "monuments of superstition;" the monuments of superstition in question being all that Scotland possessed of what was most valuable in art and venerable in architecture.
"The registers of the church, and the libraries," says Spotiswoode, "were cast into the fire. In a word, all was ruined; and what had escaped in the time of the first tumult, did now undergo the common calamity." In his sermons, Knox openly denounced Mary, not only as an incorrigible idolatress, but as an enemy whose death would be a public boon. In equally savage style he fulminated against the amusements of the court, and dwelt especially on the deadly sin of dancing. And yet Knox—we must in candor admit it—was not totally indifferent to some social amenities, for he was then paying his addresses to a young girl of sixteen, whom he afterward married. Mary had freely accorded to her Protestant subjects the privilege of worshipping God according to their own creed; but it did not enter into the views of Knox and his co-religionists that the same privilege should be accorded to Mary in the land of which she was sovereign, and with great difficulty could she obtain the right to a private chapel at Holyrood—even this being interfered with, and the officiating priest afterward insulted, beaten, and driven away. And these Christian gentlemen did not stop here. They had the insolence and inhumanity to present to the queen what they called a "supplication," in which they declared that the practice of idolatry could not be tolerated in the sovereign any more than in the subject, and that the "papistical and blasphemous mass" should be wholly abolished. To this, Mary's reply was that, answering for herself, she was noways persuaded that there was any impiety in the mass, and trusted her subjects would not press her to act against her conscience; for, not to dissemble, but to deal plainly with them, she neither might nor would forsake the religion wherein she had been educated and brought up, believing the same to be the true religion, and grounded on the word of God. She further advised her "loving subjects" that she, "neither in times past nor yet in time coming, did intend to force the conscience of any person; but to permit every one to serve God in such a manner as they are persuaded to be the best." On this, Mr. Hosack remarks, "Nothing could exceed the savage rudeness of the language of the assembly. Nothing could exceed the dignity and moderation of the queen's reply."
The enemies of Mary Stuart always seek to find excuse for the rebellious outrages of the lords and the kirk in the design attributed to Mary Stuart of introducing Catholicity to the exclusion of Protestantism. Mr. Hosack handles this portion of his subject with great ease and success, showing conclusively the admirable spirit of toleration that animated Mary throughout. Then follow the marriage of Mary with Darnley; the rebellion of Murray, Argyll, and others to deprive the queen of her crown; the energy, ability, and admirable judgment of Mary in dealing with them, and the consummate hypocrisy and falsehood of Elizabeth in feigning good-will to Mary while furnishing the rebels money and assistance. The French ambassador in London had discovered that six thousand crowns had been sent from the English treasury to the Scotch rebels. The fact was positive. He mentioned it to Elizabeth in person; but she solemnly assured him, with an oath, (elle nia avec serment,) that he was misinformed. There were strong reasons why Elizabeth would not have it believed that she had lent the rebel lords any countenance, and she therefore got up a remarkable scene for the purpose. The French and Spanish ambassadors had charged her in plain terms with stirring up dissensions in Scotland, and she desired to reply to the imputation in the most public and emphatic manner. Murray and Hamilton were summoned to appear, and in presence of the ambassadors and her own ministers she asked them whether she had ever encouraged them in their rebellion. Murray began to reply in Scotch, when Elizabeth stopped him, bidding him speak in French, which she better understood. The scene was arranged beforehand. Murray fell on his knees and declared "that her majesty had never moved them to any opposition or resistance against the queen's marriage." "Now," exclaimed Elizabeth in her most triumphant tone, "you have told the truth; for neither did I, nor any one in my name, stir you up against your queen; for your abominable treason may serve for example to my own subjects to rebel against me. Therefore get you out of my presence; ye are but unworthy traitors." This astounding exhibition of meanness, and falsehood, and folly, which it is certain, says Mr. Hosack, imposed upon no one who witnessed it, is without a parallel in history.
Mary's energy and prudence in suppressing this dangerous rebellion sufficiently refute a prevalent notion that she was indebted to the counsels of Murray for the previous success of her administration. Even Robertson admits that at no period of her career were her abilities and address more conspicuous. And more remarkable than her ability in gaining success was the moderation with which she used it. Not one of the rebels suffered death, and her speedy pardon of the Duke of Chatelherault, a conspirator against her crown, of which he was the presumptive heir, was an instance of generosity unexampled in the history of princes.
The accusation against Mary of having signed the Catholic League, put forward by so many historians—Froude, of course, among them—is clearly shown by Mr. Hosack to be utterly untrue. She never joined it. By this refusal she maintained her solemn promises to her Protestant subjects—the chief of whom remained her staunchest friend in the days of her misfortune. She averted religious discord from her dominions, and posterity will applaud the wisdom as well as the magnitude of the sacrifice which she made at this momentous crisis.
