| <Tait's Edinburgh Magazine 1846> 
| <Mary Queen of Scots Part I ~~ Burton>
| <pb n="425">
| The multitude of documentary collections referring to 
| Mary Queen of Scots, which have been newly published, 
| demand attention by the sheer extent of surface which they 
| cover. A library of many volumes is now lying before us; and 
| the public, who have their railway schemes to attend to, then 
| monthly accounts to pay, and the general business that brings 
| them bread to attend to, demand that we the miners of 
| literature, should drive a shaft through this great stratified 
| mass, and tell them how far it appears to contain valuable 
| <hi rend="italic"> ore. </hi> We may state in the first place, and 
| before descending to particulars, that the matter of real interest 
| lately, for the first time, published, is less than we would 
| expect from the extent of the publications. The original 
| incidents, or the new lights thrown on matters already known, 
| are not numerous; and in a couple of cursory articles which 
| Prince Labanoff's complete collection suggests to us, we 
| certainly shall not confine ourselves to the documents which 
| appear for the first time in his pages. 
| It would be difficult perhaps to adduce better evidence of 
| the magic influence which the name of Mary Stuart has 
| exercised over the reading pubic of Europe, than this full 
| flowing continuation of the stream of literature, which, for 
| three hundred years, has borne her strange eventful history on 
| its bosom. Will it ever be exhausted? Surely never, so long as 
| there are Prince Labanoffs in the world. Here is pure literary 
| chivalry ~~ a great book that can have neither readers nor 
| purchasers, the fruit of the labour of fourteen years' research, in 
| all parts of Europe, offered up as a sacrifice to the manes of <p> "an 
| injured Queen." </p> Imagine the occupations, other than 
| rummaging through dusty records, in which a Prince might 
| have occupied himself for fourteen years. Picture the sojourn in 
| courts ~~ the lionism ~~ the literary reputation he might have 
| attained as a Puckler Muskau, and we can form a faint 
| conception of his sacrifices. Wo to the youthful enthusiast, 
| male or female, that, having read the "Abbot," or the 
| translation of Schiller's drama, shall expect to revel in the 
| romantic delights of these seven scarlet volumes. The 
| disappointment will be as egregious as that of the managers of 
| the Juvenile Circulating Library, who ordered Tooke's 
| Diversions of Purley. The zeal of the prince is beyond our 
| praise, as it is beyond our power to estimate it. He is the true 
| knight-errant, to whom his mistress's word is law, however 
| little meaning there may be in her commands. If a document 
| but bear Mary's signature, it is entitled to admission, however 
| unworthy the object. Hence the fine collection of letters of 
| safe-conduct which we possess in these volumes, by all of 
| which, sundry worthy burgesses, intent on their own business, 
| are permitted, <q> </q> 
| To find a series of such documents, in their honest broad 
| Scotch, printed with Parisian types, under the auspices of a 
| Russian prince, with a French analysis prefixed to each of 
| them, is not a little curious, and suggests the hope, that if any 
| future Russian prince shall publish the letters of Queen 
| Victoria, he will not omit whatsoever commissions to military 
| and naval officers, or patents of baronetcy, he is so fortunate as 
| to lay hands on. 
| We must not forget, however, in speaking of Prince 
| Labanoff's seven volumes, that they are printed for the 
| continent of Europe, rather than the British Isles. It is true that 
| the copy before us bears the imprint Londres; but the 
| typography is foreign, and intended to supply French, German, 
| Spanish, and perhaps a few Russian readers, with a general 
| recueil of the letters of Mary Queen of Scots. The editor may 
| therefore be excused for having included a few documents 
| which would hardly in this country be admitted to have either 
| historical or biographical value. Apart from the value of his 
| documents, it is due to the prince, and the sort of reputation he 
| appears to court, to say that his work is edited with wonderful 
| labour, minuteness, and critical intelligence. With regard to the 
| letters in the French language, our testimony will not go for 
| much: but, for the many specimens in our own Scottish dialect, 
| we can safely say, that we never knew like documents so 
| correctly published by a native of England. 
