MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

BORN 1542-DIED 1587.

"Welcome, illustrate lady, and our queen!"
and in one verse the poet makes pointed allu-
sion to certain prophecies which assigned a
brilliant future to the young queen:-
"If saws be sooth to shaw thy celsitude,

What bairn should brook all Britain by the sea,
The prophecy expressly does conclude
The French wife of the Bruce's blood should be:
Thou art by line from him the ninth degree,
And was King Francis' perty maik and peer;
So by descent the same should spring of thee,

MARY QUEEN OF Scors, the daughter of the form of a poetical address, in twenty-eight James V. and Mary of Lorraine, was born at stanzas. It beginsLinlithgow Palace, December 8th, 1542. While she was still a child she was demanded in marriage by Henry VIII. of England for his son Edward VI. When the Earl of Huntly was solicited for his assistance in this measure, he said like a man, that he did not mislike the match so much, as the way of wooing. The wishes of this boisterous potentate were not gratified, and a war arose in consequence, during which the young princess was sent to France at the age of six years. She was kindly received by Henry II., who resolved to educate her in all the accomplishments suitable to her elevated rank. She profited by her attention and her talents from the education which a munificent king bestowed upon her, as the intended wife of the dauphin, heir-apparent of his crown. By the death of the French king, and her marriage with Francis II., whom she also lost soon after, she became an unprotected widow at the age of eighteen. France had now no charms for her; while she received invitations from all parties to return to her native country and her divided people. She arrived at Leith, the seaport of Edinburgh, on the

19th of August, 1561.

By grace of God against this good new year." After many vicissitudes of fortune, and struggles with her turbulent and semi-savage nobles, Mary was at last forced to flee from her own kingdom to that of a rival and enemy, for refuge from the hands of those who were capable of almost any deed of violence. But as well might the beautiful and unfortunate queen claim protection from her kinswoman as the hunted deer seek refuge in a tiger's den. For nineteen years she was confined a prisoner in various castles, and at length ended her sad and chequered career on the block. She was beheaded at Fotheringay Castle, February 8, 1587, in the forty-fifth year of her age. "The admirable and saintly fortitude with which she suffered," it has been well remarked,

formed a striking contrast to the despair and agony which not long afterwards darkened the death-bed of the English queen." Her remains now rest in Westminster Abbey, where a magnificent monument is erected to her memory. Mary's sad story may be epitomized in the

"Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand The downward slope to death."

Before her departure from France Mary wrote verses with great facility in the language of that country, which may be said to have been her mother-tongue. She never attained to a good knowledge of English, not even of that form of it spoken in her native land. Her poems on the death of the dauphin, and on her leaving France, have "very considerable merit linesin the ideas, the imaginations, and the very genius of elegiac poetry," says her vindicator Whitaker, who has translated them into Eng- While the conduct and character of Queen lish. She was not only a poetess, but the Mary have been the subject of endless controcause of poetry in others. Many a vaudeville versy with historians, her great beauty, her was written on her departure for Scotland, and learning, and her many accomplishments are one of her subjects, Alexander Scot, known as universally acknowledged. She wrote with much of love, sent "Ane New Year Gift" in Italian languages. Among her compositions the Scottish Anacreon because he sung so elegance and force in the Latin, French, and

contained eight poems.1 It is doubtful wheth at any time the queen applied herself to t study or composition of English poetry. distich in that language, scrawled on a wind at Fotheringay, is the only fragment: —

are "Poems on Various Occasions;" "Royal | troduction by Julian Sharman. The volun Advice to her Son;" a copy of verses in French, sent with a diamond ring to Queen Elizabeth; and her "Last Prayer," written originally in Latin. A meritorious poem of five stanzas has been attributed to her second husband, Lord Darnley, the father of James VI. In 1873 an edition of Queen Mary's poems in French was published, with an in

"From the top of all my trust,
Mishap has laid me in the dust."

ON THE DEATH OF THE DAUPHIN.

While in a tone of deepest woe
My sweetly mournful warblings flow,
I wildly cast my eyes around,
Feel my dread loss, my bosom wound,
And see, in sigh succeeding sigh,
The finest moments of my life to fly.

Did Destiny's hard hand before,
Of miseries such a store,
Of such a train of sorrows shed
Upon a happy woman's head?
Who sees her very heart and eye
Or in the bier or in the coffin lie;-

Who, in the morning of my day,

And midst my flowers of youth most gay,
Feel all my wretchedness at heart,
That heaviest sorrows can impart;
And can in nothing find relief
But in the fond indulgence of my grief.

What once of joy could lend a strain,
Is now converted into pain:
The day, that shines with feeblest light,
Is now to me a darksome night;
Nor is there aught of highest joys

That now my soul will condescend to prize.

Full at my heart and in my eye

A portrait and an image lie
That figure out my dress of woe,
And my pale face reflected show
The semblance of the violet's blue,
Unhappy love's own genuine hue.

To ease my sorely troubled mind,
I keep to no one spot confin'd,
But think it good to shift my place,
In hopes my sadness to efface;
For now is worst, now best again,
The most sequestrate solitary scene.

