Though the remainder of our hero's life was less adventurous, it was no less noble. He made, as all had foreseen, a great king, showing himself as wise and high-minded as he had already proven brave and patient. He found Sweden a petty province, he left it a mighty kingdom; he found it a wilderness, poor, thinly peopled, and semi-barbarous, he left it prosperous, populous, and civilized. He himself was the head and centre of all this, performing an amount of work which seems almost impossible for one man. His letters, some of which remain, are clear, minute in detail, and exact. He knew just how he wanted things done, and he had them done his way. His own life might be summed up in his advice to his two sons, given when, only a few months before his death, he resigned a crown grown too heavy for his failing strength. "Think carefully, execute promptly, _never give up_, never delay. Resolves not carried out are like clouds without rain in times of drought." MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS By SAMUEL L. KNAPP (1542-1587) [Illustration: Mary, Queen of Scots.] Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was the third child of James V. and his wife, Mary of Guise. That lady had borne him previously, two sons, both of whom died in infancy. Mary was born on December 7, 1542, in the palace of Linlithgow. She was only seven days old when she lost her father, who, at the time of her birth, lay sick at the palace of Falkland. The young queen was crowned by Cardinal Beaton, at Stirling, on September 9, 1543. Soon after her birth, the Parliament nominated commissioners, to whom they intrusted the charge of the queen's person, leaving all her other interests to the care of her mother. The first two years of her life, Mary spent at Linlithgow, where it is said she had the small-pox, but the disease must have been of a particularly gentle kind, having left behind no visible traces. During the greater part of the years 1545, 1546, and 1547, she resided at Stirling Castle, in the keeping of Lords Erskine and Livingstone. She was afterward removed to Inchmahome, a sequestered island in the lake of Monteith; after remaining there upward of two years, it was thought expedient by those who had at the time the disposal of her future destiny, that she should be removed to France. She was accordingly, in the fifth year of her age, taken to Dunbarton, where she was delivered to the French admiral, whose vessels were waiting to receive her; and attended by Lords Erskine and Livingstone, her three natural brothers, and four young ladies as companions, she left Scotland.