Then comes the murder of Riccio, which is generally attributed to the jealousy of Darnley and the personal hatred of the nobles. These motives, if they ever existed at all, were but secondary with the conspirators who contrived Riccio's death.
Their main objects were the restoration of the rebel lords, the deposition of the queen, and the elevation of Darnley to the vacant throne, on which he would have been their puppet.
Mr. Hosack traces, step by step, the progress of the conspiracy, and the bargaining and traffic among the conspirators for their several rewards. There was a bond of the conspirators among themselves, a bond with Darnley, and one with the rebel leaders who waited events at Newcastle. Elizabeth's ministers in Scotland were taken into their confidence and counsels, as was also John Knox, while Elizabeth was advised of and approved it. Many years ago, a Catholic convent was burned in Boston—with what circumstances of atrocity we do not now desire to recall. On the Sunday preceding the outrage, exciting sermons were delivered on the horrors of popery from more than one Protestant pulpit. So, also, on the Sunday preceding the murder of Riccio, the denunciations of idolatry from the pulpits of Edinburgh were more than usually violent, and the texts were chosen from those portions of Scripture which describe the vengeance incurred by the persecutors of God's people. The 12th of March was the day fixed for the parliament before which the rebel lords were cited to appear, under pain of the forfeiture of their titles and estates. This forfeiture the conspirators were resolved to prevent, and chose the 9th of March to kill Riccio. They could have assassinated him at any time on the street, in the grounds, in his own room; but the lords selected the hour just after supper when Riccio would be in attendance upon the queen, in order to kill him in her presence, doubtless with hope of the result of her death and that of her unborn babe from the agitation and affright that must ensue from such a scene. The contingency of Mary's death was provided for in the bond. We need not here repeat the horrible details of the scene in which, while a ruffian (Ker of Faudonside) pressed a cocked pistol to her breast until she felt the cold iron through her dress, the hapless victim of brutal prejudice and bigotry, whose only crime was fidelity to his queen, was dragged from her presence and instantly butchered. Nor need we describe the fiendish exultation and savage conduct of the assassins toward a sick, defenceless woman.
"Machiavelli," remarks Mr. Hosack, "never conceived—he has certainly not described—a plot more devilish in its designs than that which was devised ostensibly for the death of Riccio, but in reality for the destruction both of Mary Stuart and her husband."
For two days the noble assassins appeared to have been entirely successful. Riccio was killed, the parliament was dissolved, the banished lords recalled, and the queen a prisoner. But her amazing spirit and resolution scattered all their plans to the winds. The poor fool Darnley began to see the treachery of the men who had made him their tool, and Mary fully opened his eyes to his danger. At midnight on the Tuesday after the murder, the queen and Darnley crept down through a secret passage to the cemetery of the royal chapel of Holyrood and made their way "through the charnel house, among the bones and skulls of the ancient kings," to where horses and a small escort stood waiting for them. Twenty miles away Mary galloped to Dunbar, where, within three days, eight thousand border spears assembled to defend her.
The assassins, Morton, Ruthven, and their associates, fled to England, where, under Elizabeth's wing, they were of course safe. Maitland went to the Highlands, and Knox, grieving deeply over the discomfiture of his friends, took his departure for the west.
The complicity of Murray,
"The head of many a felon plot,
But never once the arm,"
was not known, and he was pardoned his rebellion, and again received by Mary into her confidence. This is the Murray constantly referred to by Mr. Froude in his History of England as "the noble Murray," "the stainless Murray"—a man who, for systematic, thorough-going villainy and treachery has not his superior in history.
Darnley, with an audacity and recklessness of consequences which seem hardly compatible with sanity, made a solemn declaration to the effect that he was wholly innocent of the late murderous plot.
The indignation of his associates in the crime knew no bounds. He alone, they said, had caused the failure of the enterprise; he had deserted them, and now sought to purchase his safety in their ruin. From that moment his fate was sealed.
Buchanan's famous lie concerning Mary's visit to the Castle of Alloa, which, to his shame, Mr. Froude substantially repeats, is disposed of effectually in a few words by Mr. Hosack.
The ride from Jedburg, too, as recounted by Buchanan in his own peculiar style, repeated by Robertson and by Froude, as far as he dares, in the teeth of the testimony on the subject, also receives its quietus at Mr. Hosack's hands.
