There are tears, hot, burning tears, under those ceremonious sentences she wrote to Elizabeth from here. Her heart was full of them, though the Queen awed the woman, and kept them there. Sad restless nights must she have passed under those soft starry June skies, though her days were pomped out with the regal strain of her grand rank. It was the Queen who looked on for two hours while her faithful followers played football for her amusement "on a playing green towards Scotland," and that beautiful face undoubtedly had its full complement of smiles and graces; but that proud passioned heart in whose depths pulsed the blood of the heaven-scaling Guises and the absolute Tudors, must have had hours of dreadful hard human suffering here, as it was here that her pleasant sustaining dream of Elizabeth's sympathy and help was first so utterly dispelled. But the heathery hills of Scotland were still in sight here, and here also she could still hear the clear ringing accent and heart hallowed speech of her own loved land, and the attraction bound her—she wished to stay here. Poor lady, on her beautiful head descended the retribution of many wrongs. Queen of Scotland, and born on its rugged soil, she yet through her maternity and education was entirely French. All her affinities with the Scotch nature had been destroyed, and from this all her troubles sprang. She was the victim of circumstances—the heiress of the results of a century of mistakes and acrimonious unwisdom. We must pity her. She must ever be pitied, and her final treatment must be for ever deprecated. But still Elizabeth acted not alone. Terrible things—the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572, in which at
