In the meantime, about a year ago, there appeared a “History of Marie Stuart” by M. Dargaud, a writer of talent, whose book has been much praised and much read. M. Dargaud made, in his own way, various researches about the heroine of his choice; he went expressly to England and Scotland, and visited as a pilgrim all the places and scenes of Marie Stuart’s sojourns and captivities. While drawing abundantly from preceding writers, M. Dargaud does them justice with effusion and cordiality; he sheds through every line of his history the sentiment of exalted pity and poesy inspired within him by the memory of that royal and Catholic victim; he deserves the fine letter which Mme. Sand wrote him from Nohant, April 10, 1851, in which she congratulates him, almost without criticism, and speaks of Marie Stuart with charm and eloquence. If I do not dwell at greater length upon the work of M. Dargaud, it is, I must avow, because I am not of that too emotional school which softens and enervates history. I think that history should not necessarily be dull and wearisome, but still less do I think it should be impassioned, sentimental, and as if magnetic. Without wishing to depreciate the qualities of M. Dargaud, which are too much in the taste of the day not to be their own recommendation, I shall follow in preference a more severe historian, whose judgment and whose method of procedure inspire me with confidence. Marie Stuart, born December 8, 1542, six days before the death of her father, who was then combating, like all the kings his predecessors, a turbulent nobility, began as an orphan her fickle and unfortunate destiny. Storms assailed her in her cradle,-- “As if, e’en then, inhuman Fortune Would suckle me with sadness and with pain,” as an old poet, in I know not what tragedy, has made her say. Crowned at the age of nine months, disputed already in marriage between the French and English parties, each desiring to prevail in Scotland, she was early, through the influence of her mother, Marie de Guise (sister of the illustrious Guises), bestowed upon the Dauphin of France, the son of King Henri II. August 13, 1548, Marie Stuart, then rather less than six years old, landed at Brest. Betrothed to the young dauphin, who, on his father’s death became François II., she was brought up among the children of Henri II. and Catherine de’ Medici, and remained in France, first as dauphine, then as queen, until the premature death of her husband. She lived there in every respect as a French princess. These twelve or thirteen years in France were her joy and her charm, and the source of her ruin.