she had, in her early youth, received the first impressions.” It is well known that the court at which she received her education was most dissolute; and the supposition that she carried away the innocent polish and refinement of their manners, without contracting their criminal contagion, is not only incredible, but contradicted by the confessions of her friends. Memoires de Chastelnau, augmentez par J. le Laboureur, Prieur de Juvigné, tom. i. p. 528. A Bruxelles, 1731. I have no desire, however, to dip into this subject, or to drag to light facts unfavourable to that unhappy princess; although the unwarranted and persevering attacks which have been made upon worthy men, in order to reconcile the “future conduct” of Mary, with “the general tenor of her character,” would justify far greater freedoms than have been lately used in this way. “We are too apt to figure to ourselves the reformers of that age, as persons of impolitic and inflexible austerity.” This is the remark of one who was much better acquainted with their history than Mr Hume. Lord Hailes, Historical Mem. of the Provincial Councils of the Scottish Clergy, p. 41. Comp. Knox, Historie, p. 310. See also Note Z. Mr Hume’s object, in the passage on which I have animadverted, was to blacken the reformers, rather than to exalt the queen, of whose character he had at bottom no great opinion. “Tell Goodall,” says he, in a letter to Dr Robertson, “that if he can but give up queen Mary, I hope to satisfy him in every thing else; and he will have the pleasure of seeing John Knox, and the reformers, made very ridiculous.” Indeed, Mr Hume confessed to his confidential friends, that he had, in his history, drawn the character of that {322} princess in too favourable colours. “I am afraid,” says he to the same correspondent, “that you, as well as myself, have drawn Mary’s character with too great softenings. She was undoubtedly a violent woman _at all times_.” Stewart’s Life of Robertson, p. 37, 38. Note R, Footnote 114.