pronunciation; the loathsome spitting, from the contamination of which it was absolutely impossible to protect our dresses; the frightful manner of feeding with their knives, till the whole blade seemed to enter into the mouth; and the still more frightful manner of cleaning the teeth afterwards with a pocket-knife, soon forced us to feel that we were not surrounded by the generals, colonels, and majors of the Old World, and that the dinner-hour was to be anything rather than an hour of enjoyment.

Her sons, Anthony and Thomas Adolphus Trollope, are elsewhere noticed. See Frances Trollope (2 vols. 1895), by Frances Eleanor Trollope, the second wife of Thomas Adolphus, and herself a novelist.

The Countess of Blessington (1789-1849), long known in the world of fashion and light literature, was born at Knockbrit near Clonmel. Her father, Edmund Power, was an Irish 'squireen,' who forced his daughter, when only fourteen, into a marriage with a drunken Captain Farmer. The marriage was unhappy; Marguerite soon left her husband, who was killed in 1817 by a fall from a window. Four months later she was promoted from mistress to be countess of an Irish peer, Charles Gardiner, Earl of Blessington. Her acquired rank, her beauty, and literary tastes now rendered her the centre of a brilliant circle, and she revelled in every species of extravagant display. In 1822 the pair set out on a Continental tour. They visited Byron in Genoa; and Lady Blessington's Conversations with Lord Byron (1834; new ed. 1894) present on the whole a faithful-though inevitably incomplete-picture of the noble and then notorious poet.

In May 1829 Lady Blessington was again left a widow-this time with a jointure of about £2000 a year. A daughter of the deceased earl, by a former marriage, became the wife of Count Alfred d'Orsay, the famous dandy of the day. This marriage also proved unfortunate; the pair separated, and while Madame d'Orsay remained in Paris, the count accompanied Lady Blessington to England. This close association, broken only by death, gave rise to scandalous rumours, yet the countess and her friend maintained a conspicuous place in society. D'Orsay, accomplished both as painter and sculptor, was the acknowledged leader of fashion; but a career of gaiety and splendour soon involved the countess in debt. She made a considerable income by writing, yet her expenditure greatly exceeded her resources. Her first novel, Grace Cassidy, or the Repealer, appeared in 1833, and followed by nearly a dozen others, including Strathern's Life at Home and Abroad (1843) and Marmaduke Herbert (1847). There were also tales in verse and innumerable contributions to magazines and annuals. Perhaps Lady Blessington's best book was her Idler in Italy; but she was better known as the editor for years of the annual Book of Beauty and The Keepsake. Finally D'Orsay had to flee to the Continent (April 1849), and the countess followed, having broken up her establishment in Gore House, Kensington; every

was

thing was sold off, and Lady Blessington and D'Orsay settled in Paris, where she died the same year, while the count survived her just three years. The friendliest perhaps the truest-estimate of this brilliant creature is given in the epitaph written for her tomb by Barry Cornwall: In her lifetime she was loved and admired for her many graceful writings, her gentle manners, her kind and generous heart. Men famous for art and science in distant lands sought her friendship; and the historians and scholars, the poets and wits and painters, of her own country found an unfailing welcome in her ever-hospitable home. She gave cheerfully, to all who were in need, help and sympathy, and useful counsel; and she died lamented by many friends. Those who loved her best in life, and now lament her most, have reared this tributary marble over the place of her rest.' Her Life has been written by Madden (3 vols. 1855) and Molloy (1896). Her poems were verses at most, often not quite that; in a collection of her Maxims, Thoughts, and Reflections, separately published in 1839, these are as characteristic as any:

Deceivers.

We are born to deceive or to be deceived. In one of these classes we must be numbered; but our self-respect is dependent upon our selection. The practice of deception generally secures its own punishment; for callous indeed must be that mind which is insensible to its ignominy! But he who has been duped is conscious, even in the very moment that he detects the imposition, of his proud superiority to one who can stoop to the adoption of so foul and sorry a course. The really good and high-minded, therefore, are seldom provoked by the discovery of deception; though the cunning and artful resent it as a humiliating triumph obtained over them in their own vocations.

Society.

'Be prosperous and happy, never require our services, and we will remain your friends.' This is not what society says, but it is the principle on which it acts.

The Poetry of Life.

The poetry of our lives is, like our religion, kept apart from our every-day thoughts: neither influence us as they ought. We should be wiser and happier if, instead of secluding them in some secret shrine in our hearts, we suffered their humanising qualities to temper our habitual words and actions.