Then follow the dangerous illness of Mary, the aggravating and fatal misconduct of Darnley, the poor queen's mental suffering and anxiety, the preliminary plotting by Murray, Maitland, Argyll, and Huntly to put Darnley out of the way, the signing of the bond among them for the murder of the "young fool and tyrant," and the insidious attempt by these scoundrels to entrap the poor heart-broken Mary into some such expression of impatience or violence against Darnley as would enable them to set up the charge of guilty knowledge against her. The conspirators themselves have put on record the noble and Christian reply of Mary Stuart, "I will that ye do nothing through which any spot may be laid on my honor or conscience; and therefore, I pray you, rather let the matter be in the state that it is, abiding till God of his goodness put remedy thereto."
Following upon the baptism of the infant prince, who afterward became James VI. of Scotland, came the unfortunately too successful endeavors of Murray, Maitland, Bothwell, and Queen Elizabeth to obtain the pardon of the Riccio murderers.
Poor Mary's political success would have been assured if she had possessed but a small share of Elizabeth's hardness of heart and vindictiveness. Always generous, always noble, always forgiving, she allowed herself to be persuaded to grant a pardon to these villains—seventy-six in number—excepting only George Douglas, who stabbed Riccio in presence of the queen, and Ker of Faudonside, who held his pistol at her breast during the perpetration of the murder. This ruffian remained safely in England until Mary's downfall, when he returned to Scotland and married the widow of John Knox.
It was about this period that Buchanan was extolling to the skies, in such Latin verses as those beginning
"Virtute ingenio, regina, et munere formæ
Felicibus felicior majoribus,"
the virtues of a sovereign whom he afterward told us every one knew at the time to be a monster of lust and cruelty! His libel was written when Mary was a fugitive in England, to serve the purposes of his employers, who had driven her from her native kingdom. The most assiduous of her flatterers as long as she was on the throne, he pursued her with the malice of a demon when she became a helpless prisoner. His slanders were addressed not to his own countrymen, for whom they would have been too gross, but to Englishmen, for the great majority of whom Scotland was a terra incognita. His monstrous fictions were copied by Knox and De Thou, and later by Robertson, Laing, and Mignet, who, while using his material, carefully abstained from quoting him as authority. Mr. Froude, the author of that popular serial novel which he strangely entitles The History of England, with delicious naïveté declares his belief in the truth of Buchanan's Detection, and makes its transparent mendacity a leading feature of his work.
According to Buchanan, the Queen of Scots was, at the period above referred to, leading a life of the most notorious profligacy. Mr. Hosack, in his calm, lawyer-like manner, shows conclusively that at that very time she never stood higher in the estimation both of her own subjects and of her partisans in England. Considering the difficulties of her position, he adds, Mary had conducted the government of Scotland with remarkable prudence and success; and her moderation in matters of religion induced even the most powerful of the Protestant nobility to regard her claims with favor.
And still the plotting went on. Motives enough, for them, had Murray, Morton, Maitland, and the rest to seek the destruction of Darnley—revenge and greed of gain. These men had imposed upon the generous nature of the queen in the disposal of the crown lands, and they well knew that Darnley had made no secret of his disapproval of the improvident bounty of his wife. These grants of the crown lands, under the law of Scotland, could be revoked at any time before the queen attained the age of twenty-five. That period was now at hand, and the danger of their losing their spoils under the influence of Darnley was imminent.
He had just been taken down with the small-pox at Glasgow, and the conspirators, well knowing Mary's forgiving temper, feared, as well they might, that his illness would lead to a reconciliation between them.
Although Bothwell had shared less in the bounty of the queen than the others, his motive was no less powerful for seeking the death of Darnley. He aspired to Darnley's place as the queen's husband, and his ambition was no secret to Murray and the others. Full willingly they lent themselves to aid him, knowing that, if successful, his plans would be fatal both to the queen and to himself.
Queen Mary went from Edinburgh to Glasgow, to visit Darnley on his sick-bed. On this visit hinges a mass of accusations against Mary by her enemies. We regret that the passages of Mr. Hosack's book in which he dissects and analyzes all the evidence covering the period from the journey to Glasgow down to the explosion at Kirk-a-field are too long to be copied here. They are masterly, and more thoroughly dispose of the slanders than any statement we have seen. He moreover demonstrates that the queen's journey to Glasgow, heretofore relied on as a proof of her duplicity because she went uninvited, was undertaken at Darnley's own urgent request. It is during this visit to Glasgow that Mary is charged with having written the two casket letters, which, if genuine, certainly would prove her to be accessory to the murder of her husband. With thorough knowledge of Scotch localities, language, customs, and peculiarities, and with a perfect mastery of all the details of testimony, pro and con, in existence on the subject—a mastery which Mr. Froude is far from possessing—Mr. Hosack makes the examination of this question of the genuineness of the Glasgow letters with an application of the laws of evidence that enables him—if we may be permitted the homely phrase—to turn them inside out. Contrasted with the sweet, trusting, child-like confidence with which the letters are received by Mr. Froude, Mr. Hosack's treatment of them is shockingly cool. In commenting upon Hume's opinion that the style of the second Glasgow letter was inelegant but "natural," Mr. Hosack remarks that human depravity surely has its limits, and the most hardened wretches do not boast, and least of all in writing, of their treachery and cruelty. Even in the realm of fiction we find no such revolting picture.
