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shath done; but such as kings lover neither to acknowledge nor to reward. It was the service which the knife renders to the tree when trimming it to the quick, and depriving it of the superfluous growth of rank and unfruitful suckers, which rob it of nourishment."

“You talk riddles, my lord," said Mary; will hope the explanation carries noJthing insulting with it

You shall judge, madam," answered Lindesay. With this good sword was Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, girded on the memorable day when he acquired the name of Bell-the-Cat, for dragging from the presence of your great-grandfather, the third James of the race, a crew of minions, flatterers, and favourites, whom he hanged over the bridge of Lauder, as a warning to such reptiles how they approach a Scottish throne. With this same weapon, the same inflexible champion of Scottish honour and nobility slew at one blow Spens of Kilspindie, a courtier of your grandfather James the Fourth, who had dared to speak lightly of him in the royal presence. They fought near the brook of Fala; and Bell-the-Cat, with this blade, sheared through the thigh of his opponent, and lopped the limb as easily as a shepherd's boy slices a twig frota a sapling."

"My lord," replied the Queen, reddening," my nerves are too good to be alarmed even by this terrible history.-May I ask how a blade so illustrious passed from the House of Douglas to that of Lindesay?Methinks it should have been preserved as a consecrated relique, by a family who have held all that they could do against their king, to be done in favour of their country."

،، Nay, madam," said Melville, anxiously interfering," ask not that question of Lord Lindesay-And you, my lord, for shame for decency-forbear to reply to it."

It is time that this lady should hear the truth," replied Lindesay.

And be assured that she will be moved sto anger by none that you can tell her, my lord. There are cases in which just scorn has always the mastery over just anger."

"Then know," said Lindesay, "that upon the field of Carberry-hill, when that false and infamous traitor and murtherer, James, sometime Earl of Bothwell, and nick-named Duke of Orkney, offered to do personal battle with any of the associated nobles who came to drag him to justice, I accepted his challenge, and was by the noble Earl of Morton gifted with this good sword that I might therewith fight it out-Ah! so help me heaven, had his presumption been Cone grain more, or his cowardice one grain less, I should have done such work with this good steel on his traitorous corpse, that the hounds and carrion-crows should have found their morsels daintily carved to their

use!

The Queen's courage well nigh gave way

to the mention of Bothwell's name ha hame connected with such a train of guilt, shame, and disaster. But the prolonged boast of Lindesay gave her time to rally herself, and to answer with an appearance of cold contempt-"It is easy to slay an enemy who enters not the lists. But had Mary Stuart inherited her father's sword as well as his sceptre, the boldest of her rebels should not upon that day have complained that they had no one to cope withal. Your lordship will forgive me if I abridge this conference. A brief description of a bloody fight is long enough to satisfy a lady's curiosity; and unless my Lord of Lindesay has something more important to tell us than of the deeds which old Bell-the-Cat achieved, and how he would himself have emulated them, had time and tide permitted, we will retire to our private apartment, and you, Fleming, shall finish reading to us yonder little treatise Des Rhodomantades Espagnolles."

"Tarry, madam," said Lindesay, his complexion reddening in his turn; " I know your quick wit too well of old to have sought an interview that you might sharpen its edge at the expense of my honour. Lord Ruthven and myself, with Sir Robert Melville as a concurrent, come to your Grace on the part of the Secret Council, to tender to you what much concerns the safety of your own life and the welfare of the State."

"The Secret Council?" said the Queen'; "by what powers can it subsist or act, while I, from whom it holds its character, am here detained under unjust restraint? But it matters not-what concerns the welfare of Scotland shall be acceptable to Mary Stuart, come from whatsoever quarter it will

and for what concerns her own life, she has lived long enough to be weary of it, even at the age of twenty-five.-Where is your colleague, my lord-why tarries he?"

