hand, and Beale then mounted a platform and read the warrant aloud.

In all the assembly Mary Stuart appeared the person least interested in the words which were consigning her to death.

"Madam," said Lord Shrewsbury to her, when the reading was ended, "you hear what we are commanded to do."

"You will do your duty," she answered, and rose as if to kneel and pray.

The dean of Peterborough, Dr. Fletcher, approached the rail. "Madam," he began, with a low obeisance, "the queen's most excellent majesty-" "Madam, the queen's most excellent majesty-" Thrice he commenced his sentence, wanting words to pursue it. When he repeated the words a fourth time she cut him short.

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"Mr. Dean," she said, "I am a Catholic, and must die a Catholic. It is useless to attempt to move me, and your prayers will avail me but little." Change your opinion, madam," he cried, his tongue being loosed at last; repent of your sins, settle your faith in Christ, by him to be saved." "Trouble not yourself further, Mr. Dean," she answered; "I am settled in my own faith, for which I mean to shed my blood." "I am sorry, madam," said Shrewsbury, "to see you so addicted to popery."

"That image of Christ you hold there," said Kent, "will not profit you if he be not engraved in your heart." She did not reply, and, turning her back on Fletcher, knelt for her own devotions. He had been evidently instructed to impair the Catholic complexion of the scene, and the Queen of Scots was determined that he should not succeed. When she knelt he commenced an extempore prayer, in which the assembly joined. As his voice sounded out in the hall she raised her own, reciting with powerful, deep-chested tones the penitential psalms in Latin, introducing English sentences at intervals, that the audience might know what she was

saying, and praying with especial distinctness for her holy father, the pope.

From time to time, with conspicuous vehemence she struck the crucifix against her bosom, and then, as the dean gave up the struggle, leaving her Latin, she prayed in English wholly, still clear and loud. She prayed for the Church which she had been ready to betray, for her son whom she had disinherited, for the queen whom she had endeavored to murder. She prayed God to avert his wrath from England— that England which she had sent a last message to Philip to beseech him to invade. She forgave her enemies, whom she had invited Philip not to forget, and then, praying to the saints to intercede for her with Christ, and kissing the crucifix and crossing her own breast, “Even as thy arms, O Jesus," she cried, "were spread upon the cross, so receive me into thy mercy and forgive my sins."

With these words she rose. The black mutes stepped forward, and in the usual form begged her forgiveness. "I forgive you," she said, "for now I hope you shall end all my troubles." They offered their help in arranging her dress. "Truly, my lords," she said, with a smile, to the earls, "I never had such grooms waiting on me before." Her ladies were allowed to come up upon the scaffold to assist her; for the work to be done was considerable, and had been prepared with no common thought.

She laid her crucifix on her chair. The chief executioner took it as a perquisite, but was ordered instantly to lay it down. The lawn vail was lifted carefully off, not to disturb the hair, and was hung upon the rail. The black robe was next removed. Below it was a petticoat of crimson velvet. The black jacket followed, and under the jacket was a body of crimson satin. One of her ladies handed her a pair of crimson sleeves, with which she hastily covered her arms; and thus she stood on the black scaffold with the black figures all around her, blood-red from head to foot. Her

reasons for adopting so extraordinary a costume must be left to conjecture. It is only certain that it must have been carefully studied, and that the pictorial effect must have been appalling.

The women, whose firmness had hitherto borne the trial, began now to give way, spasmodic sobs bursting from them which they could not check. "Ne criez vous," she said; “j'ai promis pour vous," (“ Do not cry; I have promised for you.") Struggling bravely, they crossed their breasts again and again, she crossing them in turn and bidding them pray for her. Then she knelt on the cushion. Barbara Mowbray bound her eyes with a handkerchief. "Adieu," she said, smiling for the last time, and waving her hand to them, "Adieu, au revoir." They stepped back from off the scaffold, and left her alone. On her knees she repeated the psalm, "In te, Domine, confido," ("In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust.") Her shoulders being exposed, two scars became visible, one on either side, and, the earls being now a little behind her, Kent pointed to them with his white wand and looked inquiringly at his companion. Shrewsbury whispered that they were the remains of two abscesses from which she had suffered while living with him at Sheffield.