Virtue.

Horne Tooke said of intellectual philosophy that he had become better acquainted with it, as with the country, through having sometimes lost his way. May not the same be said of virtue? for never is it so truly known or appreciated as by those who, having strayed from its path, have at length regained it.

Infirmities of Genius.

The infirmities of genius are often mistaken for its privileges.

Love.

Love in France is a comedy, in England a tragedy, in Italy an opera seria, and in Germany a melodrame.

Mrs Bray, born Anne Eliza Kempe (17901883), a Londoner, was intended for the stage, but in 1818 married Stothard the artist, who died in 1821. In 1825 she married the Rev. E. A. Bray, vicar of Tavistock; and after his death in 1857 she settled in London. Between 1820 and 1874 she published a score of romances, books of travel, and other works, the best being The Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy (1836; 2nd ed. 1879), the Life of Thomas Stothard, R.A. (1851), and A Peep at the Pixies (1854). Her Autobiography and also a twelve-volume edition of her romances were published in 1884.

Catherine Grace Frances Gore (17991861) was born the daughter of Charles Moody, a wine-merchant at East Retford in Nottingham. She was already known as a poetess when in 1823 she married Captain Charles Arthur Gore of the Life Guards. She was able to support her family by her voluminous literary labours; and she continued to supply the circulating libraries with one or two novels a year till, quite blind, she after 1850 retired from work and from society, having produced some two hundred volumes of novels and shorter tales, with comedies and poems. Her first publications were two or three volumes of poems; her first novel, Theresa Marchmont, was published in 1823; the two tales, The Lettre de Cachet and The Reign of Terror-one of the times of Louis XIV., and the other of the French Revolution-in 1827. Next appeared a series of Hungarian Tales. Women as they Are, or the Manners of the Day (3 vols. 1830), was an easy, sparkling tale of modern society, with much lady-like writing on dress and fashion, and some rather misplaced contempt for 'excellent wives' and' good sort of men.'

Pictures

of gay life-balls, dinners, and fêtes-with clever sketches of character and amusing dialogues, make up the three volumes of Mothers and Daughters (1831). The Fair of May Fair (1832) was hardly so well received; and thereafter the authoress lived in France for some years. Mrs Armytage appeared in 1836; and in the next years (1837-38) Mary Raymond, Memoirs of a Peeress, The Heir of Selwood, and The Book of Roses, or Rose-fancier's Manual, a delightful little work on the history of the rose, its propagation and culture, based on Mrs Gore's knowledge of French gardening. Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb (1841), and The Banker's Wife (1843) are among her more notable works. She had seen much of the world both at home and abroad, and was never at a loss for character or incident. The worst of her works must be pronounced clever their interest consists in their lively and caustic pictures of fashionable society; but the want of passion and simplicity in her living models, and the endless frivolities of their occupations-though not unknown in modern fashionable novels-usually weary and repel readers nowadays. Thackeray caricatured her manner in one of the 'Novels by Eminent Hands.'

A Worldly Lady.

Lady Lilfield was a thoroughly worldly woman—a worthy scion of the Mordaunt stock. She had professedly accepted the hand of Sir Robert because a connection with him was the best that happened to present itself in the first year of her début-the 'best match' to be had at a season's warning! She knew that she had been brought out with the view to dancing at a certain number of balls, refusing a certain number of good offers, and accepting a better one, somewhere between the months of January and June; and she regarded it as a propitious dispensation of Providence to her parents and to herself that the comparative proved a superlative - even a high-sheriff of the county, a baronet of respectable date, with ten thousand a year! She felt that her duty towards herself necessitated an immediate acceptance of the dullest 'good sort of man' extant throughout the three kingdoms; and the whole routine of her after-life was regulated by the same rigid code of moral selfishness. She was penetrated with a most exact sense of what was due to her position in the world; but she was equally precise in her appreciation of all that, in her turn, she owed to society; nor, from her youth upwards-Content to dwell in decencies for ever' --had she been detected in the slightest infraction of these minor social duties. She knew with the utmost accuracy of domestic arithmetic, to the fraction of a course or an entrée, the number of dinners which Beech Park was indebted to its neighbourhood-the complement of laundry-maids indispensable to the maintenance of its county dignity-the aggregate of pines by which it must retain its horticultural precedence. She had never retarded by a day or an hour the arrival of the family-coach in Grosvenor Square at the exact moment creditable to Sir Robert's senatorial punctuality, nor procrastinated by half-a-second the simultaneous bobs of her ostentatious Sunday-school as she sailed majestically along the aisle towards her tall, stately, pharisaical, squire-archical pew. True to the execution of her tasks --and her whole life was but one laborious task-true and exact as the great bell of the Beech Park turretclock, she was enchanted with the monotonous music of her own cold iron tongue; proclaiming herself the best of wives and mothers because Sir Robert's rent-roll could afford to command the services of a first-rate steward and butler and housekeeper, and thus ensure a well-ordered household; and because her seven substantial children were duly drilled through a daily portion of rice pudding and spelling-book, and an annual distribution of mumps and measles! All went well at Beech Park; for Lady Lilfield was 'the excellent wife' of a good sort of man'!

