his action, he had struck the plaster figure-not with the wild blows of the poor, mad artist, but with one great, resolute crash that sent the creamy fragments flying. The head fell to pieces; again he struck, and the neck and shoulders split. The great fragments of crust slowly separated and dropped down-and I saw Jenny!

Jenny, white and stiff, with none of her colour left save purple in her lips and eyelids, and the glossy yellow of her tresses, but with her bright, blonde beauty otherwise unimpaired. The hair still rippled and broke in seductive little tendrils over her broad brow, the sweet mouth still curved upwards as if about to widen in a smile. She wore a black frock and a locket with Laurie's miniature strung round her neck. There was no mark of violence on her, no stain of the grave. She sat there fresh, debonnair, gracious, as on the day I last saw her.

"A tomb,' said the priest. 'Oh, la belle!'

"You see, he was a Frenchman, and a bit of an artist.

"How did she die? No one but Laurie will ever know for certain, and Laurie died mad. The theory generally accepted is that she had hot words with him, or rather, that he spoke harshly to her, and that the shock caused her death. A doctor, well acquainted with the Montressors attended Jenny's mother--said that the girl had a weak heart. Then Laurie would conceive the fantastic idea of burying her in the statue. She was so much in love with him that this story's quite probable.

"I copied it in his studio. Yes. Well. . . . Dinner? All right; come on! Oh, excuse me a minute!"

The friend smiled as he saw Kitto cover the statuette in the corner.

IS THE READING OF HISTORICAL NOVELS PREJUDICIAL TO THE TRUE STUDY OF HISTORY?

BY ADA SHURMER.

To the lover of historical research, whose real aim is to

discover truth and to do justice, and who endeavours to maintain an unbiassed mind, the study of history must always be a delight, and the misrepresentations of historical novelists painful. That the reading of these works must be a waste of time to this class of persons is to me, at least, manifest. I go further, however, and submit that such reading is injurious to any class of historical inquirers.

I will endeavour to prove my point from the novels themselves, beginning with Charles Kingsley's "Westward Ho."

In this work Mr. Kingsley delivers himself with all the lightness and irresponsibility of the novelist, and on no less a subject than the guilt, from his point of view, of Mary Stuart. Mr. Kingsley, whose adoration, not only of Queen Elizabeth,` but of everything English, seems to have rendered him incapable of seeing straight where her victim was concerned, pronounces without hesitation his verdict on a subject which has exercised the thoughts of multitudes of learned and just men and women ever since the period in which that victim of fraud, English intrigue, and Scottish treachery lived. In referring to the murder of Mary Stuart by Elizabeth's orders, Mr. Kingsley thus expresses himself on page 501:-"But this evening Northam is in a stir . . . the hills are red with bonfires in every village, and far away the bells of Bideford are answering the bells of Northam. For this day has

come the news that Mary Queen of Scots is beheaded in Fotheringay, and all England, like a dreamer who shakes off some hideous nightmare, has leaped up in one tremendous shout as the terror and danger of seventeen anxious years is lifted from its heart for ever." Well, in the first place, that "all England" rejoiced at this news is a falsehood which can

be refuted by reference to almost any reliable historian. I have in this paper drawn only from Dr. Taylor's "Pictorial History." I may just say that when the hapless Queen of Scotland threw herself on the protection of Elizabeth at the latter's own request, and with repeated assurances of protection, she only did so in order that Elizabeth might fulfil her repeated offers of mediating between her and her rebellious and traitorous subjects. Also that the "terror and danger need never have arisen but for the Queen of England's unlawful detention of the Scottish Sovereign, and her delay in and afterwards refusal to return her to her own country, where a large majority and an influential one was eager to receive her. Dr. Taylor, referring to the fault found with Mary for trusting Elizabeth, says :—

""

