heart, had his simple words been sung with taste or execution more appropriate to their subject. In truth, it was impossible to listen to the lay without feeling a conviction that the heart of the minstrel was in his song. There were, moreover, moments in which a practised ear might have discovered variations, not in the tune only, but in the words, as the singer exerted his unrivalled powers to adapt the text, which he had chosen, to his own peculiar circumstances; nor would it have required more than a common degree of fancy to have traced the sounds, “O Reine Marie!” mingling with the proper refrain of the chant, although it would have been less easy to distinguish whether the fervent expression with which the words were invested was applied to an object of mortal idolatry or of immortal adoration. It would seem, however, that there were listeners near, to whom this doubt had not so much as once occurred; for in a shadowy bower, not far distant from the spot where the concealed musician sang, there stood a group of ladies, drinking with breathless eagerness every note that issued from his lips. Foremost in place, as first in rank, was one whose charms have been said and sung, not by the poet and the romancer only, but by the muse of history herself, who almost seems to have dipped her graver pencil in the hues of fiction when describing Mary Stuart of Scotland. Her form, rather below than above the middle stature of the female form, was fashioned with such perfect elegance, that it was equally calculated to exhibit the extremes of grace and majesty. Her ringlets of the deepest auburn, glancing in the light with a glossy, golden lustre, and melting into shadows of dark chestnut; the statue-like contour of her Grecian head; her eyes, on which no man had ever gazed with impunity to his heart--more languid and at the same time far more brilliant than those of created beauty; her mouth, whose wreathed smile might have almost tempted angels to descend and worship; her swan-like neck of dazzling whiteness; and, above all, the glorious blending of feminine ease with regal dignity--of condescension and affability toward the meanest of her fellow-men, with the exalted consciousness of all that was due, not to her rank, but to herself--combined to render her perhaps the loveliest, as after-events proved her beyond a doubt the most unfortunate, of queens or women. Sorrow at this time had scarcely cast a shadow on that transparent brow; or, if an occasional recollection of the ill-fated Francis did leave a trace behind, it was a sadness of that gentle and spiritualized description which is, perhaps, a more attractive expression to be marked in the features of a lovely woman, than the full blaze of happiness and self-enjoyment. Simple almost to plainness in her attire, the queen of Scotland moved before her four attendant Maries, ten thousand times more lovely from the contrast of her unadornment to the gorgeous dresses of those noble