Of the third letter, the historian Robertson long since remarked that, "if Mary's adversaries forged her letters, they were certainly employed very idly when they produced this." And this remark may correctly be applied to the fourth letter. The difference between the two first and the two last is the most striking. The Glasgow letters breathe only lust and murder; but these are written, to all appearance, by a wife to her husband, in very modest and becoming language. She gently reproaches him with his forgetfulness, and with the coldness of his writings, sends him a gift in testimony of her unchangeable affection, and finally describes herself as his obedient, lawful wife. This is not the language of a murderess, and these simple and tender thoughts were not traced by the same hand that composed the Glasgow letters. They are the genuine letters of Mary, not to Bothwell, but to her husband Darnley, and they are here by result of an ingenious device to mix up a few genuine letters of Mary with those intended to prove her guilty of the murder. The only letters of importance as testimony against the queen are the two first, and they were conclusively proven by Goodall, more than a century ago, to have been written originally in Scotch.
Concerning Paris, whose testimony is strongly relied on by Mary's enemies, Mr. Hosack has made a very important discovery. According to a letter of Murray to Queen Elizabeth, Paris arrived in Leith (a prisoner) about the middle of June, 1569. But Professor Schiern, of Copenhagen, in compliance with a request made by Mr. Hosack to search the Danish archives for any papers relating to Scotland, found the receipt of Clark, Murray's agent, acknowledging the delivery to him of the prisoner Paris on the 30th of October, 1568. So that Paris was delivered up nearly a year before his so-called deposition was produced. The authenticity of his deposition, monstrous though it be, has been stoutly maintained by several of Mary's enemies. Even Hume remarks upon it,
"It is in vain at present to seek improbabilities in Nicolas Hubert's dying confession, and to magnify the smallest difficulty into a contradiction. It was certainly a regular judicial paper, given in regularly and judicially, and ought to have been canvassed at the time, if the persons whom it concerned had been assured of their own innocence."
Mr. Hume is an attractive writer, but as a historian it is long since people ceased to rely upon him for facts. The passage here quoted is a characteristic exemplification of his extraordinary carelessness. According to Mr. Hosack, the short sentence cited contains three distinct and palpable mistakes. In the first place, the paper containing the depositions of Paris was authenticated by no judicial authority. Secondly, it was not given in regularly and judicially; for it was secretly sent to London in October, 1569, many months after the termination of the Westminster conferences. Lastly, it was impossible that it could have been canvassed at the time by those whom it concerned; for it was not only kept a profound secret from the queen and her friends during her life, but it was not made public for nearly a century and a half after her death. The depositions of Paris were first given to the world in the collections of Anderson in 1725.
It did not at all suit Murray's purpose to produce Paris in open court. So, after being tortured, he was executed, and in place of a witness who might have told what he saw and heard, was produced a so-called deposition professedly written by a servant of Murray, and attested by two of his creatures, Buchanan and Wood, both pensioners of Cecil, and both enemies of the Queen of Scotland. Buchanan, of course, had full cognizance of the Paris deposition, for he subscribed it as a witness; and yet we have the singular fact that, although he appended to his Detectio the depositions of Hay, Hepburn, and Dalgleish, that of Paris is omitted. Again, in his History of Scotland, published subsequently, although he refers to Paris in several passages, he is still silent as to his deposition. The solution of this seeming singularity is simple. He rejected it for its manifest extravagance and absurdity, which, he wisely concluded, could not impose on the worst enemies of the queen.
Fable and fiction answering Mr. Froude's purpose just as well as authentic history, he of course accepts the "Paris" paper as perfectly true. A successful writer of the romance of history, Mr. Froude deserves great credit for his industry in gathering every variety of material for his novel without any absurd sentimental squeamishness as to its origin.
