where he had done his wife to death. Even within recent years uncanny noises have been heard in the wood hard by, and "something black having the appearance of a hearse drawn by four horses" is seen by the affrighted wayfarer.

Stowey itself consists of one long street with another forking from it. At the top of the principal thoroughfare is a lofty mound once surmounted by a keep, of which only some foundations are traceable, while the lower portions of the building have vanished altogether. This castle formed part of the domains of that Lord Audley who headed the western insurrection against Henry the Seventh, and lost his head after the defeat at Blackheath. From the castle mound, as it is called to-day, you can look over the whole town, and from some such point as this Coleridge on his descent from Danesborough may have exclaimed —

"And now, beloved Stowey, I behold

Thy church-tower, and methinks the four huge elms

Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend;

And close beside them, hidden from my view, Is my own lonely cottage, where my babe And my babe's mother dwell in peace!"

The "mansion," of course that of "Tom" Poole, is still in existence, but the elms are no more. But with these exceptions, with the removal perhaps of a little thatch and the substitution of tile or slate, Stowey to-day is much the same as it was in the days when Coleridge walked its quiet streets. No house, we are told, has been erected there for fifty

years, and, unless the railway comes, it seems doubtful whether any house ever again will be. The smoke curls upward against the background of wooded hill, the housewife stands gossiping at her door, the children play at mysterious games in the kennel just as they did a century ago. Nor does Quantock alter, though less quiet than of yore, for, of late years, it has become a hunting ground, and the combes that our poet loved for their quietude echo in March and September with the music of that. historic pack, the Devon and Somerset staghounds, rousing from his lair the wild red deer that, save here and on adjacent Exmoor, exists no more in merry England. Yet, in spite of the windings of Antony's horn, the baying of hounds and the clatter of the gay cavalcade sweeping down the stony bottom of Adder's Combe or over the heather bell and whortleberry of Hareknaps, the beauty of Quantock remains, and the scene is, for eleven months out of the twelve, as peaceful as in the far away time when Coleridge and his friends roved

"On seaward Quantock's heathy hills," and when the only interruption came from some leafy glen

"Where quiet sounds from hidden rills

Float here and there like things astray."

We may still agree with the opinion uttered by him in Holford Glen, "This is a place to reconcile one to all the jarrings and conflicts of the wide world," and still more with Thelwall's reply "Nay-to make one forget them altogether.'

A

STRANGE fascination. lingers around the name of Mary Stuart. The sadly romantic story which had its end with the executioner's axe on that fateful day at Fotheringay in the February of 1587, has kept the Scottish Queen on the borders of a living land through three centuries of time, and given her a place in the hearts of all those who can pity misfortune even if they cannot look upon it as altogether undeserved. As Mr. Swinburne has put it, there beats no heart in English-speaking lands that does not keep her memory aglow as a warder keeps his beacon fire. Nor is it a case of memory only. A widow at nineteen, one of the most beautiful women of her time and country, the pliant tool of gross and dissolute self-seekers, carrying in her person a grace and an affability that strangely unfitted her for the rough turbulent life into which she was castwho would not spare a sigh for the wrongs and the wretchedness of Mary Stuart, notwithstanding that the faint suspicion of a crimson stain may lie dimly on her historic fame? Away back in 1563 Thomas Randolph declared her to be "the fynneste she that ever was," and the world has in the main agreed with him, inclining to believe that such errors as the Queen of Scots may have committed were more of the heart than of the head, and that the catastrophe which closed her career was as evidently unmerited as the vicissitudes

that have helped to lift her name into the regions of romance.

It was an unfortunate dynasty that Mary Stuart represented. With the single exception of her father, who died of a broken heart after the defeat of his army at the Solway Moss, not one of the Jameses had been privileged to end his life in bed. The first James, after spending many of his best years in prison, fell a victim to the dagger of an assassin in the old priory of the Dominicans at Perth; the second James was killed by the bursting of a cannon at the siege of Roxburgh Castle; the third James was slain at Bannockburn during a revolt of his subjects; and the fourth James, after leading his country to defeat and disgrace, died, with most of the Scottish nobility, on the field of Flodden. Nor, if we pursue the Stuart dynasty on to the time when it fell for ever in the defeat of the brave and heroic darling of the Jacobites on Culloden Moor, shall we find much mitigation of the adverse circumstances that thus surrounded its earlier history. The first Charles, like Mary herself, ended his life on the scaffold, the second Charles passed most of his years in flight or in exile; the seventh James abandoned the throne which no eighth James ever occupied ; and Charles Edward passed the last of his dreary days in obscurity and dissipation, an exile in a foreign country, and all but forgotten by those he had hoped to govern.

