And so it afterward appeared. In vain did Mary petition as a favor, or claim as a right, an interview with her relentless persecutor. She should have known that even if Elizabeth could, by her constitution, have pardoned her assumption of the style or titles of the English monarchy, she could yet never overlook, never forgive her surpassing loveliness, her elegant accomplishments, her brilliant wit, her more than mortal grace! She might have condescended to despise the rival queen--she could only stoop to hate the rival beauty. From castle to castle had she been transferred, with no regard for either her rank or convenience. From prison to prison, from warder to warder, had she been conveyed, as each abode seemed in turn insecure to the lynx-eyed jealousy of her tormentor, or every jailer in turn sickened at the loathsome weariness of his hateful and degrading employment. No better proof--if proof were needed--could be adduced of Elizabeth’s tyrannical and cruel despotism, than the unconstitutional authority by which she forced noble after noble, the very pride and flower of the English aristocracy, to change their castles into prisonhouses, their households into warders and turnkeys, their very lives into a state of anxious misery, which could only be surpassed by that of the unhappy prisoner they were, so contrary to their will, compelled to guard. After the base mockery of the trial instituted at York, but a few months after her arrival--that trial wherein a brother was brought forward to convict his sister of adultery and murder--that trial which, though it pronounced the prisoner unconvicted, yet inflicted on her all the penalties of conviction--it scarcely appears that Mary ever entertained a hope of obtaining her liberty, much less the station which was her right, from either the justice or the generosity of the lion-queen. In vain had every course been tried, in vain had every human means been employed. In vain had Scotland sued; in vain had France and Spain threatened, and even prepared to act upon their threats. For Mary there was no amelioration, no change!