Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/300

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290
THE PORTRAITS OF JOHN KNOX.

cannot find that he is at liberty to pay visits in that direction, or to consort with Princes at all. Mary often enough bursts into tears, oftener than once into passionate long-continued fits of weeping, — Ejiox standing with mild and pitying visage, but without the least hairsbreadth of recanting or recoiling ; wait- ing till the fit pass, and then with all softness, but with all inexorability, taking up his theme again. The high and graceful young Queen, we can well see, had not met, nor did meet, in this world with such a man. The hardest-hearted reader cannot but be affected with some pity, or think with other than softened feelings of this illstarred, young, beautiful, graceful and highly gifted human creature, planted down into so unmanageable an environment. So beautiful a being, so full of youth, of native grace and gift; meaning of herself no harm to Scotland or to any- body ; joyfully going her Progresses through her dominions ; fond of hawking, hunting, music, literary study ;* cheerfully accepting every gift that out-door

  • 'The Queen readeth daily after her dinner, instructed by a

learned man, Mr. George Bowhanan, somewhat of Livy.' — Kandolph to Cecil, April 7, 1562 (cited in Irving's Life of Buchanan, p. 114).