And now, little by little, the truth begins to come out. For full two years after the murder of Darnley, no one was publicly charged with the crime but Bothwell and the queen. And this because it was the interest of the ruling faction in Scotland, (themselves the murderers,) to confine the accusation to these two persons. But as in time events develop, we find the leaders of this faction, quarrelling among themselves, begin to accuse each other of the crime, until the principal nobility of Scotland are implicated in it. Mr. Hosack's conclusion, from a searching analysis of all the evidence on record, is, that the mysterious assassination of Darnley was not a domestic but a political crime; and it was one which for many a day secured political power to that faction which from the first had opposed his marriage, and had never ceased from the time of his arrival in Scotland to lay plots for his destruction.
As might be expected, Mary's enemies accuse her of a criminal degree of inactivity after the death of her husband. But what could she do? Who were the murderers? No one could tell. The whole affair was then involved in impenetrable mystery. Her chief officers of justice, Huntly the chancellor, and Argyll the lord-justice, were both in the plot; Bothwell, the sheriff of the county, on whom should devolve the pursuit and arrest of the criminal, had taken an active share in the perpetration of the murder, and Maitland, the secretary, who had first proposed to get rid of Darnley, was probably the most guilty of all. In a memorial afterward addressed by Mary to the different European courts, she thus describes the situation: "Her majesty could not but marvel at the little diligence they used, and that they looked at one another as men who wist not what they say or do."
And now calumny ran riot. Slanderous tongues and pens were busy. Since Mary had dismissed the insolent Randolph from her court, Elizabeth had maintained no ambassador there, so that the usual official espionage could not be carried on. Instead thereof, Sir William Drury, stationed on the Scotch border, transmitted day by day a current of scandalous stories. Mary was a woman, and her enemies might effect by slander what they could not accomplish by force. Then, too, a bigoted religious prejudice made the work easy. No matter, says our author, what was the nature of the accusation against a Catholic queen; so long as it was boldly made and frequently repeated, it was sure to gain a certain amount of credit in the end. Here follows, in Mr. Hosack's pages, an able presentation of contemporary testimony going to show the falsehood of the accusations that the queen was at this time on a footing of intimate understanding with Bothwell. Under the circumstances his trial was, of course, a farce.
The most powerful men in Scotland were his associates in guilt. One of his noble accomplices in the murder rode by his side to the Talbooth. Another accomplice, the Earl of Argyll, hereditary lord-justice, presided at the trial; and the Earl of Caithness, a near connection of Bothwell by marriage, was foreman of the jury. The parliament which met soon after did little, besides passing the Act of Toleration, but enact statutes confirming Maitland, Huntly, Morton, and Murray in their titles and estates. As we have seen, this was precisely the main object sought by these men in the murder of Darnley, an object passed over in silence by most historians, and not understood by others. Their common interest in his death was the strongest bond of union among the noble assassins. If Darnley had lived, he would have prevented the confirmation of these grants; for he had made significant threats on that subject, especially as to the gifts to Murray. Murray and the others wanted the lands and titles. They obtained them. Bothwell had his own designs, and these were insolent in their ambition. He wanted the queen's hand in marriage as a step to the throne. It was but just that his companions should help him as he had aided them. On the evening of the day on which parliament rose, (April 19th,) Both well gave an entertainment at a tavern in Edinburgh to a large party of the nobility. After wine had circulated freely, he laid before his guests a bond for their signatures. This document recited that it was prejudicial to the realm that the queen should remain a widow; and it recommended him, (Bothwell,) a married man, as the fittest husband she could obtain among her subjects. With a solitary exception—the Earl of Eglinton—all the lords present signed this infamous bond, and thereby bound themselves to "further advance and set forward the said marriage," and to risk their lives and goods against all who should seek to hinder or oppose it. It is claimed by Mr. Froude that his special saint, "the noble and stainless Murray," did not sign this bond; but it is now made plain that he did. Meantime calumny had free scope, and no invention was too gross for belief by many, if it but carried with it some injury to Mary's reputation. Thus, she is accused of journeying to Stirling for the express purpose of poisoning her infant son. Poor Marie Antoinette in after years, as we know, was accused of something worse than taking the life of her child. The answer of these two Catholic queens, great in their sufferings, and grand in their resignation, was, in each case, an eloquent burst of nature and queenly dignity. "The natural love," said Mary Stuart, "which the mother bears to her only bairn is sufficient to confound them, and needs no other answer." She afterward added, that all the world knew that the very men who now charged her with this atrocious crime had wronged her son even before his birth; for they would have slain him in her womb, although they now pretended in his name to exercise their usurped authority.
