REIGN OF QUI.KN MARY. 77
they are usually examined with interest by visitants. The antique cicerone, to whom this department apper tained, and whose voice had grown hoarse and hollow by painful recitations in these damp apartments, still threw herself into an oratorical attitude, and bestowed an extra emphasis, when any favorite article was to be exhibited, such as " Queen Mainfs work-box ! Queen Mairy s candelabra!" The latter utensil, it seems, she brought with her from France. Probably some tender associations, known only to herself, clustered around it ; for she was observed often to fix her eyes mournfully upon it, as a relic of happier days. In her apartments, we were shown the stone on which she knelt at her coronation ; the embroidered double chair, or throne, on which she and Darnley sat after their marriage ; the state-bed, ready to perish, and despoiled of many a mouldering fragment by antiquarian vorac ity ; her dressing-case, marvellously destitute of neces sary materials ; and the round, flat basket, in which the first suit of clothes for her only infant were laid. These articles, and many others of a similar nature, brought her palpably before us, and awakened our sympathies. There was a rudeness, an absolute want of comfort about all her appointments, which touched us with pity, and led us back to the turbulent and half civilized men by whom she was surrounded, and from whom she had little reason to expect forbearance as a woman, or obedience as a queen. The closet, to which we were shown the secret staircase where the assassins entered, seems scarcely of sufficient dimen-
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