| The tragedy of Mary Queen of Scots, consists naturally of 
| three acts, ~~ the murder of Rizzio, the assassination of Henry 
| Darnley, and her own ignominious death. They are all 
| connected together by that dark chain of causes and effects, 
| whereby crime begets crime. They are events deeply impressed 
| on the mind of the world ~~ traditions of horror that have their 
| local range over the whole European mind; and when the time 
| shall come in which they shall be forgotten, let him predict, 
| who can foresee the day when the written tablets of the most 
| memorable events in the world's history shall be effaced. In the 
| Hague
| <pb n="428">
| they show one the doublet worn by William of Navarre, when 
| he was shot by Balthazar Gerards, pierced and blood-stained; 
| in Berlin, they proudly exhibit the accoutrements of Charles the 
| Bold, worn on the fatal field of Grandsom. But such relics are 
| mute memorials in comparison with that foul stain, that, in the 
| dark corner of the town in Holyrood, close to the mouldering 
| fragments of the contemporary furniture, marks the spot where 
| the miserable Rizzio lay bleeding from fifty-six wounds. The 
| stain may be an exhibitionist's trick after all; but if it be so, 
| surely never was drama of still life better devised than its 
| juxtaposition in that grim old chamber, with the mouldering 
| bed of state, and the ghastly tapestry hiding the little doorway 
| of the secret passage, by which the murderers entered from 
| Darnley's apartments. He would be firm nerved or 
| unimaginative, who would sleep soundly on that memorable 
| bed. Among all the narratives of this butchery, we know none 
| that can compete with that of the "Relation" by Lord Ruthven, 
| one of the principal actors. The charm of this narrative is in the 
| utter brazen effrontery ~~ the obdurate calmness, with which 
| the whole scene of violence is described, as the performance of 
| an act rather commendable than otherwise ~~ something which 
| had excited absurd prejudices, yet was substantially a useful 
| piece of public service. <q> </q> And so he proceeds, as 
| methodically as a quaker, lecturing her after such a fashion, as, 
| were it at this day employed by a London policeman to a 
| prostitute, would elicit cries of <p> "Shame, shame," </p> from an 
| audience in St. Giles. After "Signior Davie" had been 
| despatched in the outer chamber, we have a fine scene of 
| honest familiarity. Back goes Ruthven to the queen's 
| apartment, whether with his dagger sheathed or still reeking in 
| his hand he saith not. <q> </q> There are some good-natured 
| exchanges of courtesy described on the occasion, thus <q> 
| </q> 
| This, with some equally cordial social scenes passes while 
| the body of the murdered man lies in the passage. The 
| description of the removal of the body does some credit to the 
| old ruffian's power of picturesque description: ~~
| <q> </q> 
| The leaving of the whiniard or dagger sticking in the body, 
| was a neat and emphatic method of notifying that the affair was 
| one of Darnley's own. There is no doubt that Queen Mary 
| fiercely resented this cowardly, brutal, and insulting act; and if 
| she had any blood in her, could not have failed to boil at such a 
| moment. For some time after the deed, she was held a prisoner 
| in her palace. In a letter to Beaton, archbishop of Glasgow,
| <pb n="427">
| Printed by Prince Labanoff, but also published among the 
| documents in Keith's "History of Scotland," she tells us that ~~ 
| <q> </q> 
| Cut her majesty in collops! Such was the style in which 
| she had to mention to an ecclesiastical dignitary of the realm 
| the proceedings of those who were zealous for the reformation 
| of religion and morals. It should, by the way, be emphatically 
| remembered in these days of the revivalship of martyrdoms, 
| that Rizzio, like his royal mistress, was a martyr for 
| Catholicism. How they have both escaped canonization, let the 
| Vatican say if it chooses. Perhaps there was more known 
| <hi rend="italic"> there </hi> of the real character both of  
| mistress and minion, than all the volumes written about them 
| have divulged to us poor exoterics. All those concerned in the 
| slaughter were zealous advocates of the reformation, and 
| particularly of the transference of the rich church benefices 
| from the lazy ecclesiastics to persons who could apply them to 
| a better use. A <p> "band of manrent," </p> as it is termed, was 
| contracted with Darnley ~~ a deed by which, with as much 
| solemn formality as if it were a contract of charterparty or an 
| indenture of apprenticeship, they bind themselves to aid him 
| <q> </q> in this instrument, ~~ a remarkable relic of the 
| character of the times, the <p> "true religion" </p> is most anxiously 
| provided for, and they become bound to <q> </q> This is no 
| more a reproach to Protestantism than the death of Cranmer is 
| to Catholicism; but Mary may be excused if she did not think 
| either the people who slew her favourite, or the principles by 
| which they were actuated, altogether the most pure and 
| agreeable under the sun. 
