the horizon and flamed with blinding brilliance across the sea.

"Ah!" he murmured. "The superb, the glorious sun! Unwearied lord of Creation! Generous giver of all light and life! And yet, who knows what worlds he may not have drawn into his flaming self, and consumed during the sons of his existence? It is ever and everywhere the same: death in company with life! And swift, strong death is better than slow, weak life! .. Almost the splendour and inspiration of his rising tempt me to stay! Great nourisher and renewer of life's heat!"

He put off his fur coat, and let it fall on the deck, and stood for a while as if wrapt in ecstasy. Then, before Lefevre could conceive his intention, his feet were together on the bulwark, and with a flash and a plunge he was gone!

Amazement held the doctor's energies congealed, though but for an instant or two. Then he threw off hat and coat, and stood alert and resolute to dive to Julius's rescue when he rose, while those who manned the yacht prepared to cast a buoy and line.

Not a

ripple or flash of water passed unheeded; the flood of sunshine rose fuller and fuller over the world; moments grew to minutes, and minutes swelled to hopeless hours under the doctor's weary eyes, till it seemed to them as if the universe were only a swirling, greedy ocean;

-but no sign appeared of his night's companion: his life was quenched in the depths of the restless waters, as a flaming meteor is quenched in night. At length Lefevre ordered the yacht to stand away to the shore, his heart torn with grief and self-upbraiding. He had called Courtney his friend, and yet until that last he had never won his inner confidence; and now he knew that his friend-he of the gentle heart, the peerless intelligence, and the wildly erring life -was dead in the hour of selfredemption.

When he had landed, however, given to the proper authorities such information as was necessary, and set off by train on his return to town, the agitation of his grief began to assuage; and when next day, upon the publication in the papers of the news of Courtney's death by drowning, a solicitor called in Savile Row with a will which he had drawn up two days before, and by which all Julius Courtney's property was left to Dr Lefevre, to dispose of as he thought best, "for scientific and humane ends," the doctor admitted to his reason that a death that could thus calmly be prepared was not lightly to be questioned.

"He must have known best," he said to himself, as he bowed over his hands-" he must have known best when to put off the poisoned garment of life he had woven for himself."

J. MACLAREN COBBAN.

4

MARY SIUART's story is as perennially fascinating as a fairy tale. Apart from her strongly marked and yet ambiguous personality, the interest centres in the apparently insoluble riddle which the circumstances attending Darnley's death present to the historical student. That riddle cannot be unravelled until some moderate ly reasonable explanation of the famous documents known as the Casket Letters has been found. More than twenty years ago I had come to the conclusion that while it was possible that some of the documents were genuine, it was probable that one of them at least (and that the most incriminating) had been fabricated. I had a good deal of correspondence on the subject with Mr Froude while his 'History of England' was being published (the volumes, it will be remembered, appeared at intervals); and some time in 1869 or '70 I prepared at his suggestion a series of articles (which appeared soon afterwards in Fraser's Magazine') in which this view was strongly pressed. A very masterly contribution to the discussion by the late Mr Hosack, in which a somewhat similar line of argument was followed, had been published in 1869.1 My impression is that we had arrived independently at substantially the same conclusion. apology for Mary has been more than once reprinted, and Mr. Hosack's work has become one of

My

the classics of the controversy. Our view appeared to many critics to be essentially reasonable, and was, I believe, very generally accepted. Until quite lately, indeed, it may be said to have held the field; and the foreign apologists of Mary, who during the past twenty years have brought German erudition and Gallic brilliancy to solve the conundrum, have, with few exceptions, been content to emphasise the argument with which Mr Hosack's name will continue to be associated.

2

In the brief chapter on the Casket Letters which appeared in my recent work on 'Maitland of Lethington,' the reasons for the true faith (as we hold it) were very summarily, and, I had hoped, very moderately stated. Very moderately-for I was anxious, in a strictly historical work, to avoid any appearance of dogmatism or partisanship. My conclusion was, not that the documents had been proved to be fabricated, but that they belonged to a class of writings which cannot be used with absolute confidence that they are what they profess to be. The historian, I said, was not required to address himself to the solution of problems which the lapse of time and the animosity of partisans may have rendered insoluble. He had to consider only whether certain documents to which, ever since they were first produced, acute suspicion has been held to attach, can be

am

accepted by him as material on which it is safe to build. "For my own part," I added, "I an slow to believe that any entirely candid and cautious inquirer will henceforth be willing to accept the responsibility. He will hold, on the contrary, that the contents of Morton's casket have been insufficiently authenticated, and that Mary must be condemned, if condemned at all, upon other evidence." I have seen no reason to doubt the soundness of this conclusion.

My argument has been criticised with more or less keenness of hostility, on the assumption apparently that I was an indiscriminate advocate of Mary Stuart's claims to canonisation. Theot has never been my view. I have never held that she was during her life a saint, and in her death a martyr. have maintained only that she was a very charming sinner, and that the sinister portrait of her which has been transmitted to us by Buchanan is a gross caricature of an exceptionally brilliant woman who was neither a Messalina nor a Mrs Fry.