On the 23d of April, while travelling from Linlithgow to Edinburgh, with a few attendants, the queen was stopped by Bothwell, at the head of one thousand horse. Bothwell rode up, caught her bridle-rein, and assured her that "she was in the greatest possible danger," and forthwith escorted her to one of her own castles, Dunbar. Here she was kept a prisoner. Melville, who accompanied her, was sent away, having heard Bothwell boast that he would marry the queen, even "whether she would herself or not." No woman was allowed near her but Bothwell's sister.
Although our readers are familiar with the horrible story, the best account of it is, after all, Mary's own simple and modest narrative of the abominable outrage. It is found in Keith, vol. ii. p. 599, and in Hosack, p. 313. After referring to the great services and unshaken loyalty of Bothwell, she says that, previous to her visit to Stirling, he had made certain advances, "to which her answer was in no degree correspondent to his desire;" but that, having previously obtained the consent of the nobility to the marriage, he did not hesitate to carry her off to the castle of Dunbar; that when she reproached him for his audacity, he implored her to attribute his conduct to the ardor of his affection, and to condescend to accept him as her husband, in accordance with the wishes of his brother nobles; that he then, to her amazement, laid before her the bond of the nobility, declaring that it was essential to the peace and welfare of the kingdom that she should choose another husband, and that, of all her subjects, Bothwell was best deserving of that honor; that she still, notwithstanding, refused to listen to his proposals, believing that, as on her former visit to Dunbar, an army of loyal subjects would speedily appear for her deliverance; but that, as day after day passed without a sword being drawn in her defence, she was forced to conclude that the bond was genuine, and that her chief nobility were all in league with Bothwell; and finally, that, finding her a helpless captive, he assumed a bolder tone, and "so ceased he never till, by persuasion and importunate suit, accompanied not the less by force, he has finally driven us to end the work begun." Forced to marry Bothwell Mary was, to all who saw her, an utterly wretched woman, and longed only for death. The testimony on this point is very ample, and her behavior at this crisis of her history, concludes Mr. Hosack, can only be explained by her rooted aversion to a marriage which was forced upon her by the daring ambition of Bothwell and the matchless perfidy of his brother nobles.
But already a fresh plot was on foot. Melville wrote to Cecil concerning it, on the 7th of May; and on the following day, Kirkaldy of Grange sent to the Earl of Bedford a letter intended for Elizabeth's eye. Kirkaldy, the Laird of Grange, an ardent Protestant, who, at the age of nineteen, was one of the men who murdered Cardinal Beaton, enjoyed among his fellow-nobles the reputation of being a man of honor, and the best and bravest soldier in Scotland. He advised Bedford of the signing of a "bond" by "the most part of the nobility," one head of which was, "to seek the liberty of the queen, who is ravished and detained by the Earl of Bothwell;" another, "to pursue them that murdered the king." The letter concludes by asking Elizabeth's aid and support for "suppressing of the cruel murtherer Bothwell." But Elizabeth had lost not only much money, but all credit for veracity, by her last interference in Scottish affairs, and refused to have any thing to do with this plot.
For three weeks after her marriage the queen remained at Holyrood; the prisoner, to all appearance, rather than the wife of Bothwell. She was continually surrounded with guards; and the description of her situation given by Melville, who was at court at the time, agrees entirely with that of the French ambassador. Not a day passed, he says, in which she did not shed tears; and he adds that many, even of Bothwell's followers, "believed that her majesty would fain have been quit of him." The insurgent leaders—Morton, Maitland, and Hume—were busy, and soon in the field with their forces. Bothwell raised a small levy to oppose them, and the two armies met at Carberry Hill on the 15th of June, 1567, exactly one month after the marriage. There was no fighting. Dangerous as it was, Mary preferred to trust herself to the rebel lords than to remain with Bothwell. She received their pledge—that, in case she would separate herself from Bothwell, they were ready "to serve her upon their knees, as her most humble and obedient subjects and servants"—through Kirkaldy of Grange, the only man among them whose word she would take. They kept their pledge as they usually observed such obligations. What followed is too horrible to dwell upon. It is wonderful that any human being could have lived through the physical exhaustion, the insults, and the brutal treatment this poor woman was subjected to during the next two days. The people of Edinburgh grew indignant; and Kirkaldy of Grange swore the lords should not violate their promises. But they quieted him by showing a forged letter of the queen to Bothwell. It was not the first time some among them had forged Mary's signature. With every circumstance of force and brutality, Mary was then imprisoned in Lochleven, whose guardian was the mother of the bastard Murray.
And now, while the friends of Mary, numerous as they were, remained irresolute and inactive, the dominant faction made the most strenuous efforts to strengthen itself. In the towns, where its strength chiefly lay, and especially in Edinburgh, says Mr. Hosack, the Protestant preachers rendered the most valuable aid. By indulging in furious invectives against the queen, and charging her directly with the murder, they prepared their hearers for the prospect of her speedy deposition, and the establishment of a regency in the name of the infant prince. It is clear that Murray was not forgotten by his friends the preachers.
