There was never, perhaps, an occasion throughout the whole of Mary's life on which she appeared to greater advantage than this. In the presence of all the pomp, learning, and talent of England, she stood alone and undaunted; evincing, in the modest dignity of her bearing, a mind conscious of its own integrity, and superior to the malice of fortune. Elizabeth's craftiest lawyers and ablest politicians were assembled to probe her to the quick,--to press home every argument against her, which ingenuity could devise and eloquence embellish,--to dazzle her with a blaze of erudition, or involve her in a maze of technical perplexities. Mary had no counsellor--no adviser--no friend. Her very papers, to which she might have wished to refer, had been taken from her; and there was not one to plead her cause, or defend her innocence. Yet was she not dismayed. She knew that she had a higher Judge than Elizabeth; and that great as was the array of Lords and Barons that appeared against her, posterity was greater than they, and that to its decision all things would be finally referred. Her bodily infirmities imparted only a greater lustre to her mental pre-eminence; and not in all the fascinating splendor of her youth and beauty--not on the morning of her first bridal day, when Paris rang with acclamations in her praise--was Mary Stuart so much to be admired, as when, weak and worn out, she stood calmly before the myrmidons of a rival Queen, to hear and refute their unjust accusations, her eye radiant once more with the brilliancy of earlier years, and the placid benignity of a serene conscience, lending to her countenance its undying grace. Elizabeth's Attorney-General opened the pleadings. He began by referring to the act of Parliament, in which it was made capital to be the person _for_ whom any design was undertaken against the life of the Queen. He then described the late conspiracy, and attempted to establish Mary's connexion with it, by producing copies of letters which, he alleged, she had written to Babington himself and several of his accomplices. To these having added letters from Babington to her, and the declarations and confessions which had been extorted from her secretaries, he asserted that the case was made out, and wound up his speech with a laboured display of legal knowledge and forensic oratory.