When the psalm was finished she felt for the block, and, laying down her head, muttered, "In manus, Domine tuas, commendo animam meam." The hard wood seemed to hurt her, for she placed her hands under her neck. The executioners gently removed them, lest they should deaden the biow, and then, one of them holding her slightly, the other raised the ax and struck. The scene had been too trying even for the practiced headsman of the Tower. wandered. The blow fell on the knot of the handkerchief and scarcely broke the skin. She neither spoke nor moved. He struck again, this time effectively. The head hung by a shred of skin, which he divided without withdrawing the ax; and at once a metamorphosis was witnessed strange as was

His arm

ever wrought by wand of fabled enchanter. The coif fell off, and the false plaits. The labored illusion vanished. The lady who had knelt before the block was in the maturity of grace and loveliness. The executioner, when he raised the head, as usual, to show it to the crowd, exposed the withered features of a grizzled, wrinkled old woman.

"So perish all enemies of the queen!" said the dean of Peterborough. A loud "Amen!" rose over the hall. "Such end," said the earl of Kent, rising and standing over the body, "to the queen's and the Gospel's enemies!"

Orders had been given that every thing which she had worn should be immediately destroyed, that no relics should be carried off to work imaginary miracles. Sentinels stood.

at the doors, who allowed no one to pass out without permission; and after the first pause, the earls still keeping their places, the body was stripped. It then appeared that a favorite lap-dog had followed its mistress unperceived, and was concealed under her clothes. When discovered it gave a short cry, and seated itself between the head and the neck, from which the blood was still flowing. It was carried away and carefully washed, and then beads, paternoster, handkerchief-each particle of dress which the blood had touched-with the cloth on the block and on the scaffold, was burnt in the hall fire in the presence of the crowd. The scaffold itself was next removed; a brief account of the execution was drawn up, with which Henry Talbot, Lord Shrewsbury's son, was sent to London, and then every one was dismissed. Silence settled down on Fotheringay, and the last scene of the life of Mary Stuart, in which tragedy and melodrama were so strangly intermingled, was over.

XXXV.

ARRIVAL OF THE ARMADA.-EWALD.

[The great effort of Spain and Philip II. to subjugate England was to have been made in favor of Mary Stuart. But Mary was destroyed before the preparations for the expedition could be completed. The attempt, therefore, when it was made, the year after Mary's death, appeared as a bald design to crush England under a foreign yoke, and the result was that every Englishman, old and young, Catholic and Protestant, rallied under the banner of the queen.]

THE summer sun was casting its lengthening shadows upon the bowling-green behind that hotel well known to all officers of her majesty's navy, the Pelican Inn, Plymouth. It was the evening of July 19, 1588. An exciting game of bowls was about to be interrupted. Standing around the bowlingalley watching the play was a little throng whose names naval warfare and the story of adventure will not easily let die. There on that memorable occasion stood Lord Howard, of Effingham, the lord high admiral of England; Sir Robert Southwell, his son-in-law, the captain of the Elizabeth Jorcas; Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Richard Grenville; Martin Frobisher and John Davis; and last, but far from least, Sir John Hawkins, "the patriarch of Plymouth seamen," lazily watching the movements of his pupil, Sir Francis Drake, vice-admiral of the fleet. Raising his form to his full height, then slowly bending forward, the better to give impetus to the swing of his right arm, Sir Francis was about to send the bowl speeding along the alley, when he suddenly stayed his hand and gazed open-mouthed at an old sailor who, with the news-fever burning hot within him, had rushed into their midst. "My lord, my lord!" cried the weatherbeaten old salt to the lord high admiral, "they're coming -I saw 'em off the Lizard last night; they're coming full sail, hundreds of 'em a darkening the waters!" The cool