in particular, and that in fact he knew nothing whatever about them, inasmuch as the Casket was not even discovered for nearly half a year after his interview with the ambassador! Above all, will it be believed that Mr. Froude, while he thus assures his readers that this informant confirmed every particular of the letters unfavourable to the Queen, has the amazing folly to print (in Spanish, it is true,) the words of the original despatch; and that these words expressly declare that the ambassador's informant, although distinctly challenged to say what he thought as to the Queen's guilt, declined to offer any opinion, but although he did not condemn her, yet did not acquit her notwithstanding !*

Against such use of authorities we confess ourselves unable to argue with even the semblance of moderation. Mr. Froude's last argument for the genuineness of the letters, "because there is no ground whatever to doubt it, except the hardy and long continued, but utterly baseless denial of interested or sentimental partizans," may, in the presence of Mr. Hosack's learned, moderate, and scholarlike volume, safely be dismissed without even the ceremony of a reply.

II. Too little space remains for the second and more important branch of the inquiry, the examination how far the Casket papers exhibit those intrinsic characteristics by which the genuineness of such documents is most satisfactorily tested. Fortunately there is no part of the subject upon which we can refer with more confidence to Mr. Hosack's careful and elaborate essay. Our own intended remarks are unavoidably curtailed.

The letters, as we said, are naturally divisible into three groups; two written from Glasgow, the original language of which appears to have been Scotch; three without mark of place or time, apparently written originally in French; and three which bear marks of a Scotch original, and profess to have been written at Stirling on the eve of the Queen's seizure and abduction by Bothwell.

Among these three sets of letters, all ascribed, from our summary, to the Queen of Scots, Mr. Hosack admits the genuine authorship of the second, the undated French letters, and unhesitatingly denies that of the first and third, the socalled Glasgow and Stirling letters.

As to the three French letters, it will be remembered that there is nothing whatever in them to connect them specially

Aunque no la condeño de palabra, no la salbó nada." De Silva's Despatch, quoted by Froude, ix. 18.

with Bothwell; still less is there any indication of complicity on the part of the writer in the guilty enterprise of that bold bad man. The letters, supposing them to be Mary's, would prove nothing beyond her passionate attachment to the person to whom they are addressed; and Mary's enemies, by representing them as addressed to Bothwell, quite sufficiently effected their purpose of compromising her married honour and of supporting the general charge against her of complicity in the murder of her husband, by exhibiting the guilty love in which that design, according to their view, had its chief motive and origin. Now Mr. Hosack contends, and in this he is ably seconded by Mr. Caird, that the three letters in question are neither more nor less than genuine letters of Mary addressed to Darnley in the opening days of their married life, before the hopeless brutality and baseness of his disposition had become apparent, and before his low habits of debauchery and utter degradation of life had entirely torn aside the veil which her early love for him threw for a time over the vices of his character.

As this portion of Mr. Hosack's argument is at once the most novel and the most interesting, we shall confine ourselves chiefly to it. Merely indicating some of the general sources of suspicion of forgery as to the Glasgow and Stirling letters, we shall be content to refer the reader to Mr. Hosack's own pages for a full examination of this branch of the subject.

The writer of the first letter from Glasgow promises that, "according to [Bothwell's] commissions," she will "bring the man to Craigmillar on Monday." Now simultaneously with the Casket letters, Murray laid in evidence before the commissioners at York a "Journal" of the Queen's movements during this momentous visit to Glasgow; according to which she left Edinburgh on Tuesday, January 21st, accompanied by Bothwell, as sheriff of the county, and his brother-in-law, Huntly; she parted from them at Callander on the 22nd; and came to Glasgow on Thursday, the 23rd. Hence, according to the showing of this letter, it was on the 22nd she received the commission from Bothwell to bring Darnley to Craigmillar. Now, unluckily for the consistency of the conspirators against Mary, a commission, which purports to be given on the 22nd by Bothwell to bring Darnley to Craigmillar is plainly incompatible with their own "journal." Eventually Darnley was brought, as is well known, not to Craigmillar, but to Kirk-o-field. Now this change of purpose took place, according to the deposition of his servant Nelson, sole survivor of the catastrophe, solely at Darnley's own desire. Up to "Saturday in the morning" the original commission as to Craigmillar was still, according to the Glasgow letter, adhered

to at Glasgow; and therefore up to that day Bothwell, if this letter be genuine, expected that he would be brought to Craigmillar. And yet, according to the entry in the "Journal for the previous day (January 24th) Bothwell was actually engaged in inspecting the preparations for receiving Darnley at Kirk-o-field;-an arrangement which the professed Glasgow letter proves not to have been up to that time suggested or entertained!

A still more palpable incompatibility of the Glasgow letters with the "Journal" and with one another, all which we must say that Mr. Froude most unaccountably ignores or despises, has been indicated in a former page, where we pointed attention to the dates at which those letters must have been written. In the first place, we learn from the Journal that Bothwell, on the night of Friday, the 24th, took journey to Liddesdale and did not return to Edinburgh till Tuesday, the 28th. Now the letters, especially the second letter, must have been addressed to him at Edinburgh, and suppose his presence there, as well for the answers which they require as for the execution of the commissions which they communicate.