"The character of Mary was as remarkable for frankness and rashness as was that of her wily cousin for duplicity and dissimulation. Moreover, Elizabeth had invited Mary to come to England, and had promised to protect her; but," continues this writer (p. 85, vol. ii.), “instead of that protection the unprecedented spectacle was offered to the world of the sovereign of a great nation forcibly detaining within her realm an independent Princess who had never injured her, and who had cast herself in her hour of misfortune and peril on her protection." Dr. Taylor characterises this action of Elizabeth's (p. 86) "as contrary to the most solemn pledges repeatedly and voluntarily given by her, and at variance with every principle of justice, international law, and every sentiment of humanity," and he, one of many, proves in regard to the "terror and danger" that it was not until Mary had been wearied out with pretended and protracted negotiations between Elizabeth and Mary's accusers, that the latter, hopeless of relief, resolved, and justly resolved, to accept foreign aid for her deliverance; but, before doing so, she honestly apprised the Queen of England of her intention in the following letter (p. 105 1):-"Impatient of the state of captivity in which she was so long detained, Mary now wrote in dignified and emphatic terms to Elizabeth. She denounced the violent proceedings of Moray, who, notwithstanding

1 Taylor's "Pictorial History of Scotland."

Elizabeth's pledges, had proceeded to put down by force of arms, and to treat as rebels, all who had remained faithful in allegiance to their Queen, and she requested once for all,' and without further trifling, to be explicitly informed whether or not Elizabeth intended to restore her to her country.' Any other answer," than this explicit statement demanded, "I cannot but take to be a refusal which would cause me, to my great regret, to accept any other aid that it might please God to send me." Mr. Kingsley1 then proceeds: 'Yes, she has gone to answer to a higher Tribunal than the estates of England for all the noble English blood "—he makes no allusion to the equally noble Scottish blood so freely shed in the same cause; that is a detail not worth mentioning"for all the noble English blood poured out for her; for all the noble English hearts she had tempted into rebellion and murder." In analysing this sentence, we may remark that Mr. Kingsley seems to be able to account for Mary's actions both in this world and the next when he informs us that "she had gone to answer to a higher Tribunal; "that question, at least, was quite beyond his ken. Mary was under no responsibility for the bloodshed which her detention in England caused. That, as I have already shown, was entirely due to Queen Elizabeth's unlawful seizure of her person, and subsequent determination to control her liberty at all hazards. It would be difficult to find in any book of this nature a more untrue, more prejudiced, or more misleading passage: "The noble English hearts she tempted into rebellion and murder." There was no need to tempt; the numerous friends she had in England were more than ready to help her, but she was justified in using any and every legitimate means of regaining her liberty. As for the English truly noble hearts who felt for her, and the hands which fought for her, they were moved thereto from love of her and sympathy with her undeserved misfortunes. The "rebellions," as Mr. Kingsley calls them, which were caused by Mary in England were as a drop in the ocean compared to the generations of Tudor intrigue, treachery, and mischief-making in Scotland from Henry VII. to Elizabeth, in whom it culminated, and by whom,

1" Westward Ho."

as Dr. Taylor points out (p. 98), "it was pursued through a labyrinth of treacherous policy such as has no parallel in history." Nothing, in fact, but Mary's death would ever have appeased the unprovoked and utterly uncalled-for malignity of the English Queen. "And now," Mr. Kingsley further proceeds, "she can do evil no more. Murder and adultery, the heart which knew no forgiveness, the tongue which could not speak truth even for its own interests, have past." When a historian brings against anyone a charge so terrible as this, he has to prove his point; not so Mr. Kingsley the novelist; he sails on from one calumny to another without even an expression of regret.

In regard to the charge of murder first. Again and again did Mary demand an audience with Elizabeth, and to be confronted with her accusers, that she might defend her own cause with the Queen and denounce her persecutors; but it did not suit the detestable policy of Elizabeth to face the woman she had determined to ruin. Who were really Darnley's murderers, and that Mary had nothing whatever to do with it, has long since been proved to all persons except such as prefer to remain in the belief of her guilt. In regard to this statement, I give Dr. Taylor's authority and Mary's own words. Dr. Taylor says (p. 100): "It is impossible to avoid the suspicion "-certainty, he might have safely said— that the manifest and shameful partiality of Elizabeth in refusing, and persisting in that refusal, to exhibit to Mary the writings produced in proof of her guilt arose from some secret dread of the disclosures which might follow tending to criminate Moray and his associates, whom she had determined at all hazards to support."

And now just one letter of Mary's own (p. 99). Mary writes from her prison to her commissioners at the English court a letter which Dr. Taylor describes as "fresh, eloquent, vigorous and pathetic." She demands inspection both of the originals and copies of the letters and other writings that had been produced against her, declaring her readiness, when this was done, to give in such answers as would not only fully establish her own innocence but prove her enemies to have been themselves the authors and perpetrators of the crime which they