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    before and at the time of her execution peculiarly appalling , and sufficient to have shaken a stout heart ; yet it is well known that she preserved to the last a calm dignity of de * meanour . More than two months previous to her violent death " they removed the canopy from her chamber , and hung the walls and beds with black . " This piece of unnecessary cruelty

    is quoted from a letter of the French Ambassador to Henry 111 ; and was as well calculated as any thing that can be imagined to create horror and gloomy apprehension . It is added , " they sent her a clergyman to console her ; " thus adding insult to the species of torture inflicted . She did not admit him to her presence . A private execution , the being conducted into a familiar apartment and finding erected in it a scaffold covered with black , a few people collected around it , and the executioner awaiting the victim—all these things seem peculiarly terrible and trying ,

    Jet all the accounts give the same impression of the firmness of lary throughout . The official report , given by an eye witness , says : — " She went to the hall of execution with an undismayed countenance , and without any fear . The scaffold was two feet high and twelve broad , and as well as the cushion and block covered with black . A chair was brought her . "

    The sentence of death and order for the execution was then read . " During the reading of the commission the Queen of Scots was very silent , listening unto it with so careless a regard as if it had not concerned her at all ; marry , with such a cheerful countenance , as if it had been a pardon from her Majesty for her life . "

    That this cheerfulness continued to the end is well known , enduring even through the brutal custom of disrobing , until ' she was stript of all her apparel , saving her petticoat and kirtle , ' lest , we suppose , the executioner ' s perquisite should be injured .

    " Her head was severed at two strokes ; the countenance changed the first moment , so that it could not be recognized , and the lips trembled for nearly a quarter of an hour after . When the executioner collected the clothes , he found the Queen ' s little dog , which would not be drawn away , but laid himself down between her head and her shoulders . "

    This volume is a valuable addition to historical literature , inasmuch as it condenses a great quantity of information , hitherto spread over a wild and confusing extent . It certainly does not ao much more than other works have done to establish

    the guilt of Mary , in several instances . Be it , however , acknowledged that she was guilty in them all , we must still ive it as our opinion that she was , in many respects , a very « ne creature , perverted by circumstances for more than by nature .

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    180 Contributions to Modern History ,

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 1, 1837, page 180, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1829/page/54/