“Long years!—It tries the thrilling frame to bear, And eagle-spirit of a child of song— Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong; And the mind’s canker in its savage mood, When the impatient thirst of light and air Scorches the heart; and the abhorred grate, Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade, Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain With a hot sense of heaviness and pain!”—Lament of Tasso.

Eighteen long years of solitary grief—of that most wretched sickness that arises, even to a proverb, from hope too long deferred—had already passed away since, in the fatal action of Langside, the wretched Mary had for the last time seen her banner fall, and her adherents scattered like chaff before the wind by the determined valor of her foes. All, all was lost! It had been the work of months to draw that gallant army to a head, of which so many now lay stark in their curdled gore; while the miserable remnant were hunted like beasts of chase, to perish, when taken, upon the ignominious scaffold. And now, of all the noble gentlemen who had thronged to her bridle-rein on that fatal morning, high in hope as in valor, the merest had escaped to guard the person of that sovereign whom they loved so truly, and in behalf of whom they had endured so deeply. Her crown was lost for ever; nor her crown only, but her country.

Of all the glorious gifts which, at an earlier period of her eventful life, nature appeared to shower upon her head, freedom alone remained. The palfrey which bore her from the battle-field was now the sole possession of the titular monarch of three fair domains; the wild moors, over which she fled in desperate haste, her only refuge from persecutors the most unrelenting365 that ever joined sagacity to hatred in the performance of their plans; the dozen gallant hearts who rallied yet around their queen, beneath the guiding of the stout and loyal Herries, her only court, her only subjects. Still she was free; and to one who for months before had never seen the blessed light of heaven but its lustre was sullied by the dim panes through which it forced its way, to lend no solace to her captivity, the fresh breeze which eddied across the purple moorlands of her native land had still the power to impart a sense of pleasure, fleeting, it is true, and doubtful, but still, in all its forms and essentials, absolute and real pleasure.

At the full distance of sixty Scottish miles from the accursed field which had witnessed the downfall of all her hopes, worn out in body and depressed in spirit, she paused to take, in the abbey of Dundrennan, a few hours of that repose without which, even in the most trying circumstances, the mind can not exist in its undiminished powers. At this juncture, it appeared to those about her person that Mary was utterly deserted by that wonderful sagacity, that clear insight into the motives of others, which had ever constituted one of the strongest points of her character. The chief object of the faithful few, who had clung to her with unblenching steadiness through this her last misfortune, had been to bear her in security to some point whence she might effect her escape to the sunny shores of that land wherein she had passed the happiest, the only truly happy, hours of her checkered existence. Queen-dowager herself of France, knit by the closest ties of interest and friendship to the court of Versailles—to which, moreover, Scotland had ever been considered an auxiliar and well-affected state, no less than an easy pretext for hostilities against its natural antagonist—she had been there secure, not of safety only, but of the full enjoyment of rank, and wealth, and dignity, and pleasure, if indeed pleasure were yet within the reach of one who had herself366 suffered, and who had beheld all those that loved her suffer, as Mary the last queen of Scotland. Inclination, it would have seemed, no less than policy, should have urged the hapless sovereign to the measure advocated by each and all of her devoted train; for but a few years had flown since she had felt all those pangs which render exile to a delicate and sensitive mind the heaviest of human punishments, on parting from the fair shores of that land, which even then perhaps some prophetic spirit whispered, she must behold no more! Herries, the bold and loyal Herries, bent his knee, stiffened with years of toil and exposure, to sue of his adored mistress the only boon of all his labors, all his sufferings, that she would avoid the fatal soil of England.

“Remember,” he had cried, in tones which seemed in after-days of more than human foresight—“remember how the false and wily woman, who sways the sceptre of England with absolute and undisputed sway—remember, I say, with what unflinching determination she has thwarted you in every wish of your heart; with what depth of secret enmity she has at all times, and in all places, cherished your foes, and injured all who were most dear to you! and wherefore, oh wherefore, my beloved mistress, wherefore should her course of action now be altered, when she has no longer a powerful queen with whom to strive, but rather a fugitive rival to oppress? Elizabeth of England—believe me, noble lady—has marked this crisis as it drew nigh, with that unerring instinct which directs the blood-raven to its destined victim while life yet revels in its veins; and surely, so surely as you enter her accursed eyry, shall you feel her vulture-talons busy about your heartstrings! For years, my noble mistress, has Herries been your servant; at council or in field, with ready hand and true word, has he ever served the Stuart. It becomes me not to boast, yet will I speak: when Seyton, and Ogilvy, and Huntley, were dismayed—when367 Hamilton himself hung back—Herries was ever nigh.”

“Ever, ever true and loyal!” cried the hapless queen, touched even beyond the consideration of her own calamities by the speech of the brave veteran—“my noble, noble Herries, and bitter, most bitter has been the reward of truth and valor; but so has it ever been with Mary. I tell thee, baron, for me to love a bird, a tree, a flower, much less a creature such as thou art, an honorable, upright, and devoted friend, was but that creature’s doom: all whom I have loved have I destroyed! Alas, alas for the undaunted spirits that were severed from the forms they filled so nobly, on that dark battle-field!”