| The readiness with which, while the ruffians still held 
| possession of the palace, she professed to restore Darnely, 
| whom, even before this deed of violence, she had neglected 
| and despised, to her good graces, was a piece of palapble 
| hypocrisy. Darnley was a fool, and ~~ easily talked over, as we 
| would say, if we had no respect for the dignity of history; but 
| the Mortons, Ruthvens, and Kers of Fernyhirst were made of 
| less pliant materials; and when the queen and Darnley escaped 
| through a wine cellar, and too horse for Dunbar, they found 
| they were (as we would again say, if historical dignity 
| permitted) in a nasty scrape, and being a good deal funked, cut 
| their stick. A proclamation was issued, requiring the attendance 
| of the conspirators, <q> </q> a measure which rouses the 
| virtuous indignation of Ruthven to say, <q> </q> and 
| observing that such harsh proceedings for the slaying of a mere 
| Italian menial <q> </q> he pathetically puts forth his own 
| innocence of any act or intent beyond the mere slaying of the 
| Italian; <q> </q> And so we bid farewell to the grisly Ruthven, 
| and his reasonably pious account of his own conduct, with the 
| harsh measure dealt against him for his little prank of slaying 
| Maister Davie; stopping only one moment to mark the curious 
| type which this one family affords of the wild nature of the 
| times. It was a son of this same Ruthven who afterwards went 
| to Lochleven Castle to force Mary to resign the crown; and 
| who on another occasion joined in the forcible seizure of King 
| James at "The Raid of Ruthven." The next generation were the 
| plotters in that mysterious incident of the Gowrie conspiracy, 
| the genuine features and details of which were washed out in 
| the blood of the devoted house of Gowrie. James was 
| stronger-handed than his poor mother. Proclamations under pain of 
| rebellion sufficed him not; and a rapid death was the fate of 
| those who had lifted their hand against the Lord's anointed. His 
| vengeance fell upon the females even of this house, whose 
| blood-relationship to the conspirators was their only crime; and 
| even the infant children of the devoted race were persons 
| whom it was dangerous to harbour. King James, pusillanimous, 
| wavering, and dilatory, where matters of national policy were 
| concerned, was prompt and energetic as the tiger in punishing 
| those who had injured or endangered his sacred person. But to 
| return to his queenly mother. 
| Of the second act of her tragedy, the local vestiges are 
| now swept away. The noble colonnades of the University of 
| Edinburgh cover the once open space outside the wall where 
| stood the lonely tenement of the Kirk of Field. The blast by 
| which it was destroyed must have been an effectual one, for the 
| building is described as if scarce one stone remained upon 
| another. Yet some mouldering foundations, known to have 
| been those of the devoted dwelling, were visible within the 
| memory of man, and must have been visited and dreamed
| <pb n="428">
| over by Scott. It seems to have been but a poor and 
| ill-proportioned dwelling-house, too well suited for the murderous 
| purpose for which, whether by the queen or others, it was 
| doubtless selected. The Duke of Hamilton's spacious mansion 
| stood near the spot; and it was there that the wretched invalid 
| naturally expected that he was to be taken. But a dwelling of a 
| different kind had been prepared for him. In that day every 
| Scotsman's house was literally <p> "a castle." </p> No person of any 
| consideration would occupy a building without the walls of the 
| city, which was not in some measure a garrison. The old 
| domestic architecture of Scotland, in its difference from that of 
| England, tells the present generation the history of the turbulent 
| manners of our ancestors. While the English baron, in the midst 
| of his open deer park, spread forth his wide, low, wooden villa, 
| with its broad hospitable gateway and un suspicious bow 
| windows, the Scottish laird was immured in a tall, grim, stone 
| tower on the top of a rock, where a thick iron-bound door led 
| up a narrow stair-case to vaulted chambers lighted only by 
| loop-holes for muskets. Had he adopted the open airy 
| architecture of the more peaceful south, it is odds but his next 
| neighbour might have shot him as he looked over his grounds 
| from his bow-window. Remembering that it was an age of 
| garrisoning and fortifying, the reader of the Queen Mary 
| controversy cannot avoid being struck by the slight protection 
| that seems to have been afforded to Darnley in the Kirk of 
| Field. A suburban house of the present day would be better 
| protected. The house had a back door; but, as if it were the 
| golden age when oak and iron were useless, this door was 
| taken off, because nothing more handy could be found to cover 
| the <p> "vat" </p> in which Darnley was bathed. This incident, like 
| others which we shall have more particularly to mention, has 
| been founded on as evidence against Queen Mary; but we 
| cannot help thinking this a narrow method of treating historical 
| evidence. Monarchs do not perpetrate crimes with their own 
| hands, or devise the minutiae of their plotting. Assent and 
| encouragement are the forms in which their guilty designs are 
| moulded. There were heads to plot and hands to perpetrate the 
| murder, without troubling their royal mistress with details; and 
| whatever of minute pre-arrangement is shown to have existed 
| need not be attributed to <hi rend="italic"> her </hi> It is by 
| her general conduct before and after the event, her intercourse 
| with the principal perpetrator of the crime, and her expressions 
| of feeling in relation to it, that the student of history should 
| judge whether or not she appeared to have acted in it that guilty 
| part of foreknowledge, permission, and encouragement, which 
| is all that is necessary to make her as guilty in heart as if with 
| her own hand she had fired the train. 