66

Whether I shelter in the grove,
Or in the open meadow rove;
Whether the morn is dawning day,
Or evening shoots its level ray,
My heart's incessant feelings prove
My heavy mourning for my absent love.
If at a time towards the skies
I cast my sorrow-dropping eyes,
I see his eyes sweet glancing play
Amongst the clouds in every ray:
Then in the clouds dark water view
His hearse display'd in sorrow's sable h

If to repose my limbs apply,
And slumbering on my couch I lie,
I hear his voice to me rejoin,
I feel his body touching mine;
Engaged at work, to rest applied,
I have him still for ever at my side.

No other object meets my sight,
However fair it seems, or bright,
To which my heart will e'er consent
To yield itself in fond content;
And robbed of the perfection be
Of this impassioned mournful sympath

But here, my song, do thou refrain
From thy most melancholy strain,
Of which shall this the burden prove:

My honest heart full lively love,
Howe'er I am by death disjoin'd,
Shall never, never diminution find."

SONNET.

Que suis-je, helas! et de quoi sert la v
J'en suis fors qu'un corps privé de cuc
Un ombre vayn, un object de malheur
Qui n'a plu rien qui de mourir en vie.

The Poems of Mary Queen of Scots, edited by Sharman. One vol. Svo (Pickering, London, 100 copies only printed.-ED.

Not meeting with success at the bar, Hume

from a sought preferment at the court of James VI., but failing in this also, he entered into holy

orders, and was appointed minister of Logie,

in Fifeshire. He now devoted himself to

But worthy, to my thinking, of the name of a good prince. writing religious songs and poems, with a view

the "godlie and spiritual sangis and ballatis" | "Hymns or Sacred Songs," Mr. Hume wrote a

of that age, which were nothing more than pious travesties of the profane ballads and songs then most in vogue. In 1599 Hume published a volume entitled "Hymnes or Sacred Songs, where the right use of Poetry may be Espied," dedicated to "the faithful and vertuous Lady Elizabeth Melvil," generally styled Lady Culros, who wrote "Ane Godlye Dream, compylit in Scotish Meter," printed at Edinburgh in 1603, and at Aberdeen in 1644, which was a great favourite with the Presbyterians. The Hymns were recently reprinted by the Bannatyne Club. The best of these sacred poems, entitled by the author "The Day Estivall," is altogether an extraordinary production for the age in which it was composed. It presents the picture of a summer day from the dawn to the twilight; painted with a fidelity to nature, a liveliness of colouring, and a tasteful selection of incidents which mark the hand of a master. Besides the

poem on the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
It is called "The Triumph of the Lord after
the Maner of Men," and describes a triumphal
procession similar to those of the ancient Ro-
mans, in which the spoils of the conquered
enemy are exhibited in succession. The fol
lowing passage may suffice for a specimen:-

"Richt as the point of day beginnes to spring,
And larks aloft melodionslie to sing,
Bring furthe all kynde of instrumentis of weir
To gang befoir, and mak ane noyce cleir;
Gar trumpetis sounde the awful battelis blast,
On dreadful drummes gar stryke alarum faste;
Mak showting shalmes, and peircing phipheris shi
Cleene cleave the cloods, and pierce the hiest hill
Caus michtelie the wierlie nottis breike,
On Hieland pipes, Scottes and Hybernicke.
Let heir the skraichs of deadlie clarions,
And syne let off ane volie of cannons."

The poem has been highly praised by Dr. Le den. The year 1609 is given as the date Hume's death.

THE DAY ESTIVALL.

O perfite light! quhilk schaid away
The darknes from the light,
And set a ruler ouer the day,

Ane uther ouer the night.

Thy glorie quhen the day forth flies,
Mair vively dois appeare,
Nor at mid-day unto our eyes,
The shining sun is cleare.

The shaddow of the earth, anon,
Removes and drawis by;
Sine in the east quhen it is gone,
Appeares a clearer sky.

Quhilk sunne perceaves the lytill larkis,
The lapwing and the snype,

And tunes thair fangs like nature's clarkis,
Ouer medow, muir, and strype.

But everie bauld nocturnal beast
Na langer may abide,
They hy away, baith maist and least,
Themselves in house to hide.

They dread the day, fra they it see,
And from the sight of men,
To seats and covers fast they flee,
As lyons to their den.

Oure hemisphere is poleist clein,
And lightened more and more,
Quhill everie thing be clearlie sein
Quhilk semit dim before.

Except the glistering astres bright,
Quhilk all the night were cleare,
Offusked with a greater light,

Na langer dois appeare.

The golden globe incontinent,
Sets up his shining head,
And ouer the earth and firmament
Displays his beims abread.

For joy the birds, with boulden throats,
Agains his visage shein,

Takes up their kindlie musike nots
In woods and gardens grein.

Up braids the cairfull husbandman,
His cornes and vines to see,
And everie tymous artisan

In buith work besilie.

The pastor quits the sloithfull sleepe,
And passes forth with speede,
His little camow-nosed sheepe,
And rowtting kie to feede.