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Westminster (where the whole of the Council were added to the Commission), and in the absence of Mary's Commissioners certain of the documents were again produced this time in French. The Lords manifested the utmost reluctance to lay them before the Council; but Cecil, by a clever move, succeeded in forcing their hand. Copies were taken, and these copies were left with the Council; which writings,' says the Minute, being copied, were read in French, and a due collation made thereof as near as could be by reading and inspection, and made to accord with the originals which the said Earl Murray required to be redelivered.' No examination of the letters (with the view of testing their genuineness) was made at Westminster: all that was done was to collate the copies with the originals, which were immediately returned to the Lords. When the letters had been duly copied and collationed, the Council, along with six of the great nobles, were summoned to meet at Hampton Court. The results of the Conference were laid before them. The Casket was again produced. Then, but not till then, the letters were compared with genuine letters addressed to Elizabeth. Why this vitally important examination should have been delayed till the last moment, and why, when it did take place, it should have been hastily slurred over, are facts which have not been explained. No expert was called in, and the examination was of the most suspiciously cursory and unscientific kind. It is to be noted,' Cecil frankly admits, that at the time of the producing, showing, and reading of all these foresaid writings, there was no special choice nor regard had to the order of the producing thereof: but the whole writings lying altogether upon the council table, the same were one after another showed rather by hap, as the

same did lie upon the table, than with any choice made, as by the natures thereof, if time had so served, might have been.'

It is known that great pressure was brought to bear upon the assembled Peers to induce them to return a verdict unfavourable to Mary; but the utmost that could be extracted from them was a prudent recommendation that Elizabeth should not admit Mary to an audience, as the case now did standthat is to say upon, the ex parte evidence which had been secretly laid before the Council by Mary's enemies in her absence. On hearing of what had taken place, Mary at once demanded that she should have access to the pretended letters ; but after a good deal of fencing this was finally denied to her, and the Lords were hurriedly sent back to Scotland with the letters, being informed by Elizabeth before they left that 'there had been nothing sufficiently produced nor shown by them against the Queen their Sovereign, whereby the Queen of England should conceive or take any evil opinion of the Queen her good sister for anything yet seen.'

Such is a plain narrative of the proceedings and results of this famous Conference. One or two general observations must be added.

My friend asserts that Mary, throughout the Conference, manifested suspicious eagerness to prevent the production of the letters. The charge is so serious that it merits particular reply.

The private Conference to which Elizabeth proposed and Mary agreed that her cause should be referred, was purely political in its constitution and objects. Mary was to table a charge pro forma against her insurgent subjects, and they were to defend themselves on public grounds. The Conference was intended to be the instrument by which an arrangement between Mary and the Lords should be carried through. But from

the first Mary declined to allow any matter affecting her own honour to be introduced. If such were introduced, her Commissioners were instructed to protest and withdraw from the Conference. Elizabeth implicitly or explicitly was a party to this agreement. The bond was broken by the Earl of Murray. He went secretly to the English Commissioners at York, and showed them the Casket Letters. Mary's Commissioners were not permitted to be present, did not know, indeed, for some days that such a breach of honour had been committed. But the moment that Mary heard of the plot, she took up a position from which she never wavered. Her own Commissioners were scarcely so sagacious; for Leslie was at bottom a shifty, voluble, elastic kind of creature whose faith in human virtue of any kind was small, and who wished above all things to save his mistress from the indignity of a public trial. But Mary herself But Mary herself always said, I consent to this private Conference with a view to an amicable adjustment of the difficulties between my subjects and myself. But if you bring against me any charge affecting my honour, accommodation is impossible. Thenceforth it must be war to the knife. And to no secret conclave can I consent to refer such an accusation. I must be heard in public before the Queen, the assembled Peers of England, and the Ambassadors of Christendom. I will not trust such a question to the decision of any meaner tribunal. But I solemnly declare to the world that the accusation is false, and that the pretended letters are not mine, but have been fabricated by my accusers. Let them be produced, and let me be furnished with copies. I pledge my word of honour to prove that they have been forged-no 'such letters having ever been written by me.' But her request was disregarded. No-a public enquiry

would not be granted. The letters were produced in her absence. Then she said, 'Show me the lettersgive me copies-I will undertake, even before a tribunal, which has disregarded the plainest rules of justice and fair dealing, to manifest that they are malicious inventions.' But again-No. The letters were always withheld from her (even though she got the French Ambassador at last to take the matter up earnestly), and she was never allowed an opportunity to expose the deception.