| Those who maintain the perfect innocence of Queen Mary, 
| certainly do not perform a service to their cause in also 
| maintaining that she had great strength of judgment, courage, 
| and a natural sense of propriety. All these are unfortunately 
| necessary adjuncts of the character of pure heroineship, and 
| must be supported in their full integrity, otherwise the ideal 
| character falls to pieces; and then every fragment of it becomes 
| liable to a critical examination by historical inquirers, and to be 
| tried by all the vulgar tests which are applied to commonplace 
| and unidealized characters, such as those of William III, Oliver 
| Cromwell, and bloody Mary. Those who, not of the sworn 
| band of knight-errants, maintain that she was innocent, cannot 
| but admit that she was miserably weak and foolish in running 
| after Bothwell, in with-holding her aid to bring him to justice, 
| in consenting to marry him when it was beyond doubt, that he 
| had murdered her husband, and in desiring a compromise when 
| writings were produced against her, which either were forged, 
| or, if not, demonstrated her own guilt. For our own part, we 
| think she was a woman of genius, and with a mind possessing a 
| peculiar degree of subtle strength. Of the far-seeing policy with 
| which Elizabeth guided, if she did not quite control her 
| passions, the Scottish queen possessed not a vestige. Her 
| talents were not for ruling. But they were those of a woman of 
| the world; and had it been her fate to remain the first female in 
| the brilliant court of France, guided and protected by a 
| powerful husband, surrounded by courtiers sage in council, 
| lifted far above the touch of the ruder instruments of power, or 
| any contact with ruffianly deeds, ~~ she might have left behind 
| her, in addition to the reputation of her beauty, such a name for 
| wit, wise counsel, and good fortune, as might have allied the 
| name of Marie de France with prosperity and happiness as 
| firmly as that of Mary Stuart is associated with calamity and 
| misery. Wherever her lot had been cast, strong passion, and a 
| deep-rooted love of pleasure, must have marked her career; but 
| the indulgence of these propensities in prosperity is as different 
| from their restless torture in adversity, as the deep smooth river 
| from the roaring cataract. Yet with him who was her mate in 
| France, such a joyous career had as little apparent chance of 
| accompanying Mary, as when she landed on the dirty dreary 
| pier of Leith, and was received by musicians playing on 
| three-stringed fiddles. The seventeen months during which she was 
| Queen of France bred for that country calamities enough for 
| centuries. They were not Mary's doing; but they were caused 
| by the conduct of her relations. Blood was set a-flowing on all 
| sides; and calamitous as was the history of her reign in her 
| native land ~~ calamitous both to herself and the people ~~ it 
| seems as if the same game had been begun in France, and the 
| scene had been merely shifted across the channel when Mary 
| left La Belle France for dreary Scotland. 
| When we look at the state of society in which she was 
| brought up, and to her own strong passions and wayward 
| temper, there could be no more natural occurrence than that, if 
| she despised and detested Darnley, as there is little doubt that 
| she did, and loved another man, she would be careful not to 
| baulk any scheme for getting rid of him. 
| On this, as on the other disputed matters of Scottish 
| history, Mr. Tytler is the most impartial
| <pb n="429">
| and complete historian. There are some qualities of which the 
| world speaks well in the abstract, but against which it levies 
| exterminating war in detail; and historical impartiality is one of 
| them. He who refuses to bow the knee to any of the popular 
| idols, must expect no mercy at the hands of their worshippers. 
