Mary landed in Scotland with a mind full of anxiety and uncertainty. She came alone and unprotected, to assume the government of a country which had long been distinguished for its rebellious turbulence. The masculine spirit of her father had quailed before the storm. Her mother, whose intellectual energy she well knew, had in vain attempted to bring order out of confusion, and harassed and worn out, had at length surrendered her life in the struggle. For the last two years, it is true, the country had enjoyed, not peace and tranquillity, but a cessation from an actual state of warfare. Nevertheless, the seeds of discontent, and of mutual distrust and hatred, were as abundant as ever. Mary's religion was well known; and her confirmed devotion to it, was by one party magnified into bigotry, and pronounced criminal; whilst by another, it was feared she would show herself too lukewarm in revenging the insults which the ancient worship had sustained. Such being the state of things, how could a young, and comparatively inexperienced queen, just nineteen years of age, approach her kingdom otherwise than with fear and trembling? Contrasted too with her former situation, that which she was now about to fill, appeared particularly formidable. In France, even during the life of her husband, and while at the very height of her power, few of the severer duties of government rested upon her. She had all the essential authority, without much of the responsibility of a sovereign. Francis consulted her upon every occasion, and followed her advice in almost every matter in which she chose to interfere; but it was to him, or her uncles of Guise, that the nation looked, when any of the state-machinery went wrong. It would be very different in Scotland. By whatever counsel she acted, the blame of all unpopular measures would be sure to rest with her. If she favoured the Protestants, the Catholics would renounce her; if she assisted the Catholics, the Protestants would again be found assembling at Perth, listening, with arms in their hands, to the sermons of John Knox, pulling down the remaining monasteries, and subscribing additional covenants. Is it surprising then, that she found it difficult to steer her course between the rocks of Scylla and the whirlpools of Charybdis? If misfortunes ultimately overtook her, the wonder unquestionably ought to be, not that they ever arrived, but that they should have been guarded against so long. Nothing but the wisest and most temperate policy, could have preserved quietness in a country so full of the elements of internal discord. Mary's system of government throughout all its ramifications, must have been such as no Queen of her age could have established, had there not been more than an empty compliment, in those lines of Buchanan, in which he addresses his Royal mistress as one "Quae sortem antevenis meritis, virtutibus annos, Sexum animis, morum nobilitate genus."