Mary's remains were immediately taken from her servants, who wished to pay them the last sad offices of affection, and were carried into an adjoining apartment, where a piece of old green baize, taken from a billiard-table, was thrown over that form which had once lived in the light of a nation's eyes. It lay thus for some time; but was at length ordered to be embalmed, and buried, with royal pomp, in the Cathedral at Peterborough,--a vulgar artifice used by Elizabeth to stifle the gnawing remorse of her own conscience, and make an empty atonement for her cruelty. Twenty-five years afterwards, James VI. wishing to perform an act of tardy justice to the memory of his mother, ordered her remains to be removed from Peterborough to Henry VII.'s Chapel, in Westminster Abbey. A splendid monument was there erected, adorned with an inscription, which, if it spoke truth, James must have blushed with shame and indignation whenever he thought of his mother's fate. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, died in the forty-fifth year of her age. If the events of her life have been faithfully recorded in the preceding pages, the estimate which is to be formed of her character cannot be a matter of much doubt. To great natural endowments,--to feelings constitutionally warm,--and to a disposition spontaneously excellent, were added all the advantages which education could confer or wealth purchase. That she was one of the most accomplished and talented women of the age, even her enemies allow. But talents do not always insure success, nor accomplishments command happiness; and by few persons in the whole range of history was this truth more fatally experienced than by Mary Stuart. At first sight, her life and fate seem almost a paradox. That one upon whom most of the common goods of fortune had been heaped with so lavish a hand,--one who was born to the enjoyment of all the rank and splendour which earth possesses,--one whose personal charms and fascinations obtained for her an empire over the heart, more lasting and honourable than that which her birth gave her over a nation,--that even she should have lived to lament that she had ever beheld the light of day, is one of those striking examples of the uncertainty of all human calculations regarding happiness, which, while it inspires the commonest mind with wonder, teaches a deeper lesson of philosophy to the wisely reflective. Circumstances are not so much the slaves of men, as men are of circumstances. Mary lived at an age, and in a country, which only rendered her risk the greater the more exalted her station. In France, where civilization had made more progress, she might perhaps have avoided the evils which overtook her at home; but in Scotland, a Princess possessing the refinement of a foreign court, and though with a large proportion of the virtues and captivations of her sex, not entirely destitute of some of its weaknesses, could hardly expect to cope with the turbulent spirit, the