| His vocation is the consulting of old books and manuscripts, 
| and the drawing inferences from what he there finds of the 
| conduct and character of the persons to whom they relate. It 
| becomes him to keep his eye fixed on these original lights of 
| history, and to permit them to be coloured by no reflection 
| from living prejudice or party spirit. This is an independence, 
| which the partisan cannot tolerate. He flies at the historian's 
| throat, and bids him prove A and B to be licentious, cruel, and 
| superstitious; and C and D to be pure, conscientious, and 
| devout; because the assailant himself partakes of the opinions 
| of the latter, and hates those of the former. The matter is made 
| personal; historical evidence goes for no more than if it were 
| adduced in the Central Criminal Court. Lists of conspirators, in 
| the handwriting of the confidential clerks of sagacious 
| statesmen; contemporary letters, by well-informed men; are all, 
| be their weight what it may in ordinary causes, to go for 
| nothing on these occasions, because people will that it should 
| be so. The evidence that George Wishart had connected 
| himself with a conspiracy to put Cardinal Beaton to death, is as 
| complete as the evidence of Beaton, the main author of the 
| death of <p> "the martyr," </p> having thereby out-generaled him; 
| yet there are people who still obstinately maintain that the latter 
| was a persecuting demon, and the former an injured, innocent 
| saint, because the one was a Catholic and the other a 
| Protestant. For our own part, we think ~~ we know it will make 
| many worthy people shake their heads ~~ that the same 
| historical evidence on which we condemn the conduct of a 
| Catholic, is sufficient for condemning that of a Protestant. We 
| remember a very able declaimer against the scarlet lady on 
| seven hills, being in a friendly argument met by a statement, 
| the truth of which was no further vouched for, than by the word 
| of some very respectable "Papists." The whole of this 
| testimony was at once thrown overboard by our partisan, upon 
| this comprehensive, and certainly also comprehensible 
| principle, that, as the religion of Popery was essentially false, 
| and could not be learned without imbibing the principles and 
| practice of lying, nothing spoken in such a quarter ought to be 
| believed.
| After a serious and solemn survey and estimate of the 
| weakness and folly of the human race ~~ that weakness and 
| folly about which so many clergymen have declaimed in so 
| many sermons ~~ we are inclined to consider that the most 
| flagrant instances of it are to be found in the practice of 
| erecting historical idols. Why should any respectable man, <q> 
| </q> who pays 
| his income tax and his seat rights, and has never allowed his 
| bills to be <p> "written on," </p> hallucinate himself about the questions, 
| whether Queen Mary was accessory to the murder of  Darnley? 
| or Knox acquainted with the design of slaying Rizzio? Or 
| Wishart a plotter of the death of Beaton? Any more than about 
| the discovery of the longitude or the quadrature of the circle? 
| What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba? If a man will argue for 
| the Corn Laws, or for the established Church of Ireland, or for 
| bribery at elections, or for any given party being in office to the 
| exclusion or all others, there is sense and reason in it; for he 
| fighting for that which brings either money, or power, which is 
| as good a thing as money, to himself. But the reason why 
| people set themselves to fight the controversial battles of 
| clients, who have been resting in their graves for centuries, is 
| not so simple. Yet, lime all other human propensities and 
| follies, it has its cause. Let us try if we can throw a little light 
| thereon. 
| The spirit of political and religious party is certainly one 
| of the most effectual poisoners of historical impartiality. A set 
| of people who indulge themselves in a certain series of 
| opinions, single out some conspicuous man of former days, as 
| having held and acted upon the same set of opinions; for few 
| will readily admit that their opinions are not of an ancient 
| pedigree. Having thus fixed on their archetype, the next step is 
| to discover who and what he was. But the inquiry must be so 
| conducted as to prove that he was exactly what his self-adopted 
| disciples would wish him to have been; and any man throwing 
| light on his history and conduct, to the effect of showing that 
| those who set him up as an idol and leader were in a mistake as 
| to his true history, must at once be punished for historical 
| treason. <q>  
| </q> says a legal adage. Every idol is presumed 
| to be innocent, and no person must prove him guilty, says the 
| adage of historical practice. Proper historical proof is of a 
| peculiar kind, as distinct from legal as it is from mathematical. 
