So it has remained, a spectacle to all the earth, which the fiercest assailant and the most rigid judge cannot long contemplate without yielding to a painful compassion which rends the heart. Why should all that faculty and force, all that wonderful being, with every capacity for happiness and making happy, for wise action and beneficent dealing, for boundless influence and power--why such youth, such strength, such spirit, equal to every enterprise, should they have been swept away by that remorseless fate? We can still see the trapped and ruined Queen--exasperated still further by the consciousness that many of the men now holding her in bonds were at least as guilty as she, guilty of Darnley's blood, guilty if not of favouring yet of fearing Bothwell and yielding their countenance to his plans--pacing that chamber, appearing at that window, her loveliness, her adornments, and all the wiles of triumphant beauty forgotten, throwing forth to the earth that was as brass and the skies that were as iron, like a wild animal in its torment, her hoarse inarticulate cry. And, whatever we may think of her merits, that terrible spectacle is more than flesh and blood can bear. Pity takes the place of wrath and indignation that she alone should suffer: why not Lethington, Huntly, Athole, and the rest, all those stern peers who counselled with her upon the most effectual way of having Darnley removed, the thankless fool who disturbed every man's peace--why were not they tried along with her, they who took such high ground as her judges? Why should she bear the brunt of all? Even Bothwell had escaped, and Mary stood at the bar of the world alone.