My friend says that she did not mean seriously to defend herself. She would go before the assembled Peers and on her honour as a Sovereign Princess declare that the accusations were false. She desired only a great stage on which to display her histrionic powers.

But he forgets that the moment she heard of the charges she set herself to obtain the evidence that was available. was available. She got Huntley and Argyle to declare in writing what they knew, and had it not been for the protestation thus obtained we should never have learned some of the most important facts of the case as telling against her accusers. Why, gentlemen, this single document changed the whole aspect of the controversy. It was thenceforth impossible to maintain that the Scotch Protestant nobles were not privy to the murder. How much more might have been obtained had an honest investigation been undertaken? He forgets besides, that rather than have the enquiry stifled she ultimately consented to allow the case to proceed before the same secret tribunal. But her appeal was rejected. Elizabeth would neither hear her defence, nor would she permit her to see the letters. The Council, when hard pressed, declared that no case against Mary had been substantiated, and despatched Murray and his famous casket across the border,—with

5,000l. in his pocket to pay his expenses.

Mary's conduct during the Conference thus appears to have been perfectly simple and straightforward, whereas Elizabeth's was marked by extreme duplicity; and there is abundant evidence to show that the investigation was conducted dishonestly. The Queen and her Council did not, as a rule, stick at trifles. The Earl of Lennox opportunely appeared at Westminster as one of Mary's accusers: years afterwards Lady Lennox admitted that her husband had been induced to appear by the urgency of the English Council! It is possible that at first Elizabeth, terrified by what she regarded as a dangerous democratic outbreak, was willing to befriend the sister Queen whom rebellious subjects had deposed. But even at York the Conference had assumed a complexion decidedly hostile to Mary. The remarkable letter from Sussex to Cecil throws a clear light upon the spirit in which the enquiry was thereafter conducted. The object of the Council should be to retain Mary as a prisoner in England, and this could be effected only by rendering the breach between her and the Lords irreparable. If they could be induced to assail her honour, it was highly improbable that any truce, however hollow, could thenceforth be patched up between them. The pretended letters could not, indeed, be safely subjected to public investigation and hostile criticism, but they might be privately produced and their tenor would be noised abroad. The mere rumour that such letters had been produced would cast a slur upon Mary's reputation, and lessen her influence in England, where she was growing dangerously powerful.' Such was the substance of this remarkable communication, and whoever examines the subsequent proceedings of the Conference the anxiety of the English Council to

obtain the letters, and their steady persistent resolution to prevent Mary and her friends from examining them-will find that the advice was acted upon to the letter.

The Council, as we have seen, did not venture to condemn the Queen, nor to declare that the letters were genuine; but even if such a declaration had been made, what would it have been worth? There are certain plain rules regarding the admission of evidence which are invariably observed in Courts of Justice. That reasonable precautions shall be taken to prevent documents from being tampered with; that in the event of challenge they shall be legally and competently authenticated; that there shall be no break in the chain which connects them with the accused; that the accused shall be duly informed of their nature, and that he or his advisers shall have free access to them,-it has been found that the observance of some such rules as these is essential to the exclusion of false testimony, and to the righteous ad ministration of justice. To call the perfunctory and unscientific investi gation made by an assembly notoriously hostile to the Queen, a fair trial, in this sense, or indeed in any sense, would be a mockery and impertinence.