| The historical philosopher has no agent and counsel before 
| him. He has no <hi rend="italic"> corpus delicti </hi> which 
| must lie at somebody's door. If there be matters left dark that 
| ought to be explained, he cannot bid that lawyers stand up and 
| explain them. If there be something suspicious about the 
| conduct of a party, which yet that party might be able to 
| explain to the satisfaction of the judge, the turf has been lying 
| for centuries on his head. It follows, that all those rules of law, 
| which presume that there are living and acting human beings in 
| the presence of the judge, instead of silent historical records 
| must be abandoned; and that a different method must be 
| adopted, dispensing with the presumptions arising from the 
| conduct of the parties, as the conduct itself is wanting. The 
| misfortune, as we shall presently show, is, that in most debates 
| there is one side that will not dispense with strict juridical 
| rules. 
| Lawyers do not in general make candid historical critics. 
| The practice of their profession naturally leads them to apply 
| its rules, and they are quite insufficient to the formation of a 
| correct judgment. We shall give an instance in the historical 
| criticisms of a writer with whom ultimate
| <pb n="430">
| opinions on several important questions we are disposed to 
| agree, Malcolm Laing. In his "Dissertation on the Murder of 
| Darnley," where he is counsel against Queen Mary, and 
| certainly makes out, both as a lawyer and a historical critic, an 
| overwhelming case, he examines the public records about the 
| period of the murder, and finds that the minor agents concerned 
| in it had all received marks of the royal munificence, chiefly in 
| the form of gifts of forfeited ecclesiastical endowments, 
| immediately before the murder. Here the acute special pleader 
| thinks he has found the bribe, which at once indicates the 
| briber's accession to the crime. In a court of law, where the 
| briber is confronted with the witnesses and a jury, the 
| conclusion would be perfectly legitimate; because the accused, 
| warned that such evidence would be brought forward at the 
| trial, might be able to give an explanation of the suspicious 
| coincidence, were it capable of being explained. But before the 
| court of historical criticism, the records live and speak, but the 
| party against whom they are adduced is dumb. The queen is not 
| present to tell, that, infatuated by her wretched love for 
| Bothwell, she promoted and enriched whomsoever he 
| favoured, and enquired not whether they were people about the 
| person of her husband, or who or what they were. She is not 
| able to tell us that she knew no more of these gifts than her 
| present majesty does of the renewal of grants of crown lands. 
| There is enough to show that she had a guilty conscience 
| without the aid of these special pleadings, founded on such 
| incidents as ought not to bear weight, unless they be 
| dove-tailed into each other in the accurate framework of a criminal 
| trial, where every new discovery affords the opportunity of a 
| new explanation. 
| The false analogy between legal and historical evidence is 
| the tool which party spirit most frequently employs for the 
| perversion of history. It strictly applies the old proverb, that 
| one man may steal a cow, while another may not look over a 
| hedge. A set of people having fixed on some long departed 
| historical character as their prototype, behold! They establish a 
| vested right in their opinions of his character, and the historical 
| critic shall as soon take possession of any of the goods and 
| chattels of the individual champions without process of law, as 
| believe or state <reg orig="any thing"> anything </reg> to 
| the prejudice of their idol without 
| legal proof. Thus, all ordinary historical characters are left to 
| be dealt with according to the ordinary rules of historical 
| evidence, whereby people judge as calmly and dispassionately 
| from such lights as history throws in their way, as they would 
| decide a question about primary rocks or tertiary strata. But if a 
| Calvin or a John Knox, a Hildebrand or a Queen Mary, be the 
| object of inquiry; some persons insisting that they were all 
| perfection, demand that whoever says a word against them 
| shall adduce as full and sufficient evidence as if he demanded a 
| verdict to be followed by sentence of transportation; and if  
| <reg orig="any one"> anyone </reg> venture to treat 
| such personages according to the ordinary 
| rules of historical criticism, he must be put down as an enemy 
| and a scoffer. Such is the fate of the impartial historian who 
| ventures to examine any of the great disputed questions of 
| modern history.
| In cases where charges cannot be denied, because they are 
| attested by the partisans of the idols, and are boasted of by 
| themselves, there is a method of viewing them not less 
| pernicious to historical truth. Violence, political profligacy, and 
| falsehood, are perhaps the terms that, if they were actions of 
| the present day, would be bestowed on certain feats which the 
| great men of the sixteenth century boast of having performed. 