“Think not of them, my liege—mourn not for them,” interrupted the baron. “Knightly, and in their duty, have they fallen. Their last blow was stricken, and their last slogan shouted, in a cause the fairest that ever hallowed warrior’s blade. They are at rest, and they are happy. But think of those who, having lost their earthly all to save thee, would yet esteem themselves pre-eminently happy so they might see thee free and in security. Oh! hear me, Mary—hear for the first, last time—hear the prayer of Herries! Go not, go not—as you love life, and dignity, and liberty—as you would prove your faith to those who have never been faithless to you—go not to this accursed England!”

But it had all been vain. The fiat had gone forth, and reason had deserted, as it would seem, the destined victim. No arguments, however lucid—no fears, however natural, could divert her from this fatal project. With the choice of good and evil fairly set before her—honor, and rank, and liberty, in France, a prison and an axe in England—deliberately and resolutely she rushed upon her fate! And when she might have found a willing asylum in the arms of kindred monarchs, she yielded herself to the tender mercies of a rival queen, a rival beauty; a fierce, unforgiving, unfeminine foe; a being who, as368 she aped the name, so also displayed the attributes and nature of the lion! How could Mary—a professed foe, a claimant of her crown, a woman fairer, and of brighter parts even than her own—a mother, while she was but a barren stake—how could Mary, with so many causes to awaken her deathless hostility, hope for generosity or for mercy from a queen who could even sacrifice without a pang her inclinations to her interest; whose favors but marshalled those on whom they fell to the scaffold and the block; whose dearest favorites, whose most faithful servants had fallen, one by one, beneath the headsman’s axe; who had proved herself, in short, a worthy heiress to the soulless tyrant from whom she had sprung, by the violence of her uncurbed passions, and by the hereditary pleasure with which, through all her long and glorious reign (glorious, as it is termed, for with the multitude the ends will ever justify the means, and foreign conquest hallow domestic tyranny), she rioted in innocent and noble blood!

The Rubicon had been passed—and scarcely passed, before Mary had discovered the entire justice, no less than the deep love, manifested by the parting words of Herries. As her last sovereignty, she had stepped aboard the barge that was to waft her from her discontented and ungrateful subjects to a free and happy home, as she too fondly hoped, in merry England. Girt with the bills and bows which had battened so deeply and so often in the gore of Scottishmen, gallantly dressed, and himself of gallant bearing, Lowther, the sheriff of the marches, received the royal fugitive. With every mark of deference that manly strength is bound to show to female weakness, with all the chivalrous respect a good knight is compelled by his order to display to innocence and beauty—nay, more, with all the profound humility of a subject before his queen—did he conduct the hapless lady aboard his bark. Yet, while the words of welcome were upon his tongue, while he dwelt with loyal eagerness369 on the sincerity and love of England’s Elizabeth toward her sister-queen—by his refusal to admit above a limited and trifling portion of her train to share the asylum of their mistress, he had already drawn the distinction between the royal captive and the royal guest.

And so it afterward appeared. In vain did Mary petition as a favor, or claim as a right, an interview with her relentless persecutor. She should have known that even if Elizabeth could, by her constitution, have pardoned her assumption of the style or titles of the English monarchy, she could yet never overlook, never forgive her surpassing loveliness, her elegant accomplishments, her brilliant wit, her more than mortal grace! She might have condescended to despise the rival queen—she could only stoop to hate the rival beauty. From castle to castle had she been transferred, with no regard for either her rank or convenience. From prison to prison, from warder to warder, had she been conveyed, as each abode seemed in turn insecure to the lynx-eyed jealousy of her tormentor, or every jailer in turn sickened at the loathsome weariness of his hateful and degrading employment. No better proof—if proof were needed—could be adduced of Elizabeth’s tyrannical and cruel despotism, than the unconstitutional authority by which she forced noble after noble, the very pride and flower of the English aristocracy, to change their castles into prisonhouses, their households into warders and turnkeys, their very lives into a state of anxious misery, which could only be surpassed by that of the unhappy prisoner they were, so contrary to their will, compelled to guard.

After the base mockery of the trial instituted at York, but a few months after her arrival—that trial wherein a brother was brought forward to convict his sister of adultery and murder—that trial which, though it pronounced the prisoner unconvicted, yet inflicted on her all the penalties of conviction—it scarcely370 appears that Mary ever entertained a hope of obtaining her liberty, much less the station which was her right, from either the justice or the generosity of the lion-queen. In vain had every course been tried, in vain had every human means been employed. In vain had Scotland sued; in vain had France and Spain threatened, and even prepared to act upon their threats. For Mary there was no amelioration, no change!

From day to day, from year to year, her hopes had fallen away one by one. Her spirits, so buoyant and elastic once, had now subsided into a heavy, settled gloom; her very charms were but a wreck and shadow of their former glory. For a time she had endeavored, by all those beautiful occupations of the pencil, the needle, or the lyre, in which none had equalled her in her young days of happiness, to while away the deep and engrossing weariness which by long endurance becomes even worse than pain. For a time she had been permitted to vary the monotony of her domestic labors by her favorite exercises in the field and forest. Surrounded by a train of mail-clad horsemen, warders with bended bows and loaded arquebuses, she had a few times been allowed to ride forth into the free woodland, and to forget, amid the gay sights and heart-stirring sounds of the chase, the cares that were heavy at her heart. But how should that heart forget, when at every turn it encountered the haggard eye of the anxious keeper—anxious, for the slightest relaxation of his duty were certain death! How should the ear thrill to the enlivening music of the pack, or to the wild ............