Of this we give a singular and significant proof. In the Scots of Letter I. the first sentence ends, ‘Ze promisit to mak me advertisement of zour newis from tyme to tyme.’ The next sentence begins: ‘The waiting upon yame.’ In the English we read ‘at your departure you promised to send me newes from you. _Nevertheless I can learn none_:’ which is not in the Scots, but is in the published French, ‘et toutes fois je n’en puis apprendre.’ The _published_ French is translated from the Latin, which is translated from the Scots, but each of the French _published_ letters opens with a sentence or two from the _original_ French: thus the published French, in one of these sentences, keeps what the Scots omits. Therefore, the Scots translator undeniably, in the first paragraph of Letter I., omitted a clause which was in his French original, and is in the English translation. Consequently, when, in the same short letter, the English has, and the Scots has not, ‘_to Ledington, to be delivered to you_,’ we cannot, as most critics do, and as Herr Bresslau does, infer that Lethington had that mention of him deliberately excised from the Scots version, as likely to implicate him in the murder. It did not implicate him. Surely a Queen may write to her Secretary of State, on public affairs, even if she is planning a murder with her First Lord of the Admiralty. When the Scots translator omits a harmless clause, by inadvertence, in line 6, he may also, by inadvertence, omit another in line 41. From these facts it follows that we cannot acquit Lethington of a possible share in the falsification of the Letters, merely because a reference to him, in the original French, existed, and was omitted in the Scots text. He need not have struck out the clause about himself, because the Scots translator, we see, actually omits another clause by sheer inadvertence. In the same way Mr. Henderson’s text of the Casket Letters exhibits omissions of important passages, by inadvertence in copying.