In the very centre of this galaxy of woe stands the unhappy Queen of Scots, who was born at Linlithgow Palace on the

was in 1646, and in connection therewith the following curious entry appears in the Town Council minutes :

"The Counsall, upon the coming of the Comitie of Estattis, to sitt within this borough, fering that sundrie in the inhabitants, takens advantage of the thrang that will be by haime, will extort the leadges resorting heirto for their chambers and bedes; thairfor they have sett doune thir pryses following-viz., the pryse of a nobleman's chamber, cole and candle, with twa bedes, for 24 pounds 20 shillings; and of the gentlemen and commissioners of burrowes, the pryse 13 pounds 4 shillings; and the pryse of

themselves for their ignominious defeat at Falkirk by setting fire to its timbers. And yet it is withal a magnificent ruin. Standing on an eminence whose base is kissed by the waters of a beautiful lake, the ideal home of the curlew, its deserted halls and gaping portals, enclosed by weather-stained walls, stretching up here and there a gaunt arm to the skies, still show something of the fine taste and architectural beauty which characterise all the Scottish palaces erected by the Stuarts. The building is nearly square

the rest of the leadges resorting to the said borough for cole, candle, and bede, 24 pounds 6 shillings and 8 pence; and the groomes and footmen are to pay for their bedes three shillings."

In the interests of the summer tourist, it might very well be wished that the Scottish Town Councils of to-day were equally considerate with this old burgh!

When Scotland gave up her sceptre to England no one seems to have thought of any further use for the ancient royal dwelling at Linlithgow, and it was left to care for itself. As it stands to-day it is but a mere fragment of its old-time glory; for besides the moulding of its masonry by the rude hand of Time, it carries traces of the memorable days of '45, when General Hawley and his troops revenged

in plan, and measures about 150 feet on each of its four sides. The principal rooms are on the second floor, and include the Parliament Hall, a large banqueting hall, a chapel, and the room in which Mary Stuart was born. On the ground floor there is a labyrinth of vaults; and few of the features which go to make old buildings interesting with suggestions of old-world life are wanting. Unfortunately the remains are in a somewhat critical state, and very little that is effectual is being done to prevent their further internal decay through exposure to the elements. In Scotland there is a general opinion that ever since the Union it has been the policy of the Government to allow public buildings and royal palaces in the northern kingdom to go to ruin, with the view of

getting quickly rid of the burden of keeping them up. Whether this notion is well founded or not, it is certain that the £500 voted last year for repairs at Linlithgow is quite insufficient for anything more than a temporary restoration of the palace. The opinion of experienced architects is, that there is only one possible way by which the ruins can be preserved from ultimate destruction, and this is by roofing them. As the Government decline to go so far in the way of

restoration, it is more than probable that the birth-place of Scotland's unfortunate queen will, in the course of a few years, become nothing more than a heap of stones--a result which would assuredly be widely deplored.

66

According to the contemporary records, Mary was the prettiest babe of royal blood in Europe." We may perhaps allow for some exaggeration here; but at any rate, the infant queen was not many days old when she became the most important figure on the whole chessboard of her country's politics. Scottish nobles fought for the custody of her person as for a kingdom, and their schemes were frustrated only by the everwatchful anxiety of mother and nurse. The Earl of Arran, whose claim upon the throne made him specially interested in

The

the person of the royal infant, conceived it to be to his interest to circulate a report that Mary was "sickly, and not like to live." The calumny stung the queen-mother to the quick, and she lost no time in getting from Sir Ralph Sadler, the emissary of Henry VIII., the oft quoted certificate, "It is as goodly a child as I have ever seen at her age, and as likely to live with the blessing of God." No doubt this account of the infant Mary would not be altogether to the mind of the

truculent and unscrupu

lous Henry, who saw that the Scottish queen would stand in the way of his obtaining possession of the northern kingdom; and his next move was to seek the queen in marriage for his son, the future Edward VI., hoping thereby to get both her person and her country under his own control. But this subterfuge only made the guardians of the young queen more watchful than ever; and the safety of the royal babe was further secured by her surreptitious removal to Stirling Castle. Thus did the romantic adventures of Mary Stuart have their beginning.

The Castle of Stirling, with its memories of Wallace and Bruce and Bannockburn, had already been closely associated with the fortunes of the Stuart dynasty. Within its walls the second James first saw the light; the third James met his death in its immediate neighbourhood; the fifth James, who was born and crowned under its roof, chose it as his refuge when seeking to free himself of the Douglas faction; and now his daughter found in it a safe retreat from the intriguing lords who would fain have sought their own interests at the expense of hers. The castle bears a striking resemblance to that of Edinburgh in aspect and natural situation; and historically, too, the one is certainly quite as interesting as the other. Though the precipitous rock at Stirling does not appear to have been crowned by artificial masonry at so remote a period as that of the