heart, my spiritual eyes were opened, the lovely woman on the divan was fearfully changed. Instead of the gauze robe, sparkling with silver, a black cloth dress covered her emaciated limbs; instead of brilliants, sparkling in her hair, a mourning veil covered her whitened locks. The beauty and roundness of her neck had disappeared, and I saw around it a broad dark-red stripe. Her head moved, and fell at my feet dissevered. I saw it all, as distinctly as if it really happened, and seized with unspeakable pity I prostrated myself at her feet (who was unknowing of my vision), and besought her with all the anxiety and tenderness of friendship to leave Scotland, to fly from England, as there the death-tribunal awaited her. But Mary Stuart only laughed at my warning, and called me a melancholy fool, whom jealousy made prophetic. The more I begged and implored, the more wanton and gay the poor woman became. Then, as I saw all persuasion was vain, that no one could save her from her dreadful fate, I took a solemn oath that I would be at her side at the hour of her peril, and accompany her to the scaffold. Mary laughed aloud, and, with that mocking gayety so peculiarly her own, she accepted the oath, and reached me her white hand, sparkling with diamonds, to seal the vow with a kiss. I faithfully kept it. I had but just arrived in Rome when I received the account of her imprisonment. I presented myself immediately to the pope, the great Sixtus V., who then occupied the chair of St. Peter. Fortunately, he was my friend, and I had formerly been useful to him, in assisting him to carry out his great and liberal ideas for the welfare of humanity. As a return, I prayed the Holy Father to give me a consecrated hostie for the unhappy Queen Mary Stuart, and the permission to carry it to her in her prison. The Holy Father was incredulous of my sad presentiments, as Mary Stuart herself had been, but he granted me the request. I quitted Rome, and travelled with relays day and night. Reaching Boulogne, a Dover packet-boat had just raised anchor; I succeeded in boarding her, and arrived in London the next evening. The day following, the execution of the queen took place at Fotheringay. I was with her in her last hours, and from my hand she received the consecrated water of Pope Sixtus V. I had kept my oath. I accompanied her to the scaffold, and her head rolled at my feet, as I had seen it in my vision at Edinburgh. It was the 18th of April, 1587, and it seems to me as but yesterday. To the intuitive, seeing spirit, time and space disappear; eternity and immortality are to it omnipresent.”