SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

HISTORICAL DISQUISITIoN,

Memoirs of Mary Stuart. Queen of Scotland. By L. Stanhope F. Buckiogham. In

two volumes. Bentky.

MISCHIJANYOUS LITERATURE.

Life in the Sick-Room. Essays, by an Invalid M0,4011.

FICTION.

New Sketches of Every-day Life. A Diary. Together with Strife and Peace. By Fredrika Bremer. Translated by Mary Hewitt. Is two volumes. Longman and Co. The Gravedigger ; a Novel. By the Author of •• The Scottish Heiress." In three volumes Newby.

MR. L. STANHOPE F. BUCKIN GUAM'S MEMOIRS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

THE attention which has been excited by MARY Queen of Scots, through a succession of ages, has generally been attributed to her beauty, her misfortunes, and the events and persons with which her fate connected her. These circumstances, and the mystery in which much writing has enveloped her conduct, have doubtless con- tributed to the interest attached to her name : but we think there is a deeper cause for this feeling in her own character ; as it may be doubted whether any accidents of fortune or amount of crime are in themselves sufficient to give enduring prominence to an historical personage without some intrinsic character of a general kind. This was possessed both by CLEOPATRA and MARY STUART, who represent the two kinds of wanton ; the Egyptian using her person to advance what she thought her interest, the Scotch- woman chiefly to gratify her fancy : and the moral of the character is pointed by the end of both, in despite of every advantage of birth and fortune, with all the personal attractions of nature and art.

Neglect of this consideration has been one cause of the doubts

which have been thrown over parts of MARY'S conduct ; and on which her apologists especially dwell as proofs of her superhuman virtues—for, not content with holding that she is not so black as she is painted, they represent her as an angel of light. It is an instinct essential to the success of this class of women, that they should possess great impressibility and flexibility. This is usually called deception, and those who are duped by it may fairly call it so : but, metaphysically speaking, it is rather the instinctive adaptation of a spontaneous actress to what the present case requires- " Here Fannia, leering on her own good man, And there, a naked Leda, with a swan:" a quality which is praised in generals and statesmen as a fertility of resource, and so forth. Hence, no trust whatever can be placed in the words or even the actions of such women. It is not that they trace out a lifelong plan of falsehood, but, cunningly false upon every occasion, they exhibit a systematic coherence in their life when theL whole is surveyed. This native character is conspicuous in MARY STUART. Her prayers and tears to the conspirators against Ricer° —her immediate drying of her eyes when informed of his death, and her remark that she would now think of vengeance—her varying behaviour to DARNLEY, especially her "kindness in hatred," (for after the ungrateful and brutal conduct of that good-looking fool, affection or respect was out of the question, if such women can respect any thing,) exhibit this trait. The same remark applies to her letters, on which so much has been said : they reflected back the sentiment of the moment, or rather the sentiment the moment required; and, "Whether the charmer sinner it or saint it,"

there is a graceful representation of the truth, which mere designing falsehood of the intellect could never attain. The same faculty sustained her with queenly decorum through the great scenes of her trial and execution ; the last assisted by her advancing years, her long imprisonment, and her religion,—for persons of this character have often the religious sentiment in a high degree, the result of their impressible temperament.

When one considers the number of authors, on both sides of the

question, who have narrated the history of MARY Queen of Scots, and the still greater number who have discussed the question of her guilt or innocence, it may be doubted whether any more Memoirs of her are wanted. But there can be no doubt whatever that two such volumes as these by Mr. L. STANHOPE F. BUCKINGHAM are a work of supererogation. Mr. L. S. F. BUCKINGHAM, it appears, was reading HUME, and, referring to the authority quoted, found that it did not "substantiate the statement in the text,"—a misfortune that happens to others as well as HUME. "Confidence shaken" induced further examination ; Mr. L. S. F. BUCKINGHAM, having ample leisure, was led insensibly into the "minute portions of the Marian controversy "; and the upshot was a couple of octavoes, to oblige the world with his opinions upon Scottish history so far as relates to Queen MARY, from the death of her father JAMES the Fifth to the execution at Fotheringay Castle.

To investigate the mooted question of the nature and extent

of MARY'S criminality, would involve a long and minute exami- nation of circumstances, totally unfitted for a weekly journal ; and if our pages were the fitting place, Mr. L. S. F. BUCKINGHAM'S Memoirs of Mary Stuart do not furnish the fitting occasion. It is not merely that his logic is often unsound, or his inferences some- times unnatural—that he gives undue importance to all that tells in favour of the Queen, and exaggerates all that will blacken her opponents, making his own wishes the guide to his conclusions and not the evidence before him : these are faults more or less common to all controvertists, especially to controvertists who undertake to decide positively upon very doubtful matters, and to paint persons as possessed of all the virtues whom the general opinion of mankind, and even their own fate without a single word of comment, pro nounce to have erred grievously. Mr. L. S. F. BUCKINGHAM is altogether unequal to his theme : goodness or badness, right or wrong, is scarcely at issue in the mind of the reader—incapacity is the verdict. Had this book been written for a college-prize, it might possibly have been praised as a creditable youthful effusion— unless the bulk of the MS. had deterred the readers ; but it would have exhibited no signs of promise, except as a novelist in the Minerva press line. See, for example, an instance of that style in the character of

THE YOUTHFUL QUEEN.

