leaders of the army before Leith for the expulsion of the strangers she is said to have called the maledictions of God upon them who counselled her to persecute the preachers and to refuse the petitions of the best part of the subjects of the realm. Shut out from the countrymen and advisers in whom she had trusted, with the hitherto impartial Lord Erskine alone at her ear, adding his word concerning the "unjust possessors" who were to be driven "forth of this land," and overcome by sickness, sadness, and loneliness, this lady, who had done her best to hold the balance even and to refrain from bloodshed, though she had little credit for it, seems to have lost courage. She saw from her altitude on the castle rock the great fire in Leith, which probably looked at first like the beginning of its destruction, and all the martial bands of England, and the Scots lords and their followers, lying between her and her friends. After some ineffectual efforts to communicate with them otherwise, she sent for the Lords Argyle, Glencairn, and the Earl Marischal, with the Lord James, who visited her separately, "not all together, lest that some part of the Guysian practice had lurked under the colour of friendship." Knox's heart was not softened by the illness and isolation, nor even by the regrets and repentance, of the dying Queen. She consented to see John Willock, his colleague, and after hearing him "openly confessed that there was no salvation but in and by the death of Jesus Christ." "But of the Mass we had not her confession," says the implacable preacher. She died on the 9th of June, worsted, overthrown, all that she had aimed at ending in failure, all her efforts foiled, leaving those who had been her enemies triumphant, and the future fate of her daughter's kingdom in the hands of "the auld enemy," the ever-dangerous neighbour of Scotland. "God, for His good mercy's sake, rid us from the rest of the Guysian blood," was the prayer Knox made over her grave. And yet, so far as can be judged, Mary of Guise was no persecutor and no tyrant. To all appearance she had honestly intended to keep peace in the kingdom, to permit as much as she could without committing herself to views which she did not share. And nothing could be more touching than such an end to a life never too brilliant or happy. She had gone through many alternations of gladness and of despair, had stood bravely by her sensitive husband when the infant sons who were his hope had been taken one after another, had discharged, as faithfully as circumstances and the accidents of a tremendous crisis would let her, her duties as Regent. Her death, lonely, desolate, and defeated, with no one near whom she loved, to smooth her passage to the grave, might have gained her a more gentle word of dismissal.