ders, incessantly hovering on the frontier, wearied out all the efforts of a divided and oppressed people. Then the ever-fatal device of matching one foe against another introduced the Saxon to devour the now easy prey. These were truths too bitter to find a ready chronicler. Besides, the days of heathenism and darkness which followed destroyed the means (had even the wish existed) of commemorating the national ruin. Hence, except by tradition, the truth was scarce remembered. But it was reserved to a far later age to interpolate a positive falsehood in its place. Such an attempt was made by Tysilio, in his 'Chronicle of Kings,' published some time in the eighth century. The short account there given of the 'Cor Emmrys,' and which we have quoted, affords a forcible instance of what Mr. Herbert calls dissimulation' in a historian,—namely, that he clothes his facts with so much falsehood as to create a suspicion of the facts themselves. He could not conceal the truth that the site of Stonehenge was the scene of the well-known tragedy of the bloody Calanmai,'-that event had made the Great Cor' a subject of too painful interest for a historian to pass it in silence, as he has Abury, or to assign to it a mere fabulous origin. Forced to give thus much truth, he atones for the confession by describing it as a recent monument' erected after the Saxon Conquest by piety and patriotism to the fallen flower of British valour;-affecting to be ignorant that it had, in fact, existed long before as the temple of false religion, and that those who had perished there were not devoted leaders, but men who, for their own selfish ends, and by their fanatical policy and teaching, had brought the nation to disunion, defeat, and exile. Everything conspired to assist in establishing the ingenious fraud. The name under which the place was known by the Britons was entirely forgotten, or carefully concealed, with the memory of their disgrace, while one which the Saxon' had given to the monument in his hour of triumph-a derived from that of his successful leader-survived and continued, and was adopted by Tysilio and Geoffrey, the Latin translator of the Brut,' the latter being perhaps ignorant of the true etymology, or, what is more likely, as Mr. Herbert remarks, reading it as Hanging Stones.' Of course in Saxon name It existed when that event occurred,' says Mr. Herbert, of which it is feigned to be a memorial, although it became, as it were, a monument to those who were there buried. So the church of Ste. Genevieve has been made, though it was not built, a mausoleum; and special motives have operated to banish from discourse, and partly from recollection, its original character. This may serve for imperfect illustration.'- P. 85. 2 The advocates of the Druidic theory seem not to have considered that there is any inconsistency between the character of the people to whom they ascribe the erection of these stones, and the name which they bear. For that is evidently Saxon; and a passage in Dugdale, where the reading is 'Stanhengest,' confirms Mr. Herbert's interpretation of 'Stones of Hengest.' England nothing but the Saxon appellation prevailed, and thus the misnomer and the falsehood have passed down the stream of history. But Mr. Herbert, learned in the poetry of Wales, the native land of his house, brings to bear upon the false teaching of the Brut' the indiguant refutation of the later Bards. These fierce enthusiasts, whose sons and grandsons knew so well how to fire the patriotism of their countrymen against the yoke of the ruthless' Edward, could not, without equal disdain, brook the faint-heartedness of those who, to conceal the memorials of defeat, introduced a lie upon their annals, and obscured the 'storied' monument of the high deeds and proud bearing of their order during its second sway, after the fall of the 'men of Cæsar.' Cynddelw, the arch-Bard of Powys, at the close of the twelfth century, thus vented his detestation of Tysilio and his school: 'A copious bard sings sweetly your praise, A song without separation (i.e. schism), without deception; A lofty song, without quietness, without silence; Not the detested song of the followers of Tysilio.'—(P. 42.) We must conclude. We cannot but feel that we have still left much unnoticed in our author's treatise; but our desire to confine ourselves to the most popular view of his subject must be our excuse. Thus we have neglected the megalithic system, as it appears in the Gallic province on the other side the Channel; a study of which would suggest a much closer connexion between the uterque Britannus than historians have hitherto remarked. We have passed over, too, Mr. Herbert's onslaught upon the mighty fallacy of the 'Dracontian Temples,' -the pet discovery of Dr. Stukeley,—and which many succeeding antiquaries have taken without a murmur-and, àpropos of that, the dishonesty and oftentimes the ignorance of that learned Doctor. All which are mighty interesting,' as old Pepys would say, and may reward the patient reader. It is a fault inherent, perhaps, in the nature of Mr. Herbert's work, that on many points, even relating to his immediate subject, it is rather suggestive than conclusive; and this has necessarily led to a want of arrangement which has, we are bound to say, added much to our present task of interpretation. Further, in all that he has advanced we are not inclined to concur; but we repeat that the desire to do justice to the stride here made in antiquarianism has led us thus far to follow his guidance. And we think that, all things considered, we shall have no longer need to blush for our countrymen in their treatment of subjects like the present, when, in answer to the oft-repeated question, 'What mean these stones?' we point to this production, and compare it with the models of learning and patient labour of our German neighbours. 20 ART. II.-The History of Mary Queen of Scots. By F. A. MIGNET. 