the era of the never-to-be-forgotten Mary Stuart can give; also the unique distinction of being the greatest master of the Latin language since it died as a vernacular, and became the immortal medium of intercommunication for the wide, high, and cold republic of scholars and thinkers, scattered through realms of ether and cloudland, and lit by volcanic fire and spiritual aurora fitfully lifting the night from peaks of rock and ice. FOOTNOTES [1] When I first heard from one of my early schoolmasters the mediæval chestnut, _Quid distat inter sotum et Scotum?--Mensa tantum._ (‘What divides a sot (fool) from a Scot?--Only the table’)--the reply was credited to Buchanan. [2] He was Buchanan’s assistant, and called the king’s ‘Pedagogue,’ Buchanan being called ‘Master.’ [3] Certain emoluments arising to the feudal superior (in this case the king); which, as they depend on uncertain events, are termed casualties. [4] This covers the meaning more accurately than ‘Physicians.’ [5] Burns appears to have afterwards written it down thus:-- ‘The Solemn League and Covenant Now brings a smile, now brings a tear; But sacred Freedom, too, was theirs: If thou’rt a slave, indulge thy sneer.’ The form may be improved, the sentiment could not be. [6] My authority is Herkless’s _Cardinal Beaton_, p. 153. [7] My non-forensic sympathy, but not my full conviction, goes with Mr. Hosack and Sir John Skelton in their chivalrous but too unmeasured defence of Mary. My verdict in regard to her being ‘art and part’ in putting an end to that traitor in heart and deed, the good-for-nothing, faithless fool Darnley, is a hesitant ‘Not Proven’; but if otherwise, then a distinct non-hesitant ‘served him right.’ Skelton’s clever, interesting book upon Maitland of Lethington, Mary’s most faithful and capable minister, does not throw much, if any, light upon Buchanan. In it he is treated as an opposition pleader, capable rather than scrupulous, who did not know all the facts, and who was instructed by men who had other purposes to serve than telling the whole truth, and who probably did not know it themselves so well as Skelton had opportunities to come to know it, _e.g._ in regard to the ‘Casket Letters’--documents that could be satisfactory to no modern tribunal except a Dreyfus court-martial. Buchanan’s attack, in a pamphlet written in Scotch, upon Skelton’s hero Maitland, entitled _The Chameleon_, Skelton sneers at as a ‘Dawb’--not entirely an inaccurate criticism, for _The Chameleon_ is a caricature, and that, of course, means an exaggeration of all faults, actual or presumable. But when a ‘chameleon’ like Disraeli or Maitland, both of whom have found in John Skelton an ingenious and eloquent hero-worshipper, is assailed by satirists in _Punch_ or elsewhere, the only effective condemnatory judgment worth stating is that the caricature is not recognisable by an honest enemy or a free and easy friend. For my part, I believe that the