"He comes, madam," said Melville, ard Lord Ruthven entered at the instant, holding in his hand a packet. As the Queen returned his salutation she became deadly pale, but instantly recovered herself by dint of strong and sudden resolution, just as the noble, whose appearance seemed to excite such emotions in her bosom, entered the apartment in company with George Douglas, the youngest son of the Knight of Lochleven, who, during the absence of his father and brethren, acted as Seneschal of the Castle, under the direction of the elder Lady Lochleven, his father's mother.

Roland soon finds himself in a situation which would have embarrassed a youth of principle. He is not, however, greatly distressed by conflicting duties, but urged by pity for the Queen, and love for her attendant, becomes a party to her plans of escape. These, aided by George Douglas, the grandson of

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the Lady of Lochteven, who cherishes a deep, though hopeless passion for the lovely captive, are finally successful, chiefly through the ingenuity of Roland. After the escape, the novel follows the fortunes of Mary until the defeat of her army and her flight into England, where she was to meet with so wretched a fate. The inferior persons, however, are made happy. Roland is discovered to be the legitimate son of Julian Avenel is recognised as the heir of Sir Halbert Glendinning-aud is married to Catherine, whose liveliest pranks appear to have been played off by her brother Henry, who resembles her as Sebastian does Viola. After this union, the White Lady of Avenel-whom our readers will remember in the Monastery," is seen to sport by her haunted well, with a zone of gold around her bosom as broad as the baldric of an earl."

This is, we are aware, but a meagre sketch of the plot of The Abbot-but we regret our defects the less, as most of our readers have doubtless read it for themselves; and a little will suffice to recal its principal features to their memory. The work is, we think, on the whole, more equable than most of the productions of its author. It has fewer either of stoopings or uprisings less of merely wearisome detail, and scarcely any of those grand and unforgotten scenes which chequer his earlier romances. It has nothing in it at all comparable to the sublime and affecting scenes at Carlisle in Waverley-to the pictures in Guy Mannering, which Meg Merrilies dignifies-to the coming in of the sea, or the last moments of Elspeth, in The Antiquary-to the romantic majesties and humanities of Rob Roy to the battle of Loudon-hill, or the perils of Morton among the Covenanters, in Old Mortality-to the sweet heroism of Jenny Deans, or the natural loveliness of the lily of St. Leonard's, in The Heart of Mid Lothian-or to the magnificently awful scenes with which The Bride of Lammermuir closes. Perhaps even The Monastery has features of more "mark and likelihood" than The Abbot, in the frank-hearted Mysie Happer, and the delicate fantasies breathed forth by the White Lady of Avenel. But there is in this novel an interest more gentle, more continuous, and more unbroken, than in any by which it has been preceded. Its style, in the narrative and reflective passages, has more of elegance than its author has

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hitherto deigned to preserve. While he acknowledges the practical benefits of the Reformation, he dwells fondly and pensively on the decaying symbols of the Catholic religion, and treats with due philosophic gentleness the ancient and wide-spread errors of his species. No one has better exemplified the truth that man does not live alone on that which satisfies his reason, but requires objects on which he may repose his imagination and his affections. He looks tenderly on all that man has venerated; and ever finds in it something to excite new love and veneration, if not for the objects of respect, at least for their reverers.

The Abbot is perhaps scarcely equal to most of its predecessors in the spirit and reality of its persons. There is, indeed, great skill, and singular forbearance, in the manner in which it treats the character of the lovely and ill-fated Queen. This celebrated woman has had so many incorrigible foes and tedious champions-has given occasion to so much wretched sophistry and wearisome display of antiquarian researchthat her name seemed rather fitted to "point a moral" than to "adorna tale." But our author has managed her introduction so exquisitely--has been so chary of the glimpses which he has permitted us to snatch of her antique loveliness-and has breathed around her so sweet and feminine a grace, that she seems as fresh to us as though we now were first acquainted with her beauty and her sufferings. She captivates here in spite of her controversial advocates. We know not any modern work which gives with so little seeming effort, the feeling of grace so womanly, and of beauty so unspeakably ravishing. We treat the stories of her guilt as idle tales, without desiring other conviction than that which we feel in her looks-confiding in the truth of nature and certain that she would not so err from herself, as to "embower the spirit of a fiend, in mortal paradise of such sweet flesh." Catherine Seyton, the regular heroine, is very inferior. She is a strange problem, and not worth the solving. The author vexes us by attributing to her wild extravagances, and then explaining that they were really played off by her twin brother. We suspect this solution to be an after-thought, and think any one who attentively examines the story will agree that this is probable. The novelist, we conceive, had formed a vague idea of an original character,