2 vols. London: Bentley. AMONGST all the modes of settling a dispute, and satisfying the earnest longing for justice which disturbs the heart of man, perhaps the old method, by single combat, presents most points of immediate satisfaction. There is something so entirely congenial to the feelings in seeing a cause personified, and adequately represented. Much of this present satisfaction is experienced when we find in the page of history some grand struggle maintained, some vital question worked out, by men alive to their responsibilities, equal to the important interests they support, and with minds and tempers akin to the principles they advocate. Such a combat and such champions we find in the period we are now called on to consider-a period not less remarkable for the mighty interests involved in the battle then fought out, than for the personal qualities of those engaged in it, and their singular adaptation to the parts they severally played. It may be said, indeed, that circumstances have the power of moulding characters and fitting them to the form assigned them, but the adaptation here is something much more particular and appropriate. Had any of the leading characters in this drama changed places, we see that the results might have been altogether different, and these differences of such magnitude, as to alter the whole face of society abroad and at home, even down to the present day. The course of events connected with the unhappy queen whose character is the subject of our article, by turns brings before us all the principal personages of that period; around her they often group themselves, and with her all were intimately concerned; so closely, indeed, that the contact always develops their inner nature, unmasks their designs and motives, and tests and tries them, as some great power of nature tests every substance that is brought within its influence. It is a test popularly considered fatal to the magnanimity of our great Elizabeth, and to the disinterestedness of Scotland's great statesman: a test to bring out in glaring relief all the fierceness of Knox's nature; to reveal the secret sources of France's duplicity; and the cruelty, the treachery, the ambition of Spain; and to make manifest the utter corruption which lay on the surface at least of the old religion, and to expose every failure of sincerity, reverence, and charity, in that form which superseded it. False herself, Mary of Scotland is yet the mirror of truth to those who approach her; we see in every instance the bad in blacker colours, and the pure gold of the best sullied by an alloy, which need not have been detected, but for the severe trial she brings them to. The fair, candid, impartial mind finds in the records of Mary and her times lessons of such rare interest and importance, such a far and clear insight into persons, motives, and the secret springs of great events, as will repay the toils of the most laborious search. But for any real good, for the ascertaining of truth, for fulfilling any of the uses and purposes of history, candour and impartiality are so important, are indispensable in so stringent a sense of the term, that we may say it is better not to study them at all, than to do so in any other spirit; and experience shows us how hard it is for those who bring themselves within reach of Mary's fascinations, to preserve these qualities. For her beauty lives still: three hundred years have passed, and her smiles and tears have yet power to move the heart, and to pervert the judgment. Those well-known features reign over the imagination as though we beheld them with our eyes; we look in her face and forget, not only all that can be said, but, alas! all that can be proved, against her. If this be so now, it was surely a happy thing for England that while all this beauty lived and breathed, our country lay under a woman's rule. Most unfortunate Mary must have deemed it. No king could have withstood the temptation once to behold those charms, no man could have resisted their influence. What would have been the end, who can tell? Had she once came a suppliant before him, the world might have seen the ancient tale realized 'In robe and crown the king came down And so she might have slid into the unguarded throne, which she never abandoned the hope of one day possessing. Even Elizabeth seems to have known that her safety lay in distance, that it was risking too much to indulge a natural curiosity. We can hardly, indeed, overrate what might have been Mary's living power under favouring circumstances, when we see to what an extent her fascinations blind the moral sense of her historians and apologists at this distant period of time; when we note the tender names they give to her errors, what efforts they make to elude them, how shrinkingly they approach the mention of them, how hastily they pass them over, how petulantly unjust it renders them to all beside, applying all the severer moral standard to her fellow-actors for the licence they allow themselves in her solitary exceptional case. M. Mignet, her latest biographer, and whose work, ably con densing as it does much new matter, has given the subject a fresh interest, is better described as Mary's admirer than her apologist; for having a taste, and, we must believe also, a tender conscience, for historic accuracy, there is no want of fairness to complain of in his detail of the facts of his heroine's story; her worst enemy (the epithet invariably applied to every conscientious believer in Mary's guilt in the one great transaction of her life) never brought together so great a weight of evidence against her. In fact, he believes all the bad she has ever been charged with. The remarkable point in M. Mignet is, that this conviction of guilt in no way seems to affect his feelings towards her. She still occupies in his mind the niche of injured innocence and virtue. Now and then, it is true, the urgency of the case drags from him some unwilling phrases of condemnation; but the tone of his work is sympathising admiration. We know not what may be the secret cause for this perverted judgment. Whether it is to be found in his pride, as a Frenchman, in Mary's beauty and grace, herself half a Frenchwoman by birth, and wholly by education; or whether it proceeds from an equally patriotic hatred of Elizabeth as a main author of our national greatness, it is not easy to decide; probably both these motives have their influence; certain it is that Elizabeth gets all the hard words, is the object of all the virtuous indignation our author has to bestow; and that the same faults which in Mary are passed over without comment, or even sometimes with a lofty tribute of praise to her talent, ingenuity, and matchless resources, are in Elizabeth denounced in a storm of righteous censure. The course of our narrative will afford sufficient proof of this, without lingering at the outset to substantiate our charge. We who are compelled, however ungallantly, to take Mignet's facts,-borne out as they are by every trustworthy previous history,-and to form our own severer conclusions upon them, must proceed, without further delay, to detail these facts as recent search has confirmed, and thrown new light upon them; first attempting to show that in spite of the elegance of Mary's education, and the apparent promise of her youth, there was nothing in her early training to render the darker pages of his history impossible, nor more uncongenial and unnatural than great crimes must always be, when we set ourselves deliberately, and in cool blood, to account for them. Mary is universally called unfortunate and unhappy-too often, to screen her from severer and more appropriate epithets. But unhappy and unfortunate she may be truly called in the circumstances of her childhood and of her education. For what |