So bright an example of domestic merit-and what country neighbourhood cannot boast of its duplicate?— was naturally superior to seeking its pleasures in the vapid and varying novelties of modern fashion. The habits of Beech Park still affected the dignified and primeval purity of the departed century. Lady Lilfield remained true to her annual eight rural months of the county of Durham, against whose claims Kemp Town pleaded, and Spa and Baden bubbled in vain. During her pastoral seclusion, by a careful distribution of her stores of gossiping, she contrived to prose, in undetected tautology, to successive detachments of an extensive neighbourhood, concerning her London importance, her court-dress, her dinner-parties, and her refusal to

visit the Duchess of —; while, during the reign of her London importance, she made it equally her duty to bore her select visiting list with the history of the new Beech Park school-house, of the Beech Park double dahlias, and of the Beech Park privilege of uniting, in an aristocratic dinner-party, the abhorrent heads of the rival political factions-the Bianchi e Neri-the houses of Montague and Capulet of the county palatine of Durham. By such minute sections of the wide chapter of colloquial boredom, Lady Lilfield acquired the character of being a very charming woman throughout her respectable clan of dinner-giving baronets and their wives, but the reputation of a very miracle of prosiness among those Men of the world who know the world like men.' She was but a weed in the nobler field of society. (From Women as they Are.) London Life.

6

A squirrel in a cage, which pursues its monotonous round from summer to summer, as though it had forgotten the gay green-wood and glorious air of liberty, is not condemned to a more monotonous existence than the fashionable world in the unvarying routine of its amusements; and when a London beauty expands into ecstasies concerning the delights of London to some country neighbour on a foggy autumn day, vaguely alluding to the 'countless' pleasures and diversified ' amusements of London, the country neighbour may be assured that the truth is not in her. Nothing can be more minutely monotonous than the recreations of the really fashionable; monotony being, in fact, essential to that distinction. Tigers may amuse themselves in a thousand irregular diverting ways; but the career of a genuine exclusive is one to which a mill-horse would scarcely look for relief. London houses, London establishments, are formed after the same unvarying model. At the fifty or sixty balls to which she is to be indebted for the excitement of her season, the fine lady listens to the same band, is refreshed from a buffet prepared by the same skill, looks at the same diamonds, hears the same trivial observations; and but for an incident or two, the growth of her own follies, might find it difficult to point out the slightest difference between the fête of the countess on the first of June and that of the marquis on the first of July. But though twenty seasons' experience of these desolating facts might be expected to damp the ardour of certain dowagers and dandies who are to be found hurrying along the golden railroad year after year, it is not wonderful that the young girls their daughters should be easily allured from their dull schoolrooms by fallacious promises of pleasure.

(From Women as they Are.) Catherine Crowe (1800-76), born Stevens at Borough Green in Kent, in 1822 married Lieut.Colonel Crowe, and spent great part of her afterlife in Edinburgh, where she came under George Combe's influence. Her mind was morbid and despondent, ever hovering on the border-line of insanity, which it crossed once in one violent but brief attack. Her translation of Kerner's Seeress of Prevorst (1845) prepared the way for her wellknown Night-side of Nature (1848), a collection of well-told stories of the supernatural by an uncritical believer. She wrote also tragedies, juvenile books, and novels-the best Susan Hopley (1841) and Lilly Dawson (1847).