Strange as it may appear, there can be but little doubt that Elizabeth was sincerely indignant on hearing of the outrageous treatment of Mary by the lords. In her whole history, she never appeared to so much advantage as a woman and a queen. She would not stand tamely by, she said, and see her cousin murdered; and if remonstrances proved ineffectual, she would send an army to chastise and reduce them to obedience. Such conduct, and her messages to Mary while a prisoner at Lochleven, no doubt inspired the Scottish queen with the fatal confidence which induced her, a few months afterward, to seek refuge in England. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, and perhaps more unfortunately for Mary, the Queen of England's reputation for duplicity was now so well established that no one but her own ministers believed she was now sincere. Maitland, for the Scotch nobles, plainly told Elizabeth's ambassador that, after what had occurred in times past, "they could place no reliance on his mistress;" and the King of France said to Sir Henry Norris, "I do not greatly trust her." Meantime, the ministers daily denounced Mary as a murderess in their sermons, and demanded that she should be brought to justice like an ordinary criminal. Elizabeth's ambassador tried to induce the confederate lords to restrain the savage license of the preachers; but we cannot doubt, says Mr. Hosack, that they were secretly encouraged by their noble patrons to prepare the minds of the people for the deposition, if not for the murder, of the queen. Throgmorton's opinion was that, but for his presence in Scotland, she would have been sacrificed to the ambition and the bigotry of her subjects.
Still a prisoner at Lochleven, Mary had to suffer the brutality of the ruffian Lindsay, and the infamous hypocrisy of Mr. Froude's "stainless Murray," who, with money in both pockets from France and England, now came, with characteristic deceit, to defraud his sister of her crown. Mr. Hosack thus estimates his performance:
"First, to terrify his sister with the prospect of immediate death, then to soothe her with false promises of safety, and finally, with well-feigned reluctance, to accept the dignity he was longing to grasp, displayed a mixture of brutality and cunning of which he alone was capable."
Murray was proclaimed regent on the 22d of August. Soon afterward began the machinations for accusing Mary of Darnley's murder; and Murray's first care was to put out of the way every witness whose testimony could be of any importance. Hay, Hepburn, and Powrie and Dalgleish, on whom the queen's letters were said to have been found, were all tried, convicted, and executed on the same day. It was remarked that the proceedings were conducted with extraordinary and indecent haste. Hay and Hepburn, from the scaffold, denounced the nobles who had "made a bond for the king's murder." Public confidence was shaken in the regent, and the discontent of the people was expressed in plain speech and satirical ballads. Murray began to feel the need of Elizabeth's assistance. Mary, in her trusting confidence, had voluntarily placed all her valuable jewels in Murray's hands, for safe keeping. From among them he selected a set of rare pearls, the most valuable in Europe, which he sent by an agent to Elizabeth, who agreed to purchase what she well knew he had no right to sell. Under such circumstances, as is the custom among thieves and receivers, she expected a bargain, and got it. It was a very pretty transaction. In May, 1568, Mary escaped from Lochleven castle, and in a few days found herself at the head of an army of six thousand men. Of the ten earls and lords who flew to her support, nine were Protestants; and our Puritan historian finds it remarkable that, in spite of all the efforts of Murray and his faction, and in spite of all the violence of the preachers, she—the Catholic Queen of Scotland, the daughter of the hated house of Guise, the reputed mortal enemy of their religion—should now, after being maligned as the most abandoned of her sex, find her best friends among her own Protestant subjects, appears at first sight inexplicable. A phenomenon so strange, he adds, admits of only one explanation. If, throughout her reign, she had not loyally kept her promises of security and toleration to her Protestant subjects, they assuredly would not, in her hour of need, have risked their lives and fortunes in her defence.
Against her better judgment, Mary was induced to fight the battle of Langside, and lost the field. And now the queen made the great mistake of her life. Instead of trusting to the loyalty of the Scotch borderers, she determined to throw herself on the hospitality of the Queen of England. In vain did her trusty counsellors and strongest supporters seek to dissuade her. The warm professions of friendship and attachment made to her by Elizabeth, when she was a prisoner at Lochleven, had completely captivated her; and, insisting on her project, she crossed the Solway, in an open boat, to the English shore. She was received by Mr. Lowther, deputy warden, with all the respect due to her rank and misfortunes. Although she did not yet know it, Mary was from this moment a prisoner. Here Mr. Hosack, in a few eloquent passages, sets forth the reasons why the forcible detention of Mary, independently of all considerations of morality and justice, was a political blunder of the first magnitude. As the inmate of an English prison, she proved a far more formidable enemy to Elizabeth than when she wore the crowns both of France and Scotland. Never did a political crime entail a heavier measure of retribution than the captivity and murder of the Queen of Scots entailed on England.
