Rizzio, and after a few weeks with Bothwell she was heard “calling aloud for a knife to kill herself with.”  A mother twice, and of a son and daughter, both the children were brought forth in loneliness and sorrow, and separated from her early, her son educated to hate her, her daughter at once immured in a convent.  Add the eighteen years of her imprisonment, and the fact that this foolish, prodigal world, when there was in it one woman fitted by her grace and loveliness to charm all eyes and enliven all fancies, suffered her to be shut up to water with her tears her dull embroidery during all the full rose-blossom of her life, and you will hardly get beyond this story for a tragedy, not noble, but pallid and forlorn.

Such were the bootless, best thoughts I had while looking at the dull blood-stain and blocked-up secret stair of Holyrood, at the ruins of Loch Leven castle, and afterward at Abbotsford, where the picture of Queen Mary’s head, as it lay on the pillow when severed from the block, hung opposite to a fine caricature of “Queen Elizabeth dancing high and disposedly.”  In this last the face is like a mask, so frightful is the expression of cold craft, irritated, vanity, and the malice of a lonely breast in contrast with the attitude and elaborate frippery of the dress.  The ambassador looks on dismayed; the little page can scarcely control the laughter which swells his boyish cheeks.  Such can win the world which, better hearts (and such Mary’s was, even if it had a large black speck in it) are most like to lose.

That was a most lovely day on which we entered Perth, and saw in full sunshine its beautiful meadows, among them the North-Inch, the famous battle-ground commemorated in “The Fair Maid of Perth,” adorned with graceful trees like those of the New England country towns.  In the afternoon we visited the modern Kinfauns, the stately home of Lord Grey.  The drive to it is most beautiful, on the one side the Park, with noble heights that skirt it, on the other through a belt of trees was seen the river and the sweep of that fair and cultivated country.  The house is a fine one, and furnished with taste, the library large, and some good works in marble.  Among the family pictures one arrested my attention,—­the face of a girl full of the most pathetic sensibility, and with no restraint of convention upon its ardent, gentle expression.  She died young.

Returning, we were saddened, as almost always on leaving any such place, by seeing such swarms of dirty women and dirtier children at the doors of the cottages almost close by the gate of the avenue.  To the horrors and sorrows of the streets in such places as Liverpool, Glasgow, and, above all, London, one has to grow insensible or die daily; but here in the sweet, fresh, green country, where there seems to be room for everybody, it is impossible to forget the frightful inequalities between the lot of man and man, or believe that God can smile upon a state of things such as we find existent here.  Can any man who has seen these things dare blame the Associationists for their attempt to find prevention against such misery and wickedness in our land?  Rather will not every man of tolerable intelligence and good feeling commend, say rather revere, every earnest attempt in that direction, nor dare interfere with any, unless he has a better to offer in its place?