| On these occasions, the accepted method of treating the matter 
| is to say, that great deeds to be done, required men of great 
| nerve and little scruple; that the refinements of modern 
| morality are not applicable to those who had so stupendous a 
| mission before them; that the corruptions to be destroyed were 
| enormous; and it was the mission of the faithful workers of 
| their master's work to lay on and spare not. We admit that the 
| conduct of the men of the sixteenth century should not be 
| judged by the moral cod of the nineteenth; but we object to the 
| practice of judging a portion by the old code, and another by 
| the new. If the cunning of Wishart, and the bold ferocity of 
| Knox, are to be judged of by the moral code of their own age, 
| so also are the cruelties of Hamilton and Beaton. We have 
| much more sympathy with the opinions of the former than with 
| those of the latter; to speak distinctly, we think the opinions of 
| the reformers were right, and those of the old hierarchy wrong. 
| But we would judge the methods they respectively took for the 
| furtherance of their opinions, by one and the same law. We do 
| not think that this difference in the estimate of their creeds, 
| wide as it is, justifies any licence to the conduct of the one 
| party in pushing its opinions, which is not concede to the other. 
| Every party, of course, thinks itself right; and herein the 
| Protestant and the Catholic were alike. It should be no 
| justification to the former, of acts that would be condemned if 
| done by the other, that <hi rend="italic"> we </hi> also think 
| the Protestants right in the fundamentals of their creed. Those 
| who see the right in theory, have the less excuse if they do 
| wrong in practice. If we were bound to balance excuses for 
| wrong and violence, we are inclined to think that the supporters 
| of an old established system have a better justification for 
| intolerance, than the propounders of innovations, however 
| excellent. Surely zealous and faithful Protestants should make 
| allowances for the erroneous policy of men brought up in the 
| pagan darkness of popery. The contemporary documents of the 
| time afford us perpetually such scenes as the following, which 
| Randolph describes in writing to Cecil: ~~
| <quotation>
| <pb n="431">
| </quotation>
| Now, if the historical critic chooses to say that such conduct is 
| but characteristic of men living in that brutal and vicious age, 
| we test his sincerity by insisting that he shall make the same 
| allowance for the conduct of the Catholic party.  If he justify 
| and vindicate the conduct of the Protestants, saying that it was 
| necessary for the accomplishment of their great work, and that 
| they were bound to break down all impediments to its 
| accomplishment; we set him down as one who would vindicate 
| the still greater crimes of Marat and Robespierre, if it suited his 
| purpose. 
| By our own admission, we are treading on perilous 
| ground: the reformers on one side ~~ idols of a multitude of 
| well-meaning and not very well read people, who believe that 
| men who held opinions so much resembling their own, could 
| not do wrong; Queen Mary on the other, who has been idolized 
| as a heroine of romance, and is, therefore, perfection. Between 
| the two, we have certainly more sympathy with the former 
| partisanship. A political, or religious idol, is at least the 
| representative of earnest thought, of deep, fixed opinion, 
| respectable in error or extravagance. The ideal idol is but a 
| play-thing, which people have elevated into consequence, to 
| gratify their idle humours. The champions of opinions are 
| beings of real flesh and blood, of passions and propensities; 
| and, indeed, the most ordinary tactic of their champions is a 
| sympathy with these their passions and propensities, and a 
| vindication of the corresponding acts. But the romantic idol 
| must be all purity: it must exhibit no stain of humanity, either 
| in the form of weakness or of wickedness. The chivalrous 
| vindicators of innocent princesses, are thus the most intolerable 
| of historical coxcombs. They will no more meet us on fair 
| ground of discussion, than Sir Amadis de Gaul would meet 
| Bottom the weaver in single combat. Queen Mary must not 
| only be held free of crime, but she must not be admitted to 
| have a single frailty or folly. To keep her thus pure, her 
| champions have had to clear a wide space of ground round her. 