Mrs S. C. Hall (1800-81) was born in Dublin and brought up at Wexford, though on her mother's side she was of Swiss descent. Her maiden name, Anna Maria Fielding, was unknown in the literary world; her first work was not published till after her marriage to Samuel Carter Hall in 1824. At fifteen she had come with her mother to England, and it was some time before she revisited her native country; but the scenes which were familiar to her as a child had made such a vivid and lasting impression on her mind, and all her sketches showed so much freshness and vigour, that her readers might well imagine she had spent her life among the scenes she describes. To her early absence from her native country is partly at least to be traced one noteworthy characteristic of all her writings-the absence of party feeling on politics or religion. Mrs Hall's Sketches of Irish Character (1828) are much liker Miss Mitford's tales than they are to the Irish stories of Banim or Griffin; no doubt it was Miss Edgeworth that gave Mrs Hall her impulse to set forth the indefeasible traits of Irish character. The Sketches have much fine description, and are instinct not merely with sound and kindly feeling but true and delicate humour; the coquetry of her Irish girls is admirably given. A second series of Sketches of Irish Character (1831) was quite equal to the first ; some of the satirical presentations are hit off with great truth and liveliness. In 1832 Mrs Hall ventured on a historical romance, The Buccaneer, the scene being laid in England at the time of the Protectorate, and Oliver himself appearing among the characters. The plot is well managed, and some of the characters-notably that of Barbara the Puritan-are excellent; but the work is too feminine, and has too little of energetic passion for the stormy times in which it is cast. Her Tales of Woman's Trials (1834) are short stories in her happiest style. Uncle Horace (1835) was a novel. Lights and Shadows of Irish Life (3 vols. 1838), originally published in the New Monthly Magazine, were extraordinarily popular; the principal story, 'The Groves of Blarney,' was dramatised and played with eminent success. Marian, or a Young Maid's Fortunes (1840), makes full use again of Mrs Hall's knowledge of Irish character; Katey Macane, the cook who adopts the foundling Marian and watches over her with untiring affection, is equal to any Irish portraiture after those of Miss Edgeworth. Stories of the Irish Peasantry, contributed to Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, were afterwards published in a collected form. In 1840 Mrs Hall aided her husband in an elaborately illustrated work in three volumes, Ireland, its Scenery and Character, skilfully blending topographical and statistical information with the poetical and romantic features of the country, the legends of the peasantry, and scenes and characters of humour or pathos. The Whiteboy (1845) is usually reckoned her best novel. Other works were a fairy tale, Midsummer Eve

(1845), A Woman's Story (1857), Can Wrong be Right? (1862), The Fight of Faith (1868–69). To her husband's Art Journal Mrs Hall contributed many picturesque sketches, some of which were reissued as Pilgrimages to English Shrines and The Book of the Thames. She also produced some pleasing children's books. Her humour is not so broad or racy as Lady Morgan's, nor her observation so acute and profound as Miss Edgeworth's. Her husband, Samuel Carter Hall (1800-89), who was born near Waterford, the son of an English officer, came to London in 1831, reported and wrote for various papers, sub-edited the John Bull, and founded (1839) and edited the Art Journal. The works written and edited by him and his wife, alone or often conjointly, exceed five hundred volumes; of these his Retrospect of a Long Life (2 vols. 1883) is a series of jottings, not a set autobiography. Both husband and wife are buried at Addlestone, Surrey.

From 'Sketches of Irish Character.' Shane Thurlough [is] 'as dacent a boy,' and Shane's wife as 'clane-skinned a girl,' as any in the world. There is Shane, an active handsome-looking fellow, leaning over the half-door of his cottage, kicking a hole in the wall with his brogue, and picking up all the large gravel within his reach to pelt the ducks with-those useful Irish scavengers.

Let us speak to him. 'Good-morrow, Shane!' 'Och! the bright bames of heaven on ye every day and kindly welcome, my lady; and won't ye step in and rest?-it's powerful hot, and a beautiful summer, sure the Lord be praised!' 'Thank you, Shane. I thought you were going to cut the hay-field to-day; if a heavy shower comes it will be spoiled; it has been fit for the scythe these two days.' 'Sure it's all owing to that thief o' the world, Tom Parrel, my lady. Didn't he promise me the loan of his scythe? and, by the same token, I was to pay him for it; and depinding on that, I didn't buy one, which I have been threatening to do for the last two years.' 'But why don't you go to Carrick and purchase one?' 'To Carrick! Och! 'tis a good step to Carrick, and my toes are on the groundsaving your presence-for I depinded on Tim Jarvis to tell Andy Cappler, the brogue-maker, to do my shoes; and, bad luck to him, the spalpeen! he forgot it.' 'Where's your pretty wife, Shane?' 'She's in all the woe o' the world, ma'am dear. And she puts the blame of it on me, though I'm not in the faut this time anyhow. The child's taken the smallpox, and she depinded on me to tell the doctor to cut it for the cowpox, and I depinded on Kitty Cackle, the limmer, to tell the doctor's own man, and thought she would not forget it, becase the boy's her bachelor; but out o' sight, out o' mindthe never a word she tould him about it, and the babby has got it nataral, and the woman's in heart trouble-to say nothing o' myself-and it the first, and all.' 'I am very sorry indeed, for you have got a much better wife than most men.' 'That's a true word, my lady; only she's fidgety-like sometimes, and says I don't hit the nail on the head quick enough; and she takes a dale more trouble than she need about many a thing.' 'I do not think I ever saw Ellen's wheel without flax before, Shane.' 'Bad cess to the wheel!-I got it this morning about that too. I depinded on John Williams to bring

