By ADA IDDINGS GALE. O happy years! that pass and will not stay, I con you o’er—as one might that doth clasp A string of limpid pearls in her fond grasp— At loss to choose which gleams with purest ray. Or like a child within a garden fair, That—passing swiftly on from flow’r to flow’r Leaves each frail beauty in its wind swayed bow’r For fear she will not pluck the fairest there. So ’tis with me, in noting o’er my years— I scarce can choose one out from all the rest, And smiling say—this one was happiest. So rich I’ve been in joy—so poor in tears. Oh! may the sweetness of Time measured, be Of Time un-measured—a sweet prophecy. EIGHT CENTURIES WITH WALTER SCOTT. By WALLACE BRUCE. “The Monastery,” “The Abbott,” and “Kenilworth,” are related to the most interesting period of Britain’s history. The characters of Queen Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots, stand out in bold relief. Representing, as they do, the Protestant and Catholic religions fiercely struggling for supremacy in Britain, it is not a matter of wonder or surprise that each has been painted, at different times, and by different historians, as angel and as fiend. After reading a score of histories and essays, the general reader, like the world at large, is undecided, unless he is fortunate, or unfortunate enough to have prejudices. According to one writer, the policy of Elizabeth, alike toward foreign nations and toward her own subjects, was one vast system of chicane and wrong; her life one of mischief and misery; her character below the standard of even the closing years of the sixteenth century. On the other hand she is the incarnation of all that is noble and heroic; she is hailed as the “Gloriana” of Spenser, and as “Fair Vestal throned in the West,” by Shakspere. In like manner Mary, her queenly cousin, with a French education calculated to prejudice her in the minds of her countrymen, appears in some histories as a second Lady Hamlet, forgetful of her son, with undue haste marrying the alleged murderer of her husband. Again, she appears entirely ignorant of the conspiracy against her husband; nay more, actually compelled by the Nobles of Scotland to take the hand of Bothwell; while the religious feeling was so bitter that her opponents circulated falsehood and forgery in order to poison the minds of her subjects.