If it be replied that this may be accounted for on the supposition of Bothwell's having changed his purpose after his leaving the Queen, and that the Liddesdale journey was sudden and unforeseen, there still remains a still graver difficulty as to the two letters themselves, which the reader may already have anticipated from the account of the time and circumstances of their composition, given in a former page. It was shown by the clearest internal evidence that the second or longer letter must have been commenced on Friday, 24th; continued up to a late hour that night; suspended for the night; resumed in the afternoon of Saturday, 25th; and not finally completed until late on Saturday night. On the other hand, the first letter contains the express date, "this Saturday in the morning." We have thus the inexplicable problem of a second letter, commenced, ended, and despatched during the actual preparation of a first, both on precisely the same subject and in exactly the same spirit and tone; and this without a word of allusion in either letter to the other, or a single circumstance connected with either to explain or account for such an anomaly! Moreover, the first part of the longer letter was certainly completed on Friday night. It contains many particulars far more important, (in the hypothesis of a conspiracy between the writer and Bothwell,) for Bothwell to learn, than are the passionate complaints and love-sick longings of the short letter. Is it credible that, if Mary had really despatched

any messenger or any letter to Bothwell on Saturday morning, she would not have sent the first portion of the longer letter instead of, or at all events along with, the short letter dated Saturday in the morning?"

And even were we prepared to admit this, incredible as it is, there is yet another more formidable difficulty arising from a different quarter-the Deposition of the French servant Paris, the alleged bearer of this letter to Bothwell. In order to reconcile Paris's account of this damning interchange of letters between Bothwell and the Queen, during the visit of the latter to Glasgow, it becomes necessary to find time between the conclusion of Mary's longer letter and her final departure from Glasgow with Darnley, (1) for Paris's ride of fifty miles to Edinburgh, (2) for his delay in seeking Bothwell in Edinburgh and awaiting his reply, and (3) for his return journey of fifty miles to Glasgow. Now it is certain that Mary left Glasgow with Darnley on Monday, 27th. We have already shown that the second letter was not finished till late on the night of Saturday, the 25th; and Paris's Deposition shows that he was detained a long time waiting for Bothwell's reply. How is it possible to compress such a series of events into a period of thirty-six hours?

In order to avoid this palpable incompatibility, Laing and Robertson contend, against all internal and external evidence, that the second letter was despatched on Saturday morning. But even this assumption, unwarrantable as it is, will not remove the physical impossibility. M. Wiesener* shows clearly that the length of Paris's stay in Edinburgh awaiting Bothwell's reply, must more than exhaust even the additional day gained by the untenable assumption of his having set out on Saturday morning. We confidently refer to M. Wiesener's minute and careful dissection of the comparative story told on the one hand by the letter itself, and on the other by Paris's Deposition, even the most inveterate hater of the memory of the ill-fated queen.

It would be quite beyond our power to place adequately before the reader another most suspicious circumstance connected with this letter, namely, the inconceivably close coincidence-inconceivable except on the hypothesis of one being directly copied from the other-between the account given in the Glasgow letter of Mary's conversations with Darnley, and a report of the same conversations as repeated by Darnley himself to a gentleman of the Lennox household, named Crawford, who, at the request of Murray, detailed them in a written deposition, nearly two years after the event.

*Revue des Questions Historiques, Juillet, p. 98.

Mr. Hosack prints the two accounts side by side; and we defy any dispassionate reader to explain the identity of thoughts, words, and order of events which they exhibit, except on the supposition of Crawford's Deposition having been "made to order" and that with a view to sustain the credibility of the letter.

In like manner, we must refer to Mr. Hosack's text for many other minute evidences of fraud and fabrication both in these and the Stirling letters,-minor mistakes of detail which would be impossible to Mary, had she been the writer, but into which a subsequent forger might almost inevitably fall and by which he would as inevitably betray himself. Thus Mary in writing from Stirling is made to send a message* about "many fair words to Lethington;" whereas it is certain that Lethington was in attendance on herself at Stirling at the very time. She speaks to Bothwell of Huntly as his brother-in-law-that was, at a time prior to Bothwell's divorce from Huntly's sister. The alleged Contract of Marriage between Mary and Bothwell, dated the 5th of April, 1567, speaks of Bothwell's divorce as already" intended and begun," nearly a month before any step had been taken for the purpose.

There are many similar difficulties of detail; but we have already more than exhausted the space at our disposal, and it is not without much hesitation that we ask the reader's attention to one curious and important point which still remains —we mean Mr. Hosack's theory as to the alleged fraud on the part of Mary's accusers, in putting forward as evidence of her guilty love for Bothwell three of her genuine letters, which, although really addressed by her to Darnley, they represent as intended for Bothwell.

We beg to recall attention to the first of these letters already referred to. It is the letter which appears third in Mr. Hosack's series, and of which Robertson said, that "if Mary's adversaries forged her letters, they were employed very idly when they produced this."

"In this opinion," writes Mr. Hosack,—

Every one will agree. The reader cannot fail to be struck with the total difference of tone between this letter and that of the two former The Glasgow letters breathe only of lust and murder. The one before us is written, to all appearance, by a wife to her husband, in very modest and becoming language. She fears some danger threatening his person; she gently reproaches him with his forgetfulness, and with the coldness of his writing; she sends him a gift in testimony of her unchangeable

*Revue des Questions Historiques, Juillet, 1868., p. 98.

VOL. XIV.—NO. XXVII. [New Series,]

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