But if her faults consisted only in an excess of amiable qualities, or in those strong feelings which, though properly directed, were not always properly proportioned, the question naturally occurs, why the Queen of Scots should have suffered so much misery? "To say that she was always unfortunate," observes Robertson, "will not account for that long and almost uninterrupted succession of calamities which befel her; we must likewise add, that she was often imprudent." Here the historian first mistates the fact, and then draws an inference from that mistatement. No "long and uninterrupted succession of calamities" befel Mary. She experienced an almost unparalleled reverse of fortune, but that reverse was sudden and complete. She sunk at once from a queen into a captive,--from power to weakness,--from splendor to obscurity. So long as she was permitted to be the arbitress of her own fortune, she met and overcame every difficulty; but when lawless and ambitious men wove their web around her, she was caught in it, and could never again escape from its meshes. Had she stumbled on from one calamity to another, continuing all the while a free agent, Robertson's remark would have been just. But such was not her case;--the morning saw her a queen, and the evening found her a captive. The blow was as sudden as it was decisive; and her future life was an ineffectual struggle to escape from the chains which had been thrown round her in a moment, and which pressed her irresistibly to the ground. A calamity which no foresight could anticipate, or prudence avert, may overtake the wisest and the best; and such to Mary was the murder of Darnley, and Bothwell's subsequent treason and violence. If to these be added the scarcely less iniquitous conduct of Elizabeth, the treachery of Morton, the craftiness of Murray, and the disastrous defeat at Langside, it needs no research or ingenuity to discover, that her miseries were not of her own making.