Mary was first taken to the castle of Carlisle. Here Queen Elizabeth was represented by Lord Scrope, the warden of the marches, and Sir Francis Knollys, the queen's vice-chamberlain. These noblemen appear to have been more impressed with the mental and moral qualities of the Scottish queen than with her external graces. They describe her, after their first interview, as possessing "an eloquent tongue and a discreet head, with stout courage and a liberal heart;" and, in a subsequent letter, Knollys says, "Surely, she is a rare woman; for as no flattery can abuse her, so no plain speech seems to offend her, if she thinks the speaker an honest man." All this was written to Elizabeth, to whom, of course, it was gall and wormwood. A more remarkable passage of their letter is that in which, speaking in simple candor as English gentlemen and men of honor, they ask their royal mistress whether
"it were not honorable for you, in the sight of your own subjects and of all foreign princes, to put her grace to the choice, whether she will depart freely back into her country without your highness's impeachment, or whether she will remain at your highness's devotion within your realm here, with her necessary servants only to attend her?"
To a sovereign whose policy was synonymous with fraud, the unconscious sarcasm of this honorable advice must have been biting.
Elizabeth pledged her word to Mary that she should be restored to her throne. She at the same time pledged her word to Murray that Mary should never be permitted to return to Scotland. Then began the long nineteen years' martyrdom of Mary. The conference at York and the commission at Westminster were mockeries of justice. It was pretended there were two parties present before them—Murray and his associates on one side, Mary on the other. Mary was kept a prisoner in a distant castle, while Murray, received with honor at court, held private and secret consultations with members of both these quasi-judicial bodies, showed them the testimony he intended to produce, and obtained their judgment as to the sufficiency of his proofs before he publicly produced them; these proofs being the forged letters of the silver casket. These letters were never seen by Mary Stuart, and even copies of them were repeatedly and persistently refused her. Mr. Froude makes a lame attempt to show that some one secretly furnished her copies; but even if his attempt were successful, it does not affect the fact that the copies were officially refused her. By the time the scales had fallen from Mary's eyes, Elizabeth's art and duplicity had woven a web from which she could not be extricated. Her remaining years of life were one long, heart-sickening struggle against treachery, spies, insult to her person, her reputation, and her faith; confinement, cold, sickness, neuralgic agony, want; deprivation of all luxuries, of medical attendance, and of the consolations of religion. At every fresh spasm of alarm on the part of Elizabeth, Mary's prison was changed; frequently in dead of winter, and generally without any provision for the commonest conveniences of life. More than once, taken into a naked, cold castle, Mary's jailers had to rely on the charity of the neighbors for even a bed for their royal prisoner. At Tutbury, her rooms were so dark and comfortless, and the surroundings so filthy—there is no other word for it—that the English physician refused to charge himself with her health. But enough. We all know the sad story, and we trustingly believe the poor martyred queen has her recompense in heaven.
Mr. Hosack's treatment of the question of the authenticity of the silver-casket letters is exhaustive. More than a century ago, Goodall fully exposed the forgery, and he has never been satisfactorily answered. Mr. Froude, of course, accepts them without discussion. The conferences at York and the proceedings at Westminster are presented as only a lawyer can present them. Mary's cause gains by the most rigid scrutiny. Mr. Froude does not know enough to analyze and intelligibly present serious matters like these. He prefers a series of sensational tableaux and highly-colored dissolving views, producing for authorities garbled citations and his own fictions. Mr. Hosack's testimony, independently of its great intrinsic merit, is valuable because of his nationality and of his religion, and we hope to see his work republished in the United States. His closing page concludes thus:
"In the darkest hours of her existence—even when she hailed the prospect of a scaffold as a blessed relief from her protracted sufferings—she never once expressed a doubt as to the verdict that would be finally pronounced between her and her enemies. 'The theatre of the world,' she calmly reminded her judges at Fotheringay, 'is wider than the realm of England.' She appealed from the tyranny of her persecutors to the whole human race; and she has not appealed in vain. The history of no woman that ever lived approaches in interest to that of Mary Stuart; and so long as beauty and intellect, a kindly spirit in prosperity, and matchless heroism in misfortune attract the sympathies of men, this illustrious victim of sectarian violence and barbarous statecraft will ever occupy the most prominent place in the annals of her sex."