another source a fairly accurate idea of the speech which called forth such high praise from the French courtiers. It happens that the National Library in Paris possesses the Latin themes written by Mary Stuart in 1554, the year before the oratorical performance at the Louvre. Amongst the exercises contained in the morocco-bound volume, fifteen refer to the same subject as the speech, and, it is fair to suppose, were intended as a preparation for the princely pupil's "speech-day".[17] Disappointing as it may be to ardent admirers of the Queen of Scots, it must be admitted that her themes do not bear out the praises bestowed on her Latinity, but contain such solecisms as would probably have been fraught with unpleasant consequences to a less noble and less fair scholar. Neither need the substance of Mary's apology for learned women excite our enthusiasm. To string together, with a few commonplace remarks, lists of names evidently supplied by her tutor and taken by him from Politian's Epistles, was no very remarkable achievement on the part of a child who, if she began her classical studies as early as her fellow pupil and sister-in-law Elizabeth did, had already devoted fully five years to Latin at the date of her famous speech. But, though the Queen's early proficiency may have been overrated, there can be no doubt that, in later life, she possessed considerable familiarity with the language of Virgil and of Cicero. We know from contemporary letters that, after her return to Scotland, she continued her studies under Buchanan[18] and that, faithful to the habit which she had acquired in France, of devoting two hours a day to her books,[19] she regularly read "somewhat of Livy" with him "after her dinner". The catalogue of the books[20] contained in the royal library affords further information as to the nature and extent of her acquaintance with Latin literature. In it we find mention, amongst others of lesser note, of Horace, Virgil and Cicero, of Æmilius Probus and Columella, of Vegetius and Boethius. Neither did she neglect the Latinity of the Middle Ages. In prose it is represented by such forgotten names as those of Bertram of Corvey, of Ludolph of Saxony, of Joannes de Sacrobosco, and of Nicolaus de Clamangiis, the authors of ponderous treatises on science and on theology; the latter subject being one which her interest in the great ecclesiastical revolution of the age rendered particularly attractive to her. Amongst contemporary Latin poets her favourites seem to have been Petrus Bargæus, Louis Leroy, Sir Thomas Craig of Riccarton, and George Buchanan, whose dedication to her of his translation of the Psalms has not unjustly been pronounced to stand "unsurpassed by all the verses that have been lavished upon her during three hundred years by poets of almost every nation and language of Europe".[21]