| She did certainly marry that same dark, scowling ruffian, 
| Bothwell; but lest <reg orig="any one"> anyone </reg> 
| should imagine she was stained 
| thereby, her sworn champion, honest, stupid, dissipated old 
| Walter Goodal, proves that Bothwell was an innocent and 
| ill-used man. In such championship, every manifestation of 
| human frailty must be at once denied; for its admission is a 
| flaw in the crystal goblet; and therefore the Minerva press will 
| as soon present any of its heroines consuming a repast of rump 
| steak, washed down with bottled stout, as your regular 
| vindicator of Queen Mary will admit that she ever did any act 
| that could be termed either wicked or foolish. The general 
| opinion of Queen Mary's beauty has been the cause of all this 
| romantic championship. Heretical as it may seem, we cannot 
| help advancing the proposition that her personal charms were 
| probably not so great as they have been represented; and that 
| her influence over those who surrounded her arose, in a great 
| measure, from the talent with which she used the advantages of 
| her polished French training, ~~ a training which gave her, 
| among the somber courtiers of Britain, something like the 
| superiority which a city miss will hold among her clownish 
| connexions in the country. <reg orig="Every one"> Everyone </reg> 
| knows how far a little 
| beauty will go with such advantages; few, who have studied 
| the nature of loyal communities, can avoid observing  how 
| zealously they will heap the praise of beauty of the queen, if 
| she afford but a small excuse for the attribute, and with what 
| difficulty those who have not beheld the regal face will obtain 
| data for justly appreciating it. Mary must have been decidedly 
| above the average of good looks. Her enemies admitted that 
| she was of a pleasing countenance and a goodly presence; but 
| there is much reason to doubt is she possessed the wonderful 
| loveliness with which her followers endowed her. <q> 
| </q> Lord Hardwicke says, with much simplicity in 
| his "State Papers," <q> </q> Sir Walter Scott, in the "The 
| Abbot," noticing the same discrepancy, weaves it into one of 
| his fine fanciful imaginings. <q> </q> he says, 
| <q> </q> 
| Now we call all who are curious in iconography to witness, if a 
| large proportion of the alleged portraits of Queen Mary are not, 
| independently of similarity of dissimilarity, positively hideous. 
| That there are several of them on which the public <q> 
| </q> <q> </q>, is very true; but the resemblance is of 
| the same class which the musician's son acknowledged in his 
| father's portrait, when he said it was <q> 
| </q> There is a certain authorized costume, a sort of 
| stage property, in which <q> 
| </q> is always understood to appear. Their general features are, 
| a close-fitting red tunic, adorned with jewels; and a small 
| scull-cap, which pressing close on the front of the head, but opening 
| wide towards either temple, allows the full expanse of the 
| forehead to be seen, and lock of light brown hair to stray forth 
| at either side. A son of Sir John Medins, more celebrated for 
| his success in drinking than in painting, drove a thriving 
| <pb n="482">
| Trade by painting to order, <q> 
| </q> which, hanging on the walls of respectable old houses, 
| and having grown mouldy and dirty, besides suffering the usual 
| penance of pictures in Scottish country houses, from the 
| scouring cloth of the nymph who brightens the furniture at 
| early dawn, obtain a very venerable decayed and genuine 
| appearance, and become capable of being associated with some 
| misty tradition about the loyalty of the family, and the last 
| melancholy token of remembrance bestowed on an unfortunate 
| ancestor, by the still more unfortunate princess, whom it was 
| his lot to serve. It appears to have been the fashion of the court 
| ladies of the day, to have their pictures taken in the same 
| costume in which their sovereign was represented; and their 
| portraits are often mistaken for those of the Cleopatra of the 
| North, as well as the representations of her mother, Mary of 
| guise, of Margaret duchess of Parma, and of Elizabeth the 
| daughter of Henry II of France. If her features had been so 
| transcendently lovely as they are said to have been, would it 
| have been so difficult to have identified her pictures? would 
| they have been so very different from each other, unless in the 
| instances where they coincide in the mere article of costume? 
| But to return to the great question: 
| The fairness and impartiality of Mr. Tytler are peculiarly 
| conspicuous, in his treatment of the question of Queen Mary's 
| guilt. In the days when historical partisanship was still more 
| conspicuous than at present, and it was a matter of established 
| practice for a writer always to choose his side, and display his 
| talents in support of it, his grandfather immortalized himself, 
| by a vindication of the injured queen, so ingenious, and at the 
| same time so convincing, that Johnson oracularly pronounced 
| all doubts of her innocence to be forever at an end. Respect for 
| the memory of his ancestor, begetting a partiality for the views 
| supported by him, must have prompted Mr. Tytler to favour the 
| cause of Queen Mary. But he had begun to write history with 
| the sound maxim, that to arrive at truth is better than to support 
| a theory; and the simple unimpassioned manner in which he 
| sets forth a train of circumstances, surrounding her character 
| with suspicion, must in the minds of impartial readers, tell 
| formidably against her own declarations of innocence.