78 RELIQUES OF QUEEN MARY.
sions to allow the persons, who are said to have been assembled there, the simplest accommodations for a repast ; especially if Darnley was of so gigantic pro portions as the armor, still preserved there and asserted to be his, testifies. Poor Mary, notwithstanding her errors, and the mistakes into which she was driven by the fierce spirit of her evil times, is now remembered throughout her realm, with a sympathy and warmth of appreciation, which failed to cheer her sufferings dur ing life. Almost constantly you meet with memorials of her. In the Castle of Edinburgh, you have pointed out to you a miserable, dark room, about eight feet square, where her son, James the Sixth, was born ; in the Parthenon, among the gatherings of the Antiqua rian Society, you are shown the cup from which she used to feed her infant prince, and the long white kid gloves, strongly embroidered with black, which she was said to have worn upon the scaffold ; and in the dining- hall at Abbotsford, you start at a most distressing por trait of her, her head in a charger, taken the day after her execution. Near the Cathedral of Peterborough, where her body was interred, the following striking inscription was once put up in Latin. It was almost immediately removed, and the writer never discov ered, and we are indebted to Camden for its preserva tion.
" Mary, Queen of Scots, daughter of a king, kins woman and next heir to the Queen of England, adorned with royal virtues and a noble spirit, having often, but in vain, implored to have the rights of a prince done
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