Each year added to the surpassing beauty of her person ; while the elegance and urbanity of her manners, the mildness and gentleness of her disposition, and the unspotted purity of her life, raised her every day in the affections of those around her. Of a stature bordering upon the makstic, yet restrained within the limits of feminine beauty; a form in which the slight and delicate proportions of the girl contended with the full and swelling outlines of the woman ; every movement marked by grace ; in figure she would seem to have embodied all our most ardent imaginings of human loveliness. Her clear and brilliant complexion, in which the roseate flush of youth enhanced the trans- parent fairness of her skin, was rendered more enchanting by the luxuriant tresses—deserving almost the epithet of golden, in those gay and happy days of her early youth, but darkened into a sober auburn in her maturer years— by which it was surrounded ; and her features, faultless in proportion and out- line, and her brilliant eyes, of the most eloquent and sparkling hazel, express- ing, in every glance, the guileless purity of a young and spotless heart, com- bined with her other charms of person, to render her a model of perfection. In all the exercises which the custom of that age allowed to the gentler sex, she was an adept : music, dancing, horsemanship, and the more feminine avocations of the embroidery-frame, served, alternately, to while away her leisure hours. Nor were the more solid charms of mind wanting; for in these she was more especially distinguished.

"BIG BOY" PERIODS.

The offices of religion engrossed a large share of her attention; and the wants and sufferings of the poor never failed of relief from the overflowing benevolence of her soul. Pious without bigotry; learned without pedantry ; elegant and accomplished without frivolity ; charitable without ostentation; majestic and queenly, yet familiar and condescending; she enchained the affec- tions of all who saw her, and subdued even her enemies by the graces of her person and the perfections of her mind.

A favourite figure of this writer is "invention,"—the imagining of things, not only for which there is not a shadow of authority, but which no authority can ever attain to. Here is a fancy-sketch of this kind—one of the last of the made-up reconciliations be- tween DARNLEY and MARY.

"How easily can we picture to ourselves the torturing conflict of emotions which must have reigned in the mind of this unhappy Prince at this miserable portion of his career. Bitterly loth to tear himself from the object of his early love—a love which, though sometimes forgotten, seemed to return with re- newed ardour after each temporary relapse—dreading every moment the vengeance of the men he had deceived, and yet unable, without inculpating himself, to remove the cause of his overpowering fear, he was compelled, either by a hasty flight to avoid the threatened evil which a longer stay was almost Certain to bring upon his head, or, by an accusation of Murray, to call down upon himself the contempt and disgust of his pure and virtuous Queen. Such was his wretched position, standing out to us as an everlasting memento of the folly of a course of treachery and crime, and rendered the more impressive by a contrast with the bold and fearless conduct of Mary,—laying bare her con- science before him, and imploring him to discover to her her faults, secure in the conscious purity and innocence of her heart,—while her husband slunk abashed and degraded from the scene, a prey to the keenest tortures of misery and despair, arising wholly from the errors and crimes of his past career."

There is not in Scottish or in any history a more striking picture than the murder of DARNLEY, SO long as the historian is content to tell what he knows, and to tell it in the natural order. See how Mr. L. S. F. BUCKINGHAM contrives to mar a scene whose mys- terious effect surpasses that of any romance. MARY is supposed to have just taken leave of her husband, to be present at the fete held in the palace on the marriage of one of her servants— "Scarcely had her receding footsteps ceased to echo through the balls of this lone abode, when other and darker forms approached, and the ministers of death pressed eagerly around their helpless victim. When the house had been taken for the King, the key of the cellar had been retained, and into a mine dug in this had been conveyed the powder for the completion of their design; and now the wished-for moment bad arrived when a terrible reality was to be given to their cherished schemes against their monarch's life. Long had they hated him with a deep and bitter hatred ; long had they desired, with fiendish malice, to glut their thirst for vengeance with his blood, and avenge with one blow his desertion of their cause ; and now the hour was come, and the long- sought prey lay unresisting within their grasp. They gathered exultingly around the couch where, enfeebled by severe illness, lay the consort of Scot- land's Queen; they tore him from his bed ; and a moment sufficed to terminate that life which their schemes had made so wretched. They cast his body into the garden ; and then a match applied to the train which they had prepared hurled the dwelling into the air, and destroyed the scene though it could not obliterate the memory of their fearful crime."