sister was altogether unjustifiable; yet with the exception of his rebellion on the occasion of her marriage with Darnley, which was the least objectionable, because the boldest and most straight-forward part of the whole, he contrived to inflict, and to see inflicted, the deadliest injuries, as if he unwillingly submitted to them, rather than actively instigated them. He had little warmth of feeling; but what he had, prompted him to affect to feel as he never in reality did. He possessed all the talent compatible with cunning; he had abundance of military skill, and was not deficient in personal courage. He was not often cruel, because he saw it for his interest to be humane; he was a patron of literature, and attentive to his friends, because patronage and a numerous body of friends confer power. He affected nevertheless an ostentatious austerity in his manners, which it was impossible to reconcile with the worldliness of his pursuits. In short, he had so involved his whole character in disingenuousness, under a show of every thing that was exactly the reverse, that he was probably not aware himself when he acted from good, and when from bad motives. He had far too much ambition to be an upright man, and far too much good sense to be an undisguised villain. Notwithstanding all the ill usage she had received from him, Mary shed tears when she heard of his untimely death; and to record this fact, is the highest euloguim which need be passed on his memory. The Scots chose the Earl of Lennox Regent in the place of Murray, whilst Elizabeth, says Robertson, "adhering to her old system with regard to Scottish affairs, laboured, notwithstanding the solicitations of Mary's friends, to multiply and to perpetuate the factions which tore in pieces the kingdom." At the same time, she pretended to enter into a new negotiation with Mary, as she frequently did at subsequent periods, when hard pressed by any of the more powerful friends of the Queen of Scots. But after appointing Commissioners, and requiring Morton and others to meet them from Scotland, the affair ended as it began; Mary still continued in her prison, and Morton returned home, no proposals having been made, to which either of the parties would agree. About this period Elizabeth's temper was particularly soured, by an excommunication which Pope Pius V. issued against her, and which she erroneously supposed had been prepared in concert with Mary. A person of the name of Felton, affixed a copy of the Pope's Bull on the gate of the Bishop of London's palace, and, refusing either to fly or conceal himself, he was seized and executed for the crime. In her ill humour, Elizabeth also ordered that Mary should not be allowed to go abroad, and she did not revoke this order, until strong representations were made to her of the cruel effect produced by it on the health of the Queen, whose constitution was now much broken. The weakness in one of her sides which had long pained her, had of