the flax from O'Flaherty's this day week, and he forgot it; and she says I ought to have brought it myself, and I close to the spot. "But where's the good?" says I; "sure he 'll bring it next time." 'I suppose, Shane, you will soon move into the new cottage at Clurn Hill? I passed it to-day, and it looked so cheerful; and when you get there you must take Ellen's advice, and depend solely on yourself.' 'Och, ma'am dear, don't mintion it; sure it's that makes me so down in the mouth this very minit. Sure I saw that born blackguard, Jack Waddy, and he comes in here quite innocent-like: "Shane, you've an eye to squire's new lodge," says he. "Maybe I have," says I. "I'm yer man," says he. "How so?" says I. "Sure I'm as good as married to my lady's maid," said he; "and I'll spake to the squire for you my own self." "The blessing be about you," says I, quite grateful—and we took a strong cup on the strength of it —and, depinding on him, I thought all safe. And what d'ye think, my lady? Why, himself stalks into the place-talked the squire over, to be sure-and without so much as by yer lave, sates himself and his new wife on the laase in the house; and I may go whistle.' 'It was a great pity, Shane, that you didn't go yourself to Mr Clurn. 'That's a true word for ye, ma'am dear; but it's hard if a poor man can't have a frind to depind on.'

Miss Agnes Strickland (1796-1874) was a daughter of Thomas Strickland of Reydon Hall in Suffolk, originally a dock manager at Norwich, who after his retirement from business took entire charge of his daughters' education. Agnes soon took to writing, producing a poetical narrative, Worcester Field, or the Cavalier; a series of historic scenes and stories for children; and in 1835 The Pilgrims of Walsingham, somewhat on the plan of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims. She then, aided by her sister Elizabeth (17941875), entered upon her copious and elaborate Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest (12 vols. 1840-48; new ed., 6 vols., 1864– 1865). The Times said this work possessed 'the fascination of a romance united to the integrity of a history,' while other critics more justly complained of its feebleness of thought and poverty of style. The method is wholly uncritical; but the volumes give, nevertheless, vivid pictures of court ceremonial and domestic life, and were largely based on unpublished documents in the public offices and in private mansions. More than a dozen of the Lives were the sole work of the elder sister, who preferred not to have her share in the enterprise acknowledged on the title-page of any of the joint-works. The English history was followed by Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses connected with the Regal Succession of Great Britain (8 vols. 1850-59), also written by the sisters jointly. Miss Strickland was a strong partisan of the Stuarts; and her Life of Mary Queen of Scots (originally in the Queens, but separately published in 1873) is written with great fullness of detail and illustration, many new facts having been added by study of the papers in the Register House, Edinburgh, and

documents in the possession of the Earl of Moray and the representatives of other ancient families. Other works by Agnes (in some cases with help from Elizabeth) were Lives of the Seven Bishops, Lives of the Tudor Princesses, The Last Four Stuart Princesses, and Bachelor Kings of England. It need hardly be said that the following story of Moray's deceit and Lindsay's ferocity, from the Queens of Scotland, must not be accepted as historical truth.

Mary of Scotland at Lochleven.

The conspirators, calling themselves the Lords of Secret Council, having completed their arrangements for the long-meditated project of depriving her of her crown, summoned Lord Lindsay to Edinburgh, and on the 23rd of July delivered to him and Sir Robert Melville three deeds, to which they were instructed to obtain her signature, either by flattering words or absolute force. The first contained a declaration, as if from herself, 'that, being in infirm health and worn out with the cares of government, she had taken purpose voluntarily to resign her crown and office to her dearest son, James, Prince of Scotland.' In the second, 'her trusty brother James, Earl of Moray, was constituted regent for the prince her son, during the minority of the royal infant.' The third appointed a provisional council of regency, consisting of Morton and the other Lords of Secret Council, to carry on the government till Moray's return; or, in case of his refusing to accept it, till the prince arrived at the legal age for exercising it himself.