whose female softness and modesty should be overcome by high enthusiasm and singular fortune, and who, thus unhinged, should seek refuge in a bois terous vivacity, and affected manliness of demeanour. But wanting the power, or the time, to finish off the nice and reconciling shades of his portraiture, he had recourse to attributing to the brother all which he could not readily explain in the sister. The scene at the rustic fair, in particular, could scarcely have been planned with the idea that the dancer in a female dress, who, though with a face concealed, was taken for a beautiful woman, was really a daring and impetuous soldier. Whether our conjecture be correct or otherwise, the scenes as at present explained, are very unpleasant blemishes. Roland Græme is one of the least admirable of heroes. He is froward, insolent, and imperious, without any of the gentleness of humanity to atone for the want of rigid and unbending principle. Yet he is one of the most vivid of the author's portraits, full of the spirit of lusty life, of youth rejoicing in its strength, and of hope which fortune has no power to destroy. We seem to behold him with the holy branch in his cap, light and careless as the feather on the breeze, bounding on from novelty to novelty, incapable of remorse for the past or dread of the future. Magdalen Græme, though scarcely a character, is a very striking figure in the romance always appearing with great theatrical effect, and in a picturesque attitude-and thrilling us by her passionate lamentations over the decay of her faith, which are softened by her fond affection for her foster child. She is not, however, at all comparable to Elspeth or Meg Merrilies. Adam Woodcock is very slightly marked-the Abbot not at all, though he gives the work its title. George Douglas is a noble sketch, but it is no more. Surely the author might have found a source of the highest interest in the still and deep passion of that Scotish noble, which led

him, the contemplative, the reserved, and the proud, joyfully to resign family, fortune, life, and renown, for the deliverance of a Queen from whom he had no hope of requital!

Rare as is our author's faculty of observation, and felicitously as he employs its results, we think his power of crea ting and vivifying characters, has sometimes been the subject of excessive eulogy. He has been compared, in this plastic art, to Shakspeare, as though he were only inferior to him in wanting the graces of poetry. This appears to us an error, which even national partialities can hardly excuse. The very strict keeping of all the persons in the romances

the very marked characteristic features of all their speeches, even on trifling occasions-which seems so palpably to define them are proofs of the vast inferi ority of their author to the poet with whom some have dared to compare him. There is nothing of this singleness either in the moral or the physical creations of nature. There is more of colours and lines which are universal-more intermixture of shade with shade-more of gentle connexion and all-pervading harmouy throughout every scene-than the novelist can afford to suffer. He is com pelled perpetually to discriminate his persons by fear lest his readers should confound them. They always seem conscious of their vocation, and appear almost as if they were acting parts, and anxious at every moment not to forget their cue, or deviate from the peculiarities allotted to them. Shakspeare had not need of this wearisome jealousy. He could permit each trait gradually to spread over the surface of the character, without fear that it would lose its colouring. He did not tremble lest his persons should lose their individuality, by the predominance of universal qualities. His persons, therefore, while they can never be confounded, appear in the easy negligence of nature-partake largely in general qualities-and excite universal sympathies.

MEMOIR OF FRANCIS CHANTREY, ESQ. R. A. (WITH A PORTRAIT.)

AMONG the great names which do honour to their country, none are more entitled to its admiration and gratitude than those of the men who have invented or restored useful or agreeable arts. The most skilful professors who have excelled in reducing to practice

those principles which they found established, must be content to rank in our admiration second to the creative minds which taught them this use of their fáculties. But the individual whose powerful genius discovers and removes the er rors and prejudices which impede the

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