This, gentlemen, is the external evidence which has been produced to authenticate the Casket Letters. It required, as you will recollect, to be ample, conclusive, overwhelming. Nothing short of absolute demonstration would suffice to convince anyone acquainted with her other writings that these monstrous letters-so awkward, so uncouth, so patched and blotted-came from the elegant pen of Mary Stuart! My learned friend contends that the external evidence is sufficient. I maintain that it is ridiculously and absurdly inadequate. It is for you, gentlemen, to judge be

tween us.

One word more. My friend says that the sequence of circumstance alone is sufficient to convict the Queen. When Rizzio was assassinated by Darnley she threatened that she would give him a sore heart within a year Darnley was murdered; within six months she married the man who had managed the murder. But, gentlemen, it is precisely in such circumstances that we are bound to hesitate and to pause. There is nothing more tragic in human experience than the spectacle of innocence drawn irresistibly into the net and unable to break the meshes which perverse destiny has woven; and these pitiful fatalities have formed the subjectmatter of some of the greatest dramas ever written. The net in which the victim is enclosed is mostly knitted by that mocking and ironic power which disturbs the orderly government of the world; but it is sometimes knitted by the hand of man, and then -then only do the successive acts of the tragedy become suspiciously consecutive, coherent, and consistent. Then only is there no break in the chain-then only

UT of the vile Waverley Station

OUT at Edinburgh we rush, yelling,

into a low choking tunnel black as Erebus (there are no lamps), gliding at last into fresher air, by the wooded hill of Corstorphine, and through the almost ripe corn-fields, reaching in half-an-hour the ancient royal seat, Linlithgow. A little loch half encompasses the town and palace (birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots), massive, quadrangular, roofless, in decayed majesty, on its rising ground, and beside it the noble old church of St. Michael. Such shrines of Papal Christianity seem very odd lodgings for Presbyterianism; but of late years the Scotch have been quite florid in their notions of church-building, and particularly the Free-Kirkers.

We run to Falkirk in among the smoky ironworks whereby the southwest of Scotland, and in especial the shores of Clyde, are so busy and populous. The smoke of the Scotch coal is thick and stifling, and is felt as a special nuisance in the railway and steamer. Of the railway whistle I have already grumbled, and really it is worse, I think, in Scotland than anywhere, more frequent, persistent, brain-rending; the engine-drivers seem proud of it, like a child with its noisy toy. There again-ah let me stop my ears. Three pigs-a-killing equal to one bagpipe, seven bagpipes one Scotch railway-whistle! In America, instead of this torturing sharpness, a note of lower pitch and rounder tone is found to answer every purpose.

And now a truce to grumbling, and let us enjoy this bright afternoon and this picturesque old place, Stirling. I find it all I expected,

and more.

on

The street, something like Edinburgh High Street on a small scale, climbs to the Castle Esplanade. There are old houses, narrow courts and passages, and often the stone stair from the causeway winds up and disappears like a snake through the low archway of a circular turret. Facing down the street stands an ancient and dusky house-front built of well-cut stone decorated with heraldic sculpture, the walls roofless, the doors and windows blocked up.

Yet here is no ruin in the usual sense; 'Mar's work,' as they call it, was built up thus far three centuries ago, and then the great Earl-Regent died suddenly, here at Stirling, while overlooking his work. So says tradition, and adds he was sacrilegiously using stones torn away from the neighbouring Abbey of Cambuskenneth. There is something peculiarly dismal in a building left unfinished for an indefinite time; it lacks all the pathos of a ruin that once harboured humanity,is a monument of frustration and failure.

to

A right-hand turning brings you Argyle's Lodging,' a stone house with courtyard and those conical-roofed turrets which Scotland copied, among other architectural features, from France. A sentry paces the flagstones, for the old mansion of the Lords of Stirling, the Lords of Argyle, is now a hospital for the Castle garrison. It has a neglected and slovenly look.

Stirling Castle, long a favourite residence of the kings of Scotland, now a common barrack, stands firm and stately on the edge of its precipitous rock overlooking a vast and varied prospect, the windings of the