called upon to show _why_ they departed from them;--they were called upon to prove, that when they first imprisoned her, though they confessed the Queen was innocent, they were now satisfied she was guilty. There was a positive necessity for the appearance of the letters; and if they had not been fortunately discovered, just at the proper time, Murray and his colleagues must either have had recourse to some other expedient, or have consented to Mary's restoration, and their own disgrace. _Second_, That Mary may have written love-letters to Francis II., and to Darnley, before and after she was married to them, is not unlikely; that she wrote sonnets and letters of affection to many of her friends, both male and female, is beyond a doubt; but that she would ever have written such letters and sonnets to the Earl of Bothwell, whom she never loved, whom she at one time threw into prison, and at another sent into banishment, whom she knew to be a married man, and whose marriage she had herself countenanced and encouraged, is against all probability. If Bothwell had never become Mary's husband, history does not record one circumstance, which would at all lead to the belief, that she was attached to him. Her very marriage, when fairly and fully considered, only makes the fact more certain, that she had no regard for Bothwell, else there would have been no forcible abduction on his part, or pretended reluctance on hers. Even though she had consented to marry Bothwell, which the clearest evidence proves her not to have done, it would afford no presumption against her, that he was afterwards discovered to have been the murderer of Darnley. He had not only been legally acquitted, but all her chief nobility had recommended him to her as a husband, stating the grounds of their recommendation to be the high opinion they entertained of his worth and loyalty. Robertson, Laing, and others, it is true, copying Buchanan, have laboured to show, that Mary discovered in various ways her extreme partiality for Bothwell. Most of their arguments have been already considered elsewhere; but it will be worth while attending for a moment to such of the circumstances collected by Robertson, and drawn up in formidable array, in the "Critical Dissertation" subjoined to his History of Scotland, as have not yet been noticed. The answers and explanations which immediately suggest themselves are so entirely satisfactory, that we can only wonder the historian did not himself perceive them.