The year 1570 opened with an event which materially affected the state of public affairs in Scotland, and which to Mary was the occasion of many mingled feelings. Elizabeth, perceiving the danger which accrued to herself from detaining a prisoner of so much importance, had commenced a negotiation with the Earl of Murray for replacing his sister in his hands, when she received the unexpected and unwelcome intelligence of his assassination. The manner and cause of his death are sufficiently known to all who are acquainted with Scottish History; and though nothing can justify a murder committed to gratify private revenge, yet it is impossible to read the story of the wrongs which the Regent had heaped upon Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, without feeling towards the latter more of pity than of hatred. Next to Mary herself, no one had held so prominent a place in Scotland as the Earl of Murray; and there is no one concerning whose character historians have more widely differed. There can be no doubt that, like most human characters, it was a very mixed one; but it is to be feared that the evil preponderated. Ambition was his ruling passion, and the temptations which his birth, rank, and fortune, held out for its indulgence, unfortunately led him into errors and crimes which, had he been contented with an humbler sphere, he would in all probability have avoided. There are various sorts of ambition, and the most dangerous is not always that which is most apparent and reckless. Murray was ambitious under the cloak of patriotism, and the mask of religion. He had enough of knowledge of mankind to be aware, that no one could so safely play the villain as he who maintained a high name for integrity. Hence, though he may have loved honesty to a certain extent, for its own sake, he loved it a great deal more for the sake of the advantages to be derived from a reputation for possessing it. He was perhaps constitutionally religious; but though he was very willing to fight as a leader in the armies of the Reformation, it is somewhat questionable that he would have served the good cause with equal zeal, had he been obliged to fill only a subordinate place in its ranks. There is every reason to believe that in many cases he did good only that he might the more safely do wrong; and that he rigidly observed all the external forms of religion, only that the less suspicion might attach to him when he infringed its precepts. He had enough of moral rectitude to understand the distinctions between right and wrong, but too much selfishness to observe them unostentatiously, and too much prudence to disregard them openly. Thus to the casual observer he appeared strong in unshaken integrity, and full of the odour of sanctity. He possessed the art, which few but profound politicians can acquire, of going in the wrong path, as if he were in the right, and of gaining more estimation for his errors, than others do for their virtues. His conduct towards his