Aware that Mary would not easily be induced to execute such instruments, Sir Robert Melville was especially employed to cajole her into this political suicide. That ungrateful courtier, who had been employed and trusted by his unfortunate sovereign ever since her return from France, and had received nothing but benefits from her, undertook this office. Having obtained a private interview with her, he deceitfully entreated her to sign certain deeds that would be presented to her by Lindsay, as the only means of preserving her life, which, he assured her, was in the most imminent danger.' Then he gave her a turquoise ring, telling her 'it was sent to her from the Earls of Argyle, Huntly, and Athole, Secretary Lethington, and the Laird of Grange, who loved her Majesty, and had by that token accredited him to exhort her to avert the peril to which she would be exposed if she ventured to refuse the requisition of the Lords of Secret Council, whose designs, they well knew, were to take her life, either secretly or by a mock-trial among themselves.' Finding the queen impatient of this insidious advice, he produced a letter from the English ambassador Throckmorton, out of the scabbard of his sword, telling her he had concealed it there at peril of his own life, in order to convey it to her'-a paltry piece of acting, worthy of the parties by whom it had been devised, for the letter had been written for the express purpose of inducing Mary to accede to the demission of her regal dignity, telling her, as if in confidence, that it was the queen of England's sisterly advice that she should not irritate those who had her in their power by refusing the only concession that could save her life, and observing that nothing that was done under her present circumstances could be of any force when she regained her freedom.' Mary, however, resolutely

refused to sign the deeds; declaring, with truly royal courage, that she would not make herself a party to the treason of her own subjects by acceding to their lawless requisition, which, as she truly alleged, 'proceeded only of the ambition of a few, and was far from the desire of her people.'

The fair-spoken Melville having reported his ill success to his coadjutor Lord Lindsay, Moray's brotherin-law, the bully of the party, who had been selected for the honourable office of extorting by force from the royal captive the concession she denied, that brutal ruffian burst rudely into her presence, and, flinging the deeds violently on the table before her, told her to sign them without delay, or worse would befall her. 'What!' exclaimed Mary, shall I set my hand to a deliberate falsehood, and, to gratify the ambition of my nobles, relinquish the office God hath given to me, to my son, an infant little more than a year old, incapable of governing the realm, that my brother Moray may reign in his name?' She was proceeding to demonstrate the unreasonableness of what was required of her, but Lindsay contemptuously interrupted her with scornful laughter; then, scowling ferociously upon her, he swore with a deep oath, that if she would not sign those instruments, he would do it with her heart's blood, and cast her into the lake to feed the fishes.' Full well did the defenceless woman know how capable he was of performing his threat, having seen his rapier reeking with human blood shed in her presence, when he assisted at the butchery of her unfortunate secretary. The ink was scarcely dry of her royal signature to the remission she had granted to him for that outrage; but, reckless of the fact that he owed his life, his forfeit lands, yea, the very power of injuring her, to her generous clemency, he thus requited the grace she had, in evil hour for herself, accorded to him. heart was too full to continue the unequal contest. am not yet five-and-twenty,' she pathetically observed; somewhat more she would have said, but her utterance failed her, and she began to weep with hysterical emotion. Sir Robert Melville, affecting an air of the deepest concern, whispered in her ear an earnest entreaty for her 'to save her life by signing the papers,' reiterating that whatever she did would be invalid because extorted by force.'

Her

'I

Mary's tears continued to flow, but sign she would not, till Lindsay, infuriated by her resolute resistance, swore that, having begun the matter, he would also finish it then and there,' forced the pen into her reluctant hand, and, according to the popular version of this scene of lawless violence, grasped her arm in the struggle so rudely as to leave the prints of his mailclad fingers visibly impressed. In an access of pain and terror, with streaming eyes and averted head, she affixed her regal signature to the three deeds, without once looking upon them. Sir Walter Scott alludes to Lindsay's barbarous treatment of his hapless queen in these nervous lines:

'And haggard Lindsay's iron eye,
That saw fair Mary weep in vain.'

George Douglas, the youngest son of the evil lady of Lochleven, being present, indignantly remonstrated with his savage brother-in-law, Lindsay, for his misconduct; and though hitherto employed as one of the persons whose office it was to keep guard over her, he