read, talk, or sleep to advantage.  But here the advantages are immense; you can fly through this dull trance from one beautiful place to another, and stay at each during the time that would otherwise be spent on the road.  Already the artists, who are obliged to find their home in London, rejoice that all England is thrown open to them for sketching-ground, since they can now avail themselves of a day’s leisure at a great distance, and with choice of position, whereas formerly they were obliged to confine themselves to a few “green, and bowery” spots in the neighborhood of the metropolis.  But while in the car, it is to me that worst of purgatories, the purgatory of dulness.

Well, on the coach we went to Perth, and passed through Kinross, and saw Loch Leven, and the island where Queen Mary passed those sorrowful months, before her romantic escape under care of the Douglas.  As this unhappy, lovely woman stands for a type in history, death, time, and distance do not destroy her attractive power.  Like Cleopatra, she has still her adorers; nay, some are born to her in each new generation of men.  Lately she has for her chevalier the Russian Prince Labanoff, who has spent fourteen years in studying upon all that related to her, and thinks now that he can make out a story and a picture about the mysteries of her short reign, which shall satisfy the desire of her lovers to find her as pure and just as she was charming.  I have only seen of his array of evidence so much, as may be found in the pages of Chambers’s Journal, but that much does not disturb the original view I have taken of the case; which is, that from a princess educated under the Medici and Guise influence, engaged in the meshes of secret intrigue to favor the Roman Catholic faith, her tacit acquiescence, at least, in the murder of Darnley, after all his injurious conduct toward her, was just what was to be expected.  From a poor, beautiful young woman, longing to enjoy life, exposed both by her position and her natural fascinations to the utmost bewilderment of flattery, whether prompted by interest or passion, her other acts of folly are most natural, and let all who feel inclined harshly to condemn her remember to

  “Gently scan your brother man,
  Still gentler sister woman.”

Surely, in all the stern pages of life’s account-book there is none on which a more terrible price is exacted for every precious endowment.  Her rank and reign only made her powerless to do good, and exposed her to danger; her talents only served to irritate her foes and disappoint her friends.  This most charming of women was the destruction of her lovers:  married three times, she had never any happiness as a wife, but in both the connections of her choice found that she had either never possessed or could not retain, even for a few weeks, the love of the men she had chosen, so that Darnley was willing to risk her life and that of his unborn child to wreak his wrath upon