Every reader of history is acquainted with the circumstances which led to the production of the Casket Letters. After Mary's fight to England, Elizabeth proposed that the political issues involved in the recent conflict in Scotland should be referred to a Commission, with the view of bringing about reasonable terms of accommodation between Mary and the Lords. The Commission was not appointed to decide any question involving Mary's relations with Bothwell-any question affecting her honour; and from first to last Mary resolutely declined to allow such questions to be raised, But Elizabeth was naturally anxious that the Queen of Scots

should cease to be a dangerous rival-should be made impossible as the "successor "; and she insisted on the production before the Commission of certain letters which the Lords declared had been written by Mary and addressed to Bothwell. These are the documents which are known as the Casket Letters, and which were originally made public in an early edition of George Buchanan's 'Detection.' It was always understood until Goodall wrote that the French versions which appeared in the 'Detection' were the letters produced at Westminster; for it does not seem to have occurred to any one that it was possible that Buchanan and Cecil (who were unquestionably directly or indirectly responsible for the publication, and who had the originals, or copies of the originals, in their possession) would publish versions in the French language which had been translated from Scots or Latin.

I have never attached excessive importance to Goodall's method, though the Ingenuity with which it was applied cannot be too highly praised. Philology alone will not settle this question. Goodall maintained that the Scots letters in the 'Detection' were idiomatic and original; that the French were translations; that the letters, therefore, had not been written by Mary. Had he confined his argument to the Glasgow letter (or letters), or rather to certain portions of the Glasgow letter, his position would have been strong, if not impreg nable. There are passages in the Scots version of that letter which never came from the tame pen of a translator-passages racy of the soil, instinct with the life and force of original composition. But Goodall overstated his case--as advocates will sometimes do. It was.

not necessary for him to prove that all the documents were forged, certain of them being quite consistent with the innocence of his client. And by-and-by it appeared, curiously enough, that these were the letters which had been least affected by his destructive criticism. His method when applied to them failed to convince. Copies, moreover, were found among the State papers which had been taken apparently directly from the originals; and in these many of the linguistic errors, on which he had relied, did not occur. But as regards the Glasgow letter, his argument has not been shaken by any subsequent contribution to the controversy; and it cannot be too often repeated that, in so far as Mary's complicity in the murder is involved, the Glasgow letter is the only one that compromises her. The other letters are more or less capable of explanation; the Glasgow letter cannot be explained away. Goodall was thus so far right--the Glasgow letter, or portions of the Glasgow letter, had not, and could not have been, originally written in French; had not, therefore, and could not have been, written by Mary. Public and private libraries have been ransacked in vain; and it may now be asserted with absolute confidence that no manuscript copyno copy in French, that is-of the Glasgow letter exists. It can hardly be denied, it is hardly denied now by any competent critic,

that the one fatally compromising document produced by the Lords has been completely discredited. It has been maintained, indeed, by a recent writer (Mr Henderson) that even if the Casket Letters were discredited, the other evidence against Mary-the evidence apart from the letters-would remain unshaken. Such a contention, however, is not consistent with common-sense. If the Glasgow letter was not written by Mary-that is to say, if the Glasgow letter was fabricated - the fact will be held to prove, not merely that Mary was innocent, but that the men who fabricated the letter to justify themselves knew her to be so.1

The same writer asserts that even if one of the translated French letters was not the version produced at Westminster, Goodall's theory necessarily collapses. The argument is unsound. If we admit, what cannot well be denied, that there is a generic difference between the Scots of the Glasgow letter and the Scots of the others, then, in so far as the incriminating letter is concerned, Goodall's theory does not collapse. Suppose, for instance, that another version in French of the Glasgow letter were found in one of the public offices— another version in which the French was less impure and corrupt, and less obviously a translation--what would be the effect of the discovery? Would it not merely amount to this that another

translation into French of a letter originally written in Scots had been made at the time? It appears to me to be quite obvious that the admission that letters which may be genuine were composed in French does not affect the argument that the fabricated or manufactured letter was composed in Scots.

Mr Henderson admits that much controversy would have been spared, and that Buchanan would have better served the interests of future generations had he included the original French versions in the edition of the Detection' issued in this country. Why, then, did he not do it? No plausible explanation has been offered. I do not think that we have-any of us on either side-got to the heart of the mystery that surrounds the Glasgow letter. Assuming for the sake of argument that the Scots version which we possess was taken from a French original, there must have been something about the very appearance of the original which, when closely examined (it never was closely examined by those who represented Mary they never saw it, in fact), would have created suspicion. jealously hidden away; whereas the Scots version was constantly hawked about,-sent to Elizabeth, brought to York, retained in the public offices, translated into French for the 'Detection.' The hesitation, the reluctance of the Lords to come to close quarters, to allow the letter to be handled, can only be explained on the hypothesis that it would not bear inspection, that it was a witness who would break down if crossexamined.

It was

are

Mr Henderson endeavours to show that there are traces even in the Scots Glasgow letter of a French origin. In this, I think, he fails. The Scots is the idiomatic Scots of the time. Mr Henderson is conscientious and diligent; if he will go carefully through the volumes which being printed by the Scottish Text Society, he will be able to show, on precisely the same lines, that the original compositions of the early Scottish poets are really translations from the French. The truth is that many French words, idioms, and proverbial phrases (probably from the close intercourse between the two countries) had in the sixteenth century acquired a Scottish domicile had been acclimatised and domesticated in Scotland.

It seemed to me, therefore, when I prepared my original apology for Mary, that the whole controversy must ultimately come to turn upon the authenticity of a single letter. If the Glasgow letter proved to be genuine, if the Glasgow letter proved to be fabricated, there was in either event an end to the controversy. I do not think I exaggerate when I say that the difficulties in the way of accepting the Glasgow letter as genuine (quite irrespective of the philological argument) have of late years been deemed insuperable. Writers who have no love for Mary are forced to admit that it is incredible that she wrote this letter.1

Since Maitland of Lethington' was published, various contributions have been made to the Mary Stuart controversy. The opinion of the leading literary journals at home and